by Laura Magureanu

Created on: March 23, 2010

There are numerous factors that influence the right answer to the question: how many calories should you eat? For instance, your current weight, your age, your gender, your height, your levels of daily activity, they all influence the amount of calories you should eat. There is also the matter of whether you intend to maintain your current weight, or you want to lose weight, or you want to gain weight. So, how many calories should you eat is strongly related to other aspects of your life that you need to take into consideration.

The US Department of Health and Human Services established a list of recommended number of calories that age groups need to eat daily. Here is some data that you may find useful. For people that exercise less than half an hour daily, the list looks like this:

Females:

14-18 years old……..1800 calories
19-30 years old ……. 2000 calories
31-50 years old ………1800 calories
51 years old or more………. 1600 calories

Males:

14-18 years old …….. 2200 calories

19-30 years old …….. 2400 calories
31-50 years old …….. 2200 calories

51 years old or more ……. 2000 calories

If you are among the people that love exercising at least half an hour to an hour daily, or your regular activity includes some form of physical exercise, the list looks a little different:

Females:

14-18 years old ……. 2000-2400 calories

19-30 years old …….. 2000-2400 calories

31-50 years old …….. 2000-2200 calories

51 years old or more …… 1800-2200 calories

Males:

14-18 years old ……. 2400-3200 calories

19-30 years old …….. 2600-3000 calories

31-50 years old ……… 2400-3000 calories

51 years old or more ……. 2200-2800 calories

How many calories should you eat is an important question, but let’s not forget how important is what you eat. Bad eating habits and being overweight often lead to serious health problems, such as stroke and cardiovascular diseases. The best course of action you can take is to supervise your eating over an entire week, calculating how many calories you eat, and, especially, what you are eating. Too many calories, along with too many junk foods are bad for you, and, sooner or later, that will reflect on your health.

If you intend to discover how many calories should you eat in order to lose weight, the answer is quite simple. Based on your body necessities, identified by checking the aforementioned lists, you can consider different strategies. One would be to cut down the number of calories you eat each day, another to increase your physical activity levels, and the best one, to corroborate a reduction in calories with healthy eating and exercising.

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