Fitness Focus Monday: Your Caloric Needs

Despite the raging success of many fad diets, many health care and nutrition professionals stick to the tried and true adage "calories in, calories out" - that is, if you are trying to lose or maintain your weight, you should attempt to take in fewer calories than you expend.

The key question is, how many calories do you burn in the average day? Wearing a pedometer has helped me to realize that even though I may feel very busy on a given day, I may not necessarily be moving/physically active that day. Many of my busiest feeling days are filled up with activities like writing, web design and driving. For this reason, I find wearing a pedometer most days to be a tremendous incentive. If I glance at my pedometer at 6:00 pm and see that I've only taken 4,300 of my desired 10,000 steps I still have time after dinner to take a great evening walk.

How many calories do you burn in a day? It's not an exact science, but you can find some tools around the web to help get an approximate calculations:

• Active.com Caloric Needs Calculator
• American Cancer Society: Calculate Your Daily Calorie Needs
• A Healthy Me Calorie Needs Calculator