Q: How much calories does a working woman need daily? What food can be taken dividing the calories for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Is a 1000 cal diet fine? I am a 44 years old working woman weighing 75 kg and my height is 5.3 feet. Please suggest

A:You require around 1500-1800 kcal, depending on your physical activity. Divide them between ideally 5 meals per day - breakfast, mid morning, lunch, tea, and dinner. A general rule of thumb these days is that we need our optimum body weight (in pounds), multiplied by 10, just to maintain. Therefore, if you are a woman who weighs 140 pounds, and this is a healthy weight for you, your maintenance caloric intake is 1400 calories. If you are moving a minimum of an hour every day (this is just average movement like walking from the car to your work, walking up steps, rather than taking the elevator, playing with your kids before dinner, etc. you can add another 10% or 140 calories to the equation. That makes it 1540 calories.