How Many Calories Do You Need Per Day ?
If you have everything working the way it should, you shouldn’t need to give kilo-joules or calories a second thought, says Professor Marion Nestle of New York University and author of Why Calories Count. “You eat when you are hungry, you stop when you are full, your weight does not change, and somehow it all works out.” How many calories per day do you really need?
Understanding how many calories you really need per day
Unfortunately, we know this is crap, and it doesn’t always work out this way, and many of us struggle with our weight, knowing what to eat, and recognize when we’ve eaten enough.
Your daily Kilojule (KH) needs to depend on your age, gender, life stage, height, weight, and activity level.
According to Australian Surveys, the average intake for adults is 8700 KJ (Around 2000 Calories). But an active teenage boy, for example, requires about 12000 KJ/day while a sedentary 70-year-old woman would need much less.
How many calories per day
To find your ideal Kilo-joule figure, visit this Australian website- www.8700.com.au. This offers a calculator where you input your age, gender, weight, activity level, and weight goal to give you a daily kilo-joule figure to aim for.
Once you have this figure, how useful is it? While it’s virtually impossible to tell you how many kilojoules a particular piece of food contains by looking at it, food labels will have this information, and with practice, you can start to guess.
An average breakfast of two Weetbix, a Cup of reduced fat milk, a Tablespoon of honey, and a banana totals 1500 KJ. A cappuccino and muffin at morning tea? That’s around 1600 KJ or 18 percent of your daily intake, while an apple and green tea would deliver around 300 KJ.
The 8700 website lists common foods and their kilojoule content. California Sushi roles at lunch? that 600 KH, whereas beef and black bean sauce with fried rice packs in a heftier 2400KJ, and a bacon and egg roll around 2200 KJ.
It also offers useful tips for balancing energy in with energy out, including various activities and the kilo-joule they burn.
