I was calculating my maintenance calories wrong for years, or I am not? HELP!

xMidox

Guys please help me as I am so confused, when I was always calculating my maintenance level I used this website https://tdeecalculator.net/ which is great as I understand but the problem was that I was selecting my activity level as Sedentary and that give me around 1800 calories per day however I realized that this might be wrong because I am working out at least 5 days a week.
So I was on a cutting diet for 1352 calories but I guess that is too low taking into consideration my working out routine.

My job is pretty much in the office so I don't move a lot, but as I said I work out at least 5 or 6 times a week including lifting and low-intensity cardio.

I am 39 years old, 172cm, and bodyfat around 20% can you please help me find my estimated maintenance calories? or can you suggest what activity level should I use?

Thanks a lot

sijomial

Yes you have been selecting the wrong combined actvity and exercise setting which a TDEE calculator should be giving you.
But that is a really poor TDEE calculator - it doesn't have anywhere near enough granularity to take into account people's very varied activity and exercise. Two people with the same job and exercise could have very different activity.
https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/ is a better one.

But if you have been logging your food intake and tracking your weight trend then you have a far better idea of a calorie goal with the bonus of it correcting your logging inaccuracy.
How many total calories have you eaten in last four weeks and what has your weight done?
(Total cals plus/minus 3500cals for each pound lost/gained divided by 28)

If you prefer a variable calorie goal then use MyFitnessPal instead but beware the activity settings are also poor (they only mention jobs but people tend to have another 8hrs a day of their lifestyle activity which they should also take into account). Exercise is then estimated after the event instead of a daily average in advance.

ChickenKillerPuppy

Calculators are just estimating - your maintenance calories are whatever you can eat and maintain your weight. Have you thought about actually establishing your maintenance calories by eating at 1800 (or 2000 or whatever) for 6-8 weeks and logging your weight during that time to see if you are maintaining, gaining or losing? Actual data from your lived experience is much more valuable than a calculator, and practicing eating at maintenance is critical to learning to keep the weight off once you lose it.

AnnPT77

FWIW, there's a thread in Most Helpful Posts section of the Goal: Maintaining Weight part of the Community about various methods for determining your maintenance calorie level:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level/p1