Hi,
The following link enables you to calculate your RMR (resting metabolic rate) as well as your BMR. The calculations will give you a ballpark figure to work with.
http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php
Exercise will burn some calories and it certainly helps keep disease at bay. But exercise is not a cure for overweight unless you are talking about 2 - 3 hours a day or even more. Let's say you burn off 400 calories in an hour. You have to subtract out the calories (RMR) you would have burned without the exercise. So, you might come up with 250 for an hour. Since one pound of fat has 3500 calories, it takes a lot of exercise to burn up one pound of fat. Still, there is the residual fat burning - you may continue to burn some fat after the particular exercise. Plus, the more muscle you gain, the more fat your burn.
Intense exercise increases appetite for most of us. And you need to eat if you are hungry, not try white-knuckling. Cutting back too far on calories can backfire. We cannot fight our physiology. Being male, you will probably have a less difficult time losing than a woman though.
I would recommend that you stick to whole foods as much as possible. A lot of diet foods are highly processed and not apt to be satisfying. Nonfat dairy foods are a highly processed food. In fact, you can't absorb much of the calcium. Vitamin D is needed to absorb calcium. Fat is needed to absorb Vitamin D. If you eat a starch or a fruit, eat a protein with it for satiety. A starch or a fruit by itself may actually make you intensely hungry. An apple is a good example of a fruit that turns on hunger.
One of the largest weight loss organizations has built its empire on processed and low-fat foods. Which brings me to reduced-fat peanut butter. There couldn't be a sillier product. The good heart healthy fats are replaced with sugar. That's throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Meal frequency - everyone parrots what they've heard. Eating 6- 8 hours came about in the 1990's and some call it a fad. Eating smaller meals onlly burns about 50 more calories a day than eating three times a day. Some doctors have come out against the 6- 8 meal-a-day paradigm citing that's why Americans have gotten so large in the first place - frequent eating. However, that doesn't mean frequent eating won't work. You just have to count calories or watch portions very closely.
Personally, I am done with counting calories or diets I can't stick to. Very low-carb or zero-carb diets make me nauseous and weak. Vegan diets are hard to lose on because you have to eat a lot of calories to meet your nutrient needs. I now do a low-carb diet that actually includes potatoes, sweet potatoes, and some fruits. I have plenty of energy. My brain gets the glucose it wants and I sleep well, too. And I'm losing fat.
Good luck.
