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Nutrition Calories a day

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That is way too open ended of a question with no possible answer.

I use this calculator to get a start, but as with any calorie calculator, it only gives a very rough number and you have to adjust after seeing the results every couple weeks.

 
Hi there! There's a specific sub-forum for Diet & nutrition where this question could be better addressed.

In order to help you anyone would need at least your sex, age, current bodyweight, current BF (or at least an estimation of how you see yourself), height, daily routine, daily workout and goals.

I don't like to self adapt diets to myself and I have seen through my wife (phd. physiology and Sport nutritionist) that lots of people end up messing up their metabolism doing crazy stuff..so perhaps you should better seek help with a proper doctor.
 
25 calories per kilo is the basic maintenance. Not taking into account the level of activity. Good enough for practical purposes.
 
If you are interested in the question from a scientific perspective, you can get a number and see what influences the number. Nothing wrong with that. If you are interested in getting a number for your purpose (losing, gaining or maintaining weight) and expect that by adding all the numbers from food labels for what you eat in a day and subtract the number obtained from adding your base metabolism, calories spent exercising from tables or your heart rate monitor, etc... to get a net calories gain and predict what will happen yo your body, then this will not work. There are so many uncertainties in all these quantities and variations from person to person that this cannot be done accurately.

You can look at this Scientific American article to learn more on the food aspect. From the calories consumed aspect, base metabolism varies greatly from one person to another, and calories burned will depend greatly on efficiency and accuracy of measurement (what is meant for example by "playing basketball". I'm sure a pro basketball athlete and kids just shooting baskets in a park spend a very different amount of calories "playing basketball for one hour".

You can probably get information by comparing different foods or exercises to each other, even if that's not perfect. If you never looked at these charts, this can be an eye opener. Compare an oven baked chicken breast to two doughnuts, and be prepared to be surprised. However, if you want to predict what exactly you should eat for your intended results, this will not work. The best you can do is get estimates, and see how your weight fluctuates, and then adjust. For example, the formula tells you you should lose 5 pounds a month, but your weight stayed the same. If you really logged everything correctly, this means that you either spend even more calories or consume less food. However, given that scales are usually precise to the nearest pound and that your weight can easily vary by a pound or two from day to day just in the amount of water and other substances (think gut content...) you have in you, even that is not that precise.

Unless you can stay in a very controlled environment (they have special rooms in which your oxygen consumption and all the relevant variables are measured to study these things), there is no hope of being accurate.
 
I think this article complicates something that shouldn't be. Sure, many factors affect caloric value, but how accurate does your calorie intake have to be? Assuming the 4, 4 and 9 calories per gram for the macronurtients has worked for anybody, from grossly obese to elite bodybuilders. Moreover, there have been a lot of reports of proof of IIFYM (if it fits your macros), people losing weight on a variety of diets, from boiled potatoes to "junk" food to pizza and even biscuits. The composition of macros obviously depends on the goals, but that is a different topic.

One (I believe most important) advantage of whole and raw foods is their lower caloric density. Or the opposite, the problem with processed foods is their higher caloric density.

There is another issue that has puzzled me for decades. In the last paragraph the article states: "...veggies, nuts and whole grains... generally offer far more... nutrients than processed items" (edited by me). Veggies do not contain more nutrients than processed items, that's the point! Whole grain myth has also been debunked many times, but that's, again, another topic.
 
How many calories a day should we eat? Are there any guidelines?
The NIH's bodyweight planner tool should give you a rough guideline of where you need to be. About the Body Weight Planner | NIDDK

Otherwise there are apps and spreadsheets out there that will help you figure this out empirically. Basically you track your calories and your weight every day and punch it in, it then gives you a more accurate estimate of your daily caloric needs. Carbon Diet Coach is one such app (and works extremely well). There is also a spreadsheet that does it on this Weight Loss 101 | The Fitness Wiki It is called "3-Suns Adaptive TDEE Spreadsheet". (Linking the page in case the link to sheet changes, and it is a useful resource)

But if you are just looking for a useful guideline, enough to perform and not so much that you gain fat.
 
Are you losing weight but want to gain? Eat more.
Are you gaining weight but want to lose? Eat less.

CICO is a good start but quite a bit goes into finding fairly accurate numbers for any given individual.
 
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