TDEE

bex1086

I'm pretty consistent when it comes to my activity levels so I find it easier to have one calorie goal that includes my general daily life and my purposeful exercise. At the moment I'm struggling to figure out what it might be because I've changed my exercise levels a bit.

On an average week my life consists of:

4 mile walk five times a week with a pushchair for the school run.

Body pump class for an hour 3 times a week. Watch suggests I burn around 200 calories.

5/6 hour shift as a waitress/bar person 3 times a week.

Roughly 1 hour of cardio machines at the gym, sometimes 2. Average calorie burn according to machines is 200 in the hour so probably halve that.

I'm unsure what to put on the TDEE calculators, I don't know if moderate exercise is enough or too much.

I can't remember what I used previously, think it was either lightly active or moderately active when I wasn't doing 3 classes of body pump and the 4 mile walk. I've fallen off the wagon recently and just been eating mindlessly so I'm trying to get focused and start from the beginning.

I'm a 33 year old female, weighing 52kg and 155cm.

Any suggestions would be great, thanks.

sijomial

Different TDEE calculators descibe their combined activity and exercise BMR multipliers differently and also have different levels of granularity.
This one gives you lots of options to pick what your best guess is - https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

By the way I think there is a good chance you are under-estimating your exercise calories at the moment. 200/hr seems extraordinarilly low and halving it is more than likely moving in the wrong direction unless you are exercising in a remarkably gentle fashion.

TDEE could well be a good choice for you if your exercise is relatively consistent as you only have one estimate to adjust.

It's very likely you will need to adjust, track your results against expectations over a month and adjust as required.

LivingtheLeanDream

With a little data TDEE can be worked out individually - are you trying to maintain? do you track your calories?
Have you put your stats into this app to maintain because its usually not far away at calculating TDEE that way, might under calculate it (that's what I find anyway) but it would be a start and then you can work from there, gathering your own data over a number of weeks so you can assess what your TDEE is.

bex1086

I have put in my statistics to the app but I don't know what activity level to choose. I want to include my exercise in my calorie goal because I'm so consistent, logging it separately just makes it harder really.

I'm trying to lose but if I know my maintenance then I can choose how much less to eat. Currently I'm aiming for 1500 but ultimately as long as it's under maintenance it doesn't really matter.

Tracking calories is a yes and no answer. I do for a while then end up not even opening the app and I'll just be eating bits here and there like cutting off off bits of cheese. I've gained 3kg in 2 months and I would estimate I have been easily eating 2000+ calories on the days I haven't logged, especially if it's based on average. There has been weeks of lots of eating out so high calorie foods combined with plenty of alcohol too which all add up.

neugebauer52

Best activity level I have seen so far is on sailrabbit.com BMR and TDEE calculations if that helps.

NovusDies

bex1086 wrote: »

I have put in my statistics to the app but I don't know what activity level to choose. I want to include my exercise in my calorie goal because I'm so consistent, logging it separately just makes it harder really.

I'm trying to lose but if I know my maintenance then I can choose how much less to eat. Currently I'm aiming for 1500 but ultimately as long as it's under maintenance it doesn't really matter.

Tracking calories is a yes and no answer. I do for a while then end up not even opening the app and I'll just be eating bits here and there like cutting off off bits of cheese. I've gained 3kg in 2 months and I would estimate I have been easily eating 2000+ calories on the days I haven't logged, especially if it's based on average. There has been weeks of lots of eating out so high calorie foods combined with plenty of alcohol too which all add up.

If you are not consistently tracking your calories having an accurate TDEE amount is not going to help you much.

If you are trying to lose you and you can push yourself to log accurately for a couple of months then you would just pick a reasonable activity level. Assuming you are not hungry all the time or fatigued it should be fine. At the end of 2 months check and make sure it is accurate based on your actual results. If it needs adjusting you won't have to guess at it as much.

Accurate logging would normally involve a food scale and it should involve personally verifying that the database entries you use from MFP are accurate. It is a bit tedious at first but with time it should become easier. For me, now, I can almost do it in my sleep.

LivingtheLeanDream

Do you wear a tracker? an idea of your average steps would perhaps help you know which activity level to choose.
As you're only loosely tracking calories in it will be hard to gauge - if it means something to you to know your average TDEE you could commit to tracking consistently for say 4 weeks, then going by whether you're maintaining or losing, you'll know the score.

The online calculators are not bad for giving an idea, I have used scoobyworkshop in the past https://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/#charts - its not far off for my stats I've found.

sijomial

bex1086 wrote: »

I have put in my statistics to the app but I don't know what activity level to choose. I want to include my exercise in my calorie goal because I'm so consistent, logging it separately just makes it harder really.

If by "the app" you mean MyFitnessPal then you need to be aware it is not a TDEE calculator.
It estimates your BMR and then applies the activity (ONLY) multiplier to give you an estimate for a day with no exercise. (You could choose correctly sedentary on MFP even if you did a huge amount of exercise but sat around the remainder of the day.)
TDEE calculators also estimate your BMR but then apply an acticity AND exercise multiplier to give you a goal which includes an average of your exercise. (With a lot of exercise you cannot select sedentary on a TDEE site as that be a multiplier for someone who is both inactive and does no exercise.)

That why the level descriptions are different between the two tools. Lifestyle only or lifestyle plus exercise.

Use one method or the other but be very cautious about mixing the up estimates from one tool and method from a different tool.

PAV8888

Really, if you're not logging consistently, the activity level won't mean much.

Instead, choose a level of calories to eat that makes you a tiny bit hungry but not too hungry and go from there.

For TDEE calculator purposes you sound ACTIVE--if your one to two hours of cardio at home is for the WEEK.

For TDEE calculator purposes, if your 1-2 hours of cardio at home is PER DAY and to that you add 6.4 km of walking 5/7 days, plus 5 hours of waitressing shifts 3/7 days, plus body pump 3/7 days... that is probably getting closer to VERY ACTIVE.

You may want to explore how you weight yourself. Are you weighing yourself daily and putting the information in a weight trend application or web-site? Using average weekly weight ins? Or are you looking at occasional weigh ins weeks apart and saying things such I've gained 3kg in 2 months?

Weight, especially in not-yet menopausal females fluctuates for reasons other than fat loss or gain, and not establishing a trend doesn't let you have a full view of what your weight level is actually doing.

This means that people apply deficits that may be TOO LARGE for them because only when the deficit is large do you consistently and semi-reliably get immediate scale feed-back. Reasonable weight loss is quite often hard to see among daily water weight fluctuations.

The problem with large deficits is that even though they provide scale feedback... they often end up being counterproductive and causing side-effects, and more so for people who are closer to normal weight.

And as I wrote the above, I punched your stats into a bmi calculator to see how far above BMI 25 you were...

So, given that you're already at a BMI of 21.6 at your, presumably, higher by 2kg weight (and that you were at a BMI of 20.8 at 50kg)... one would a) caution STRONGLY against large deficits as the chances of them being counterproductive are much higher for people in your weight range than for other people and b) challenge you to define goals and to think about what you're trying to accomplish by losing weight and WHETHER you could be accomplishing these goals through other means -- such as strength training, different exercise, different time allocation, etc, etc, etc.

Health-wise, there is no statistical evidence (that I'm aware through general reading ) that losing weight would be helpful to you in any way, and plenty of ways where the process could cause marginal harm as opposed to marginal benefit. Body composition wise, you may be better off defining your goals and pursuing them with more specificity than just "losing some weight".