Discovering your own personal daily calorie requirement

MrPlate

You can drop the formula and create your own, more accurate and reliable, TDEE. It will not be based on anyones assumptions of daily activity, age, general activity level, or personal opinion. This simple calculations shows you what your daily calorie needs are and what the trend in your TDEE is. The more days you have the more accurate the result will be. I wouldn't do this without at least 30-60 days of history to work with.

Add the total calories you have eaten for the period you are measuring. Convert the total pounds lost over that period into calories. Add these two (large!) figures together and divide it by the number of days covered. That is your TDEE. It isn't some general population formula. It is a fact!

DeguelloTex

Yes. I think the idea is that people need a starting point and the calculators are decent for this. It's often pointed out that such numbers are estimates and will need to be adjusted for each person.

MrPlate

I plan to adjust mine every time I weigh in, since as you correctly point out it must be personal. Thanks for your comment, I just thought I discovered something new and wanted to share it!

DeguelloTex

It's a cool idea and you explained it pretty clearly. Personally, I have all of this in an Excel spreadsheet. I even compare it to how much my UP24 estimates for my calories to come up with a correction factor to adjust it's estimate to what seems to be reality.

MrPlate

Kind of like a moving average that accounts for outliers?

MrPlate

What is UP24?

DeguelloTex

Fitness tracker from Jawbone.