Question about cutting calories

Biffsoup
Biffsoup Posts: 7 Member
in Motivation and Support
When it says to cut however many calories to lose however many pounds, what is it using to cut from? Like, recommended caloric intake for weight loss 1k-1200, is it that or is it your maintenance caloric intake whatever that adds up to be or is it your BMR? What is the bass number that this calculation is based on? Thanks!

Replies

  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    Depends where you are getting the first number from. Weight loss comes from creating a calorie deficit from your total daily energy expenditure or TDEE. Some sites will calculate that based on your stats and exercise estimates and then give you a projected amount of calories to eat.

    MFP works off of a NEAT estimator which includes your BMR (cals you burn just being a live) as well as an estimate of your daily activity NOT including exercise.

    So if you use this site to enter stats, how much weight you want to lose, an activity level and a rate of loss it will give you a calorie goal that would enable you (in theory) to lose your desired weight by doing no exercise at all. Then when you do exercise you should log and eat back a portion of those calories so your deficit isn’t too steep.

    Try reading the stickied most helpful forum posts at the top of the getting started section they have a lot of additional useful info about how to use this site as well as set appropriate goals.
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    MFP calculates your BMR based for your gender, age, weight, and height. It then uses an activity multiplier based on the activity level you select (which is your activity not including deliberate exercise). It will then multiply your BMR by your activity multiier to get your maintainence calories. It will then use the amount of weight you told it you want to lose a week to set your deficit, and subtract that (250 calories per half pound of loss) from your maintainence calories. So if your maintainance calories is 2000 and you selected 1 pound a week, it will give you a goal of 1500. It will not set a goal of lower than 1200 for a female or 1500 for a male. You are then supposed to eat back the calories you burn from intentional execise, in addition to your goal calories.

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