The daily minimum level of energy or calories your body requires when at rest (including sleeping) in order to function effectively.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the daily minimum level of energy or calories your body requires when resting, for your respiratory and circulatory organs, neural system, liver, kidneys, and other organs to function effectively.

The BMR is greatly affected by the quantity of muscles you have. Increasing your muscle mass will help increase your BMR, which will increase the number of calories used and then decrease the amount of body fat.

Alternatively, a lower BMR will make it harder to lose body fat and overall weight.

BMR is not the total number of calories that you normally spend in a day though - you have to add on calories for any activity that your body will perform. If you consume (eat) less calories than you burn, you will lose weight; and vice versa.

Tanita body composition monitor can automatically calculate your BMR with medically validated equations, based on the measured electrical impedance, your weight and personal data.

With this BMR data and also your activity level information, you can calculate how much you need to eat to stay in current weight, or even lose your weight. A safe weight loss diet should never have less calories than your BMR.

In Tanita body composition monitors, the BMR would be displayed in both kilocalories kcal or kilojoules kj. They are just different ratings like centigrade and fahrenheit.