Measuring resting metabolic rate and its benefits for the guests of the Hilton Head Health Institute : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

The Hilton Head Health Institute (H3I) offers their guests the option of purchasing a Metabolic Assessment through the indirect calorimetry method. This provides the guests with a personalized "metabolic fingerprint" which then allows the professionals at the Institute to come up with a more personalized weight loss plan that will provide better long-term benefits. The meal plan the guests are placed on during their stay at the Health Institute is based on twelve-hundred kilocalories. For many people, this should be considered an aggressive dieting phase of weight loss, and should only be maintained for a maximum of four to six weeks. By assessing an individual's resting metabolic rate and their current activity level, an exercise and meal plan can be developed in order to keep the individual in a "weight loss" or "weight management" state (according to their goal), preventing a plateau.In order to support the idea of offering the Metabolic Assessment to the guests of the Hilton Head Health Institute, I give an overview of literature on the benefits of knowing an individual's resting metabolic rate, what effects the metabolic rate, and a data analysis comparing the measured resting metabolic rate (RMR) with an estimated RMR and other health-related factors.Honors CollegeThesis (B.?.