Online TDEE calculators experiment

takemetosingapore2019

After being strongly discouraged by the inaccuracy of the MFP estimates I decided to do an experiment using various online TDEE calculators I found online.

I have been maintaining my weight more or less for over a year now. A few times my weight went up 5-7 lb and came back down in a few days so there were fluctuations but they never lasted. However, I was confused regarding how many calories I should be eating. I noticed sometimes I ate well below what I needed even though I wasn’t sure of how many calories I needed. I could tell this due to intense stomach pangs and unwanted weight loss. Certain times I’d be extra hungry and eat more than usual. Overall, it all balanced out and I stayed the same weight.

In an effort to see what my actual maintenance calorie figure was I plugged my stats into 5-6 different online calculators and took the average of both the lightly active, moderately active and active level TDEEs.

Over one week I ate at one of the TDEE levels, the next week at another and the third week at yet another recommended TDEE level.

The lightly active estimate had me at 1800 calories.

The moderately active calculator has me at 2300 calories.

The active calc had me at 2600 calories.

On the 1800 calorie week I lost 3 lbs.

On the 2200 calorie week I lost 1 lb.

On the 2600 calorie week I lost 0.5 lb.

I am not active at all currently besides walking a lot to class and biking to commute I do not exercise at the moment. I am relatively low bf%. I am 5’10” and wear a size 2-4 clothing size.

These results suggest my TDEE is actually between 2700-2800 calories which is MUCH higher than I had ever imagined.

I just wanted to post this to show that regardless of perceived “ activity level” our estimates are very dependent on the individual and that these online calculators cannot be trusted.

If I had listened to MFP and ate what was suggested I would’ve starved and probably lost too much weight.

I think tracking and calculating based on what happens to YOUR body is the best way. I decided to try this after some suggestions in another thread regarding self estimating TDEE.

This was fun. Please let me know if you have done something similar and what your numbers showed.

MikePTY

takemetosingapore2019 wrote: »

After being strongly discouraged by the inaccuracy of the MFP estimates I decided to do an experiment using various online TDEE calculators I found online.

I have been maintaining my weight more or less for over a year now. A few times my weight went up 5-7 lb and came back down in a few days so there were fluctuations but they never lasted. However, I was confused regarding how many calories I should be eating. I noticed sometimes I ate well below what I needed even though I wasn’t sure of how many calories I needed. I could tell this due to intense stomach pangs and unwanted weight loss. Certain times I’d be extra hungry and eat more than usual. Overall, it all balanced out and I stayed the same weight.

In an effort to see what my actual maintenance calorie figure was I plugged my stats into 5-6 different online calculators and took the average of both the lightly active, moderately active and active level TDEEs.

Over one week I ate at one of the TDEE levels, the next week at another and the third week at yet another recommended TDEE level.

The lightly active estimate had me at 1800 calories.

The moderately active calculator has me at 2300 calories.

The active calc had me at 2600 calories.

On the 1800 calorie week I lost 3 lbs.

On the 2200 calorie week I lost 1 lb.

On the 2600 calorie week I lost 0.5 lb.

I am not active at all currently besides walking a lot to class and biking to commute I do not exercise at the moment. I am relatively low bf%. I am 5’10” and wear a size 2-4 clothing size.

These results suggest my TDEE is actually between 2700-2800 calories which is MUCH higher than I had ever imagined.

I just wanted to post this to show that regardless of perceived “ activity level” our estimates are very dependent on the individual and that these online calculators cannot be trusted.

If I had listened to MFP and ate what was suggested I would’ve starved and probably lost too much weight.

I think tracking and calculating based on what happens to YOUR body is the best way. I decided to try this after some suggestions in another thread regarding self estimating TDEE.

This was fun. Please let me know if you have done something similar and what your numbers showed.

That's a lot of qualifications in your activity level and it seems that you are more active than you think. You are certainly at least "active" in both the MFP (if you don't count your commute as exercise) and TDEE definition of things. Possibly more. So these calculators don't have you off quite as much as you think. I am also not sure you can draw trends from one week. There are a lot of things that affect the scale besides fat loss/gain. So while these do appear to form a nice tidy trend, I am not sure that you can draw this conclusion from just a week.

That being said, these calculators (whether using MFP or TDEE) obviously have certain limitations. They are general, not personalized to every person. They are built with the standard person in mind in terms of metabolism, calories out, etc. They will be a pretty good fit for the majority of people, but certain people will naturally be on the outside of them in either direction and have a measurably higher/lower calories in/out than the calculators suggest. The longer one does this, the more data they have about their own performance, and the more inferences they can draw from it to better customize a personalized plan than the one they get from a calculator. These things are meant to be the beginning, not the end of the process.

BattyKnitter

I'm not sure 1 week at each level is enough to really tell though..

zeejane03

Interesting experiment, it's been a while since I've played with TDEE calculators, I might have to do that again. Which calculator did you use? I've only ever used scoobys (I think that's what it was called)?

cmriverside

.

LivingtheLeanDream

BattyKnitter wrote: »

I'm not sure 1 week at each level is enough to really tell though..

+1

middlehaitch

As both MFP and TDEE calculators are only estimates, that is what I have used them as.

I have used my real life data to adjust my calorie intake, when needed, during my 9yr maintenance.

(I do/did find, for me, both MFP’s NEAT and TDEE calculators quite accurate)

Cheers, h.

PAV8888

.... glad you managed to figure out your actual activity level...

or actually I should say glad you managed to figure out a better starting point for your current activity level.

The calories you need to maintain are not static.

cwolfman13

Walking a lot and commuting by bike usually would result in being pretty active

sijomial

This demonstrates very clearly that one week is nowhere near long enough to draw conclusions from.....

On the 1800 calorie week I lost 3 lbs.

On the 2200 calorie week I lost 1 lb.

A 400 calorie difference doesn't explain such a big differential.


I do hope people don't takeaway from your post that TDEE is more accurate than using MyFitnessPal as designed as that's a false conclusion. Most inaccuracy is down to the user and not the method IMHO.

NovusDies

You need a lot of data points to establish a true weight trend. A week is not nearly enough. It is generally said that men should evaluate after 3 weeks and women after 6 weeks but that is the bare minimum. I am a guy and at any given time the wrong set of 3 weeks can paint the wrong picture.

To prove my point I evaluate my numbers each Friday. Last Friday:

1 week rate of gain: 3.00
3 week rate of loss: 3.27
2 month RoL 2.07.

I didn't really gain 3 pounds (of fat) last week nor have I been losing 3.27 pounds a week. The truth is closer to the 2 month rate of loss at a little over 2 pounds per week.

PAV8888

The not so great takeaway is that the OP doesn't 100% seem to understand that the issue was not with the tools but rather with the inputs given to the various tools.

The great, fantastic, most wonderful takeaway is that the OP does understand that they should experiment and explore and try to push things so that they are striking the right balance between reaching their goals and doing so in a reasonable patient manner than fuels their activity as much as possible along the way... which is simply GREAT and increases exponentially, in my opinion, their chance of success.

Now that they have a much more sane starting point, the OP may benefit from using a trending weight app (such as Happy Scale iPhone/Libra Android/trendweight.com/weightgrapher.com), and continuing to adjust their calories using multi-week averages (2-4 weeks makes, 4-6 weeks females with a hormonal cycle) based on their trending weight results and their consistent individualized food and exercise logging habits.