One of the frustrations I have had over the years is the wildly varying estimates of daily calorie requirements posted on the web. I count calories daily and I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. My calculations of what I was burning daily for weight maintenance per lb of body weight, relative to my activity level, was wildly at odds with most of the pages I visited like this one, and was far below the calorie burn rates posted as “normal”. I kept wondering whether I was some freak with a hyper slow metabolism or the posted calculations were in error.
Now I know - I was right and they were wrong.
The following is a web page that has a simple to use daily calorie needs calculator. I tried it on a lark and thought I would come up with the usual huge overshot, but this one didn’t. Intrigued I looked further into it and it explained that it was based on the latest scientific assessments of what people actually burn. It’s a small and geeky point, but I do feel somewhat vindicated that my empirical measurements were not in error and that my BMR needs are entirely normal.
I found this page which provides the most accurate method of calculating daily calorie requirements I have seen to date.