Sedentary daily expenditure: a base for estimating individual energy requirements.

As a base for estimating individual energy requirements, we propose using the energy expenditure of a sedentary day with regular meals and sleep at night. Ninety-five 24-h measurements of sedentary daily expenditure (SDE) by direct calorimetry on 37 men and women were analyzed, showing that fat-free mass combined with body mass index correlated highly with SDE (r2 = 0.92) with an SE of 5%. Weight and fat mass were better predictors for women and excellent predictors for men. We found that weight and height accurately predicted fat mass if suitable exponents were used in the expression wt/htx. Testing predictive equations with our own and other sets of data showed good agreement between estimated and observed SDEs. As a base for estimating individual energy requirements. SDE is more precise than basal metabolic rate and it can be predicted with useful accuracy from simple measures of weight and height.