What is BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)?
Your body needs energy in the form of calories to function normally. Each minute of every day, your body is performing life-sustaining activities. You have to breathe, blink, circulate blood, control body temperature, grow new cells, support brain and nerve activity and contract muscles.
The amount of energy (in the form of calories) that the body needs to function while resting for 24 hours is known as the basal metabolic rate, or BMR. This number of calories reflects how much energy your body requires to support vital body functions if you were resting for an entire day.
It may surprise you to know that your BMR is the single largest component (more than 60 percent) of your total energy burned every day. It’s also used by many coaches to help determine weight loss. You can use IIFYM’s BMR calculator to find your BMR. Here at IIFYMs, we take a different tack.
What does your BMR tell you?
The amount of energy (in the form of calories) that the body needs to function while resting for 24 hours is known as the basal metabolic rate, or BMR. This number of calories reflects how much energy your body requires to support vital body functions if, hypothetically, you were resting in bed for an entire day.
What is RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate)?
There isn’t a great difference between BMR and RMR. Your RMR reading includes your BMR plus the number of calories burned while eating and doing light activities such as stretching, walking, going to the bathroom, etc. Consider your activities around the house while having some time off or on a weekend and know that these are part of your RMR results. These are the small activities that the RMR takes into account.
Your resting metabolic rate, or RMR is always slightly higher than your BMR. Here at IIFYM, we prefer using your RMR as a baseline when we compute your fat loss macros, since we feel it gives us a better better platform to work from when calculating the rest of the numbers used in an IIFYM fat loss program.
What is a normal RMR?
According to several sources, the average BMR or resting metabolic rate for women is around 1400 calories per day. The average RMR for men is just over 1600 calories. But just because your number is above or below the average is not an indicator of whether or not your RMR is normal.
How do I calculate my RMR? You can use the IIFYM RMR Calculator to calculate your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). RMR is a very useful tool for flexible dieting with IIFYM techniques in mind.
Why is RMR important?
This device is important because it measures your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), which is your metabolism – the rate at which you burn calories at rest through your natural body functions (your breathing, your heartbeat…even thinking burns calories!)
Factors that Affect Your RMR
This device is important because it measures your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), which is your metabolism – the rate at which you burn calories at rest through your natural body functions (your breathing, your heartbeat…even thinking burns calories!)
Of course, there are many factors that can affect your RMR. These factors do not drastically change your metabolic rate, but they can alter the results and readings. According to Body Building, these factors include:
- Muscle Mass: The more muscle you have, the higher your RMR is. This is because you’re always exerting more energy because you’re likely using muscles that, on average, don’t get much use.
- Age: How old you are can affect your RMR. As you get older, your metabolism naturally slows down, making it harder to burn fat and calories. Due to this, your metabolism isn’t working as hard even while at rest, resulting in a decreased RMR.
- Genetics: Like all things, your genes can affect your metabolic rates. In the case of your RMR, your genetics can actually reduce the rate.
- Weather: That’s right, even the weather can affect your RMR. Most readings find that individuals living in a cold environment have an increased RMR. The cold is a major factor because it causes you to exert more energy while doing simple, daily activities. Just moving around in frigid weather takes a lot of effort. When it’s warmer, this problem doesn’t exist. It takes a lot less effort to get going during the spring and summer.
- Other factors may come into play for different people such as pregnancy, supplementation and even intense dieting. Bottom line, your RMR can be tweaked and changed by a number of factors. Just think of it as a close estimate and know it’s still valuable in finding your fat macros.
