How to Tell Which TDEE Calculator is Most Correct?

MysticRealm

It seems every TDEE calculator gives a totally different number as to how many calories it estimates you use a day.
I entered my stats into 3 different TDEE calculators and they vary by up to 1000 calories!!
I entered my stats into Health-calc and get a TDEE of 3183 (trying to be as correct as possible about how many mins/hours I spend doing each activity level).
I entered my stats into IIFYM and get a TDEE of 2176
I entered my stats into Scooby's Workshop and get a TDEE of 2415

This means, subtracting 500 cals a day (roughly one pound loss a week) the lowest I get is
1676
and the highest I get is
2683

I'd like to choose the best number to lose weight in a healthy way (while eating as much as I can haha) but the numbers are so wildly different it's hard to know where to start.
Right now I have my Calorie goal as 1700 a day (I usually eat less during the week so I can eat more on weekends) and I'm losing at a decent rate (have lost 12.9 pounds since around the beginning of January when I started, obviously a nice chunk of that is water weight). Should I just stay at this number?

In case anyone needs to know my stats are
Female
28 years old
Currently 170.6 pounds
5'4
Have a standing job (not much walking, a bit of lifting). When busy I am standing and busy for the full 8 hours, when slower I sometimes leave after 4-6 hours so have a bit more time that I spend sitting at home. Most months I'm fairly consistently working 6-8 hours 5 days a week.
I ride my horse 5 days a week. Not a ton of exercise in that (depending on how good my horse decides to be haha), but more walking around to go get him, tack him up, more movement to ride, etc. I probably spend about an hour and 15 mins at the barn constantly doing something. Some times pulling out jump equipment so doing a bit of lifting.
I work out 5 days a week (either Tough Mudder circuit training, the least difficult one yet but since I'm out of shape still takes a lot of effort, about 40 mins long. Or running,currently around 5-6kms at a speed of 5.0, usually takes 45-50 min including warm up and cool down)

MyChocolateDiet

What if you started with the highest one and evaluated after two weeks to see if you are losing, if so stay there, if not decide try the next one+down. If you lose at that level average the two and try that for two weeks, if not after twoo weeks, go down+to+the lowest cal goal you got and do the same.

Basically start with the highest one and only go down if not losing, then when you find one you are losing at try a goal halfway between that and the next one up?

Sued0nim

What did MFP give you when you set your activity to lightly active

Eat that

Log your horse riding and purposeful exercise, cut in half eat those too

Ignore TDEE calculators ...you can work that out as you lose weight with proper logging

Mr_Knight

They're all estimates.

Pick one. Stick to it for 4 weeks. Evaluate weightloss, and adjust accordingly.

TimothyFish

The only way to properly calculate TDEE is to log each activity you do in a 24hour period (including sleep) and calculate a calorie burn for each one.

sijomial

Most accurate TDEE calculator is logging your food intake accurately (or at least consistently) over a period of weeks and monitoring your weight loss.

Just look at online estimators as giving you a start point from which you will probably need to make adjustments to get an appropriate rate of weight loss. But also take into account how you feel on the chosen calories (hunger, training performance, how hard to adhere to...)

The 3183 seems remarkably high to me for your weight and activity/exercise.

As you have been doing this for a few weeks why not make adjustments from where you are now rather than starting afresh?

lemurcat12

Yes, they are all just estimates, so if starting from fresh I'd pick one (in the middle) and adjust after a few weeks of results.

BUT, since you have real life data, I'd use it. That's what I did when going to the TDEE method. I looked at what I'd been eating on average, average loss, confirmed it didn't look out of whack with the calculators, and picked a number based mostly on my real world results.

Liftng4Lis

Take an average, they're all just estimates!

auddii

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Yes, they are all just estimates, so if starting from fresh I'd pick one (in the middle) and adjust after a few weeks of results.

BUT, since you have real life data, I'd use it. That's what I did when going to the TDEE method. I looked at what I'd been eating on average, average loss, confirmed it didn't look out of whack with the calculators, and picked a number based mostly on my real world results.

This.

ScientificExplorerGirl

They are all inaccurate!!

MysticRealm

Thanks for the replies. I guess I will stick with 1700 for now and see how things go.