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For those of you who are skeptical about the 1800 number, i know how you feel. it seems totally arbitrary, and obviously it is flexible based on what you weigh. but i can tell you where it comes from.

The Legend of 1800

Bedrest-Bob's 150 lb. body burns the following calories during a day of bed rest.

Brain 365
Heart 180
Kidney 120
Liver 560
Lung 160
Other tissues 370


That's 1755 calories. (Source: Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook. Human Kinetics, 2003.)

Now, this is Bob. Women require about 10% fewer calories per day to enjoy their bedrest without death.

This puts Bedrest-Betty at 1580 calories. Roughly 1600. To stay in bed.

Let's say that Bedrest-Betty wants to get up and sit in her office. This would make her fairly sedentary. A fairly sedentary Betty uses about 20-40% of her number of bedrest calories to sit at work. Let's say we say 20%. She's not doing much. That's about 300 calories in order to do very little.

Betty is not exercising. Betty is not chasing kids or swing-dancing. Betty is fueling her organs and sitting in her cubicle.

And still, she's using about 1880 calories.


Betty's friend Vi weighs 100 lbs. Guess what? Vi only needs about 1350 calories to do Betty's office job and support her vital systems.

I'm serious.

But the 1800 comes from the fact that the average woman (used to... it's gone up) weighs 150 lbs. So, there you go.


Obviously, ladies more active than Betty & Vi need more calories.

For example, Helen is moderately active. She weighs 150, like Betty. But she has a couple of kids running around, and she goes to the gym a couple times a week. Her base number is also around 1580 calories, but because she does more, she needs more than 20% of that value to do her chasing and lifting. She needs more like 50%, which brings her total calories to around 2370.

And then there's Nala. Nala weighs 100 lbs, but she's a triathlete and training twice a day, so her modifier is about 80%. The chick works hard. While she only needs just over 1000 calories a day to lie in bed, she needs about 1900 while in training.

Bodyfat plays into this, too. Age does, too. And as you see, so does sex.

But there's my little riff on why we pick 1800. It's a dumb number, but at least you know where it came from.

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