BMR calculators - accuracy for the extremely overweight?

ErikElgerot

BMR calculators - how accurate are they?

Basically, I've gotten an awesome amount of good advice from you all over the last few days in my other thread, and am working on setting up a home workout system (HEMA drills, dumbbell/kettlebell and bodyweight exercises as appropriate and as I see what works for me with time) as well as getting my *kitten* back to the HEMA club whenever I can.

Now, the other part of the equation is that I want to revamp my diet. Now, I don't mean "diet" as in a quick-lose-weight starve-myself regiment, but rather a sustainable long-term adjustment to help me lose weight but still be able to feel full, be happy and exercise.

I'm already a member of MFP, so I have some tools available to me to track calories, but I'm still trying to figure out where I should place myself - just how accurate is BMR calculation for the super overweight? Going by a BMR calculator (I googled and used bmi-calculator.net's BMR calculator) it puts my BMR at a bit over 3300 calories per day, and MFP suggests that (at no exercise and sedentary lifestyle, so not counting any workouts I do) I should eat about 2500 calories per day to lose 1kg per week.

This all seems high to me - can that be accurate? I am 1.90m tall and weigh in at 185-188kg (age 38, male), but even then I just get the feeling that these calculators are really mostly designed for the "human-sized", so to speak (I know, self-loathing is bad etc). I basically want to make sure that I can lose weight, but not completely mess up my metabolism or malnourish myself in the process.

Any advice?

jemhh

My advice is to try the 2500 and see how it works. It doesn't sound crazy high to me, based on your stats. But they are all estimates and the very best thing to do is to give it a go for 2-4 weeks and then adjust based on results. Some people worry about that being 2-4 weeks"wasted" but I see it as 2-4 weeks invested in improving the next 10, 25, 50 years of your life (not sure of your age but you get the gist.)

Best of luck to you!

sijomial

Don't confuse BMR with TDEE - it's TDEE you need to estimate, BMR is lying down in a fasted state doing nothing and is only part of your daily calorie needs.

Don't confuse MyFitnessPal's estimate with TDEE either - it's estimating TDEE minus exercise.

Suggest you choose how you want to account for your exercise, either the MyFitnessPal way (variable daily calorie goal) or the TDEE method (same every day goal) and then choose your tool to match that choice.


I would say that the estimates given by the various formulae used are more accurate than most people's logging!