Laura Schoenfeld: There’s a handful of calculations that we use in the dietetics fields that are named after different researchers. I use a website, and I can tell you what it’s called in a second, as soon as I get it up. This website is ExRx.net. Let me see if you go to that if you can find the diet calculator. So you’ll go to that website and you’ll go to the right column, and it says “Calculators.” Then you can go to … Maybe I’ll post this in the Facebook group instead so you guys can see this link that I use. Basically this uses an equation called the Harris-Benedict equation. Or if you use body composition in this particular app, it uses the Katch-McArdle formula. This particular equation was developed in the early 1900s for determining people’s energy needs. It is an estimate, so of course, it’s never going to be 100 percent accurate, but I find it to be pretty good at estimating people’s needs because you put in their age, their sex, their weight, their height, and their activity levels, and that gives you not only their basal metabolic rate but their estimated total calorie needs for the day. Like I said, I’ll share this link in the Facebook group, but I use this one because it’s really easy. I just have it as a favorite in my favorites bar on my browser, and when I’m doing a calorie calculation for someone I’ll just use this to get an estimate.
Again, some of the recommendations are going to be clinical experience-based, so if I see a number that comes out and I’m like, I don’t really think that’s really right, I’m going to make a judgment call on that. With the exercise estimates, it’s really hard to know exactly how much time you’re spending doing different levels of activity, so I’ll use that as just an estimate, and if I think it’s appropriate, I’ll use that to base my macro recommendations off of. But if it’s way off, I might change it a little bit or I might drop it a little lower. If somebody’s coming from a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet and it says that they need 2,500 for the day, I’m not going to just go straight up to 2,500. I’ll say, “Let’s start at 1,500 and move up.” Again, there’s an art to it, but I’ll share this link, as far as what the calculator that I use is. There are lots of calculators out there, so this isn’t the only one, but I find this to be pretty useful, so I’ll share that with you guys in the Facebook group.
I know we’re kind of running over a little bit. I don’t have any live questions, so if you guys want to sneak in any question before we end the call, feel free to do that now. I’m just looking to see if there are any other questions that kind of go along with what we’re talking about today. Some of the questions are definitely more appropriate for Chris or Amy, talking about things like practice management, hiring employees, how to pick a rate, that kind of stuff. Those questions aren’t really nutrition-related, so just as an FYI, if you have those kinds of questions, I can share with you how I run my business, but it’s not going to be the same as what Chris is recommending, and those kinds of questions are really better to ask for someone who is maybe more in the clinical/exact kind of work that you want to do because what I do is a little bit more freelance and not quite a clinic situation.