Weight Maintenance Calculator
for Women

Are you curious as to how many calories you need to maintain your current weight or even lose weight?

Try this calculator to find out.

This calorie calculator is meant to be an estimate only.

Actual calories needed to maintain or lose weight may vary based on muscle mass, activity and a variety of other factors such as illness, pregnancy, etc.

If you are obese, your actual caloric needs may be less accurate. This is because a small percentage of fat tissue actually burns calories. The remaining amount of fat tissue does not burn calories. Please keep this in mind when using the calorie calculator. By consuming these calories on an average daily basis, you should maintain your weight.

However, if you are looking to lose weight, here are some tips:

Most health professionals recommend you to lose weight slow as the safest and most effective weight loss approach.
A sensible weight-loss program allows you to lose weight gradually— about one-half to one pound per week.
Gradual weight loss promotes long-term loss of body fat, not just water weight that can be quickly regained.
To lose one pound, a person must burn 3,500 calories more than are consumed (500 calories per day over the course of a week). For example, reducing calories by 300 per day and increasing daily activity to burn off an additional 200 calories should result in a weight loss of one pound per week!

Here is an example of how the calculator can help you.

If your daily calorie needs were calculated as 2500 calories and you desire to lose weight, you could:

Consume 2200 calories. (That's 300 calories less than this example diet), and...
Burn 200 calories through activity, to result in a 2000-calorie diet!

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Health Tip:

Eating healthy
reverses metabolic syndrome

Dr. Tasnime Akbaraly of University College London and her colleagues were interested if healthy eating could actually turn-the-tide and reverse metabolic syndrome, which is having 3 or more of the following risk factors: excess abdominal fat; high triglycerides, hypertension, low levels of HDL the “good” cholesterol, or type 2 diabetes. Having metabolic syndrome doubles a persons’ risk of heart disease and greatly increases the odds of developing type 2 diabetes.

The researchers studied 339 British civil servants with metabolic syndrome, and how closely the adhered to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) to see if it could help reverse metabolic syndrome. The AHEI is a set of published nutritional guidelines by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2002 that emphasizes whole grains, fruits, vegetables and decreased red meat consumption.

Five years into the study, nearly 50% no longer had metabolic syndrome. People who followed the AHEI guidelines the closest were nearly twice as likely to have reversed their metabolic syndrome. The results of the study were published in Diabetes Care, online July 29, 2010.

Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, an expert on diet and heart health from Tufts University in Boston who was not involved in the study said, "It's not about focusing on individual components of the diet, it's really the whole package, and that becomes important because it means that if one of the components of a healthy diet is to eat more fruits and vegetables, just buying a pill saying that there's a concentrated extract of fruits and vegetables is probably not what's going to help you."

Call and make an appointment with Wellness Coach Sam Hester, CWC, CPT, LWMC, at 713-500-3327. It's confidential and free. For more information on the wellness services provided, visit UT Counseling and WorkLife Services.