Help me understand my pre-weight loss TDEE

Francl27

I don't get this. I eat 2200 calories to maintain now. To maintain my pre-loss 205 pounds as sedentary I would have had to eat 2000 calories.

I'm not surprised at my TDEE now as I exercise a lot, but there is no way I was only eating 2000 calories a day.. yet maintained for 10 years.

How?? Do food calories magically disappear above a certain amount? Was I a special snowflake? I don't understand. If I ate the same way now I would gain, yet my TDEE is supposedly higher.

Confused.

lynn_glenmont

Were you logging your intake during those 10 years? Individual's recall of past consumption is notoriously unreliable.

Unknown

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Francl27

shell1005 wrote: »

Did you have no activity at all? Sedentary assumes sedentary.

Nope. Sitting all day pretty much.

And no I wasn't logging, but still. I was eating a lot.

tomatoey

What does this one tell you? I find it the most accurate

http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

tomatoey

Hunh. I entered the amount of time I'd do stuff at my old weight (being generous about activity) and it gave me ~2300 for maintenance.

I once entered what a few typical days' consumption would have been at that time, and got like 2500, even 3000. (Huge breakfast sandwich with bacon & eggs & butter, and a full-fat latte with sugar; a hot lunch [Indian or Thai typical]; another full-fat latte with sugar; a three-course dinner with a few glasses of wine or a couple of pints of beer - definitely not 2300. That was ~4-5/7 days).

edit - ok I did walk a lot, maybe I underestimated there. I added another hour's worth of walking to the calculator and got to 2400 calories required for maintenance.

Francl27

tomatoey wrote: »

What does this one tell you? I find it the most accurate

http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

Interesting. This one gives me 2270 now, 2400 then... Still doesn't seem like much but it would make more sense.

I mean it's possible that I just remember the bad days but seriously my diet was pretty horrible. But it's true that I often skipped breakfast (well I had coffee with half and half and two sugars), but when I didn't it was 2 croissants or donuts.. and I just ate whatever I wanted all day (usually large fast food meals, ice cream, chocolate, bologna, pastries, chips, bread, cheese etc). And we'd go out once a week and I'd eat easily 4000 calories in one meal.

I always ate whatever I wanted and my main excuse not to try to lose weight was that I didn't want to have to eat 'nothing' when I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain anything (I only gained 5 pounds in the last 2 years, and 5 extra when I was put on steroids for a week, which I lost in 2 weeks DURING CHRISTMAS BREAK, when I was seriously eating cookies and pie all day).