As the question implies, it’s based on you as individual. Male, female, young or old, active or sedentary, these variables all impact what your body “needs” calorically.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture authored a document titled “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” in 2005. The document is “is intended to be a primary source of dietary health information for policymakers, nutrition educators, and health providers.” So, we can look to it for some guidance on calorie needs.
On page 23, there’s a very useful table that provides guidance on calorie consumption based on gender, age and activity level. We summarized the data into a chart below. For example, a 23 year-old active woman requires 2,400 calories per day. The dietary guidelines provide a range for some combinations of gender, age and activity. We’ve represented the minimum recommendation in these charts.
- Sedentary = light physical activity associated with typical daily life
- Moderately Active = walking 1.5-3 miles per day at 3-4 mph (or equivalent activity)
- Active = walking 3+ miles per day at 3-4 mph (or equivalent activity)
What to eat?
So, now that you know how much to eat, what do you eat? Our food pyramid blog post should help. It introduces the new USDA food pyramid, but also goes into details on some alternative approaches to getting a balanced diet.
How this site can help?
Chances are, you weren’t sure how many calories you should be having each day. Now that you know, become an educated consumer of food: know what’s in the food you eat! You can use this site to find out how many calories are in many foods, including grouping together different lunch items into a lunch – you’ll see the total calories on the My Lunches page. You can also simply read the nutrition labels on the food you purchase, or in the restaurants you eat at. Find out how much a serving is, how many calories are in a serving, and do the math. Your body will thank you!
Further Reading
The contents of this Web site are not intended to offer personal medical advice. You should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this Web site.
Do you have other sources for calorie guidance? Let us know!
More about Amy and Scott Dawson, creators of Lunchtaker.com: One of our core focuses is on nutrition and fitness. Our children both attended a parent cooperative pre-school where the morning snack was as healthy as possible, and our family liked the opportunities for new foods that arose in pre-school. As our children go through grade school, we are focusing on continuing the trend of ensuring we feed ourselves a variety of foods, all good for our bodies... read more...
Posted Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:58 pm and filed under Education, Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] might be an apple or some cut up veggies. It never hurts to be aware of your kids (or your own) calorie needs, [...]
Extremely useful to those of us who compulsively count calories – but 1600-1800 – agh! Something’s got to go…. Thanks for a great article though.