The importance of eating to your BMR requirements and tips to stick to it

When it comes to health and weight loss, they can be two very different things. You can be eating a nutritious, healthy diet and still not be achieving results you want.

This all comes down to your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and how much YOU personally need to eat for weight loss.

This rate is different for everyone. Your BMR takes into account your age, gender, height, activity level, whether your breastfeeding or not, all to determine how many calories your body burns each day.

Healthy Mummy Super Coach, Cicily Goodwin – who has lost 56kg by following the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge – shares her tips to stick to eating to your BMR.

It’s important to understand the science behind this rate, because this is how you will be able to achieve that weight loss you desire.

Each day we need to be eating less calories than our bodies are consuming, so your BMR is important in telling you exactly how many calories you need.

When we understand this and eat to our BMR requirements, we are forcing our bodies into that calorie deficit and this is how you get results.

There is nothing more disheartening that eating super healthy and not seeing the scales move or the centimetres fall off! And that is the difference between health and weight loss, and why this BMR really matters!

So your first step is to check your BMR using our calculator.Once you figure out how many calories you need to be eating per day, it’s time to look at what we’re eating each day and see if we’re doing it right.

Whether you need to get increase or decrease your calories, The Healthy Mummy has the means for both! You can choose meal plans with different calories e.g Higher calorie meal plan, and you can also search the recipe hub by high or low calories.

Some ways to decrease your calories:

• Make your smoothies with almond milk or water instead of full cream or lite milk
• Don’t use cooking oil if you don’t have to
• Choose lighter snacks
• Use an alternative like Konjac noodles or cauliflower rice
• Cut sugar out of your tea/coffee and substitute with stevia if needed
• Choose drinking water over other liquids

Some ways to increase your calories:

• Add coconut oil to your smoothies
• Use full fat ingredients when cooking e.g. full cream yoghurt instead of lite yoghurt
• Add extra protein to your meals
• Add an extra snack into your day, e.g. instead of one bliss ball for morning tea have two!
• Choose meals with higher calories from the recipe hub, e.g. the sneaky snickers smoothie recipes has 500 calories, the spinach and ricotta pasta bake has 600 calories. Choose these type of nutrient dense meals that will all add up!
• Try adding some other The Healthy Mummy products into your day. e.g. the Healthy Mummy Snacks, Healthy Mummy Supplements or Healthy Mummy recipe books.

Your BMR is key to your success! If you stick to your BMR requirements you will see those results you’re wanting!

Every 5kgs you lose it’s important to recalculate your BMR to make it accurate at every stage of your journey.

TIP** if you’re changing ingredients in the recipes, this will change the calories. So to make sure we’re not under/overeating, be sure to account for any differences you make.

Also, that extra piece of peanut bubble crunch DOES count towards those calories (even though it’s irresistibly good!), so just be aware of what you’re eating and understand how that may affect your BMR calorie target each day.