Help Me Figure Out Activity Levels vs. Calories

sarahkw04

I've spent a lot of time reading and researching things like TDEE and BMR and have come to the conclusion that I may not be eating enough for my activity level. Help me work out some numbers/point me to some great reads?

I've lost about 100lbs over the last two years, but still would like to lose another 25 or so. I'm 5'2", 162lbs as of this AM. I'd like to get down to around 135-140.

I've been playing with settings in my diary like crazy, so it may not be the best place to look right now. I work at a desk job, technically, but I'm extremely active. I take and/or teach barre classes at least 5 times a week, usually get a couple of days of HIIT in, and I've been going to a power lifting gym for just shy of a month (which is what has me on the nutrition kick - I LOVE heavy lifting!) Basically, it's pretty common for me to workout 2x a day.

Take Wednesdays as an example. I get a dynamic upper body session in with my trainer at the gym, then teach a barre class and often, I also take one. I wear a heart rate monitor and have burned as much as 1300 calories on days like these.

At the moment, my diary is set to "sedentary" which I know is wrong - I bumped it down a few days ago in my experimenting. I think I need to bump it up to one of the more active levels. I then get a crazy high number of calories, however - as much as 2800 for the highest activity level.

Basically, I'm trying to find a good goal for me. I eat about 90% clean and find the idea of eating 2,000+ calories day daunting - I feel like I eat a ton now, and just don't know how I'd get that much food in a day!

I'd appreciate advice/links to read/whatever you've got!

VintageFeline

MFP uses the NEAT method. Meaning your activity level is basically how active you are outside of purposeful exercise. You are then supposed to log exercise separately and eat back some to all of those calories (depending on how accurate you think those burns are/how much data you have to work with to know the accuracy).

So sedentary for you would be fine as long as you log and eat some to all of those exercise calories.

BMR is what you burn in a coma and sort of irrelevant other than being mindful to try not to eat below that number.

TDEE includes everything, daily normal activity and exercise. It gives you an even daily goal and some people find that easier to adhere to/work with. But with this method you would not log any exercise separately as it is already built into your daily goal. In this circumstance you could aim for 500 calories a day deficit for 1lb per week loss, though I wouldn't keep that goal for long as you'll want to slow down the losses once you get another 10 or so lbs off.

So in summary. Pick a method. Pick a goal. And stick to it for a while to see what your results are. This will give you enough data to know whether you need to tweak your intake or not.

JeromeBarry1

This thread http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/638677/exercise-calculator-calories-burned
Has a link to this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YbEexb8IvXv1m9Z6irkwrBggxOg9b8GKdrLA0mKDVE8/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0

Which works online, but when I downloaded it my Excel lost the drop-down feature. It might help you.

sarahkw04

Thanks to both! I think I'm going to try TDEE for a few weeks. Using NEAT, I find myself netting less than 1,000 calories pretty often. It'll be an adjustment to get myself to eat more, but its one I think I need to make, especially if I'm going to be lifting heavy weights "with the boys" as I like to say.