Starting out, bit baffled

daniellemichael2

So I'm 28, 189lbs, 5ft 8in aiming to get back to around 140lbs. My weight gain is mainly due to stopping smoking, sedentary after brain surgery & two pregnancies.

I have dieted with calorie counting before & lost weight but regained it all as I was eating just 1200-1400 calories a day.
My bmr is 1646
Tdee is 2289


I intend to do 3-4 30 minute exercise sessions of interval/strength training & I've put my activity level as lightly active due to running after 2 kids & general day to day activities.

So should If I was to eat my 1646 bmr daily I would lose weight? Even without exercise? It just seems unreal to me that you can eat more & still lose.

Thanks, Dani x

daniellemichael2

Bump x

Noor13

Hi and welcome!

There are a few questions that I need to ask you first.
Have you been dieting on low calories for a longer time? I do assume, as you seem to be surprised that you could list at 1600, which is only your BMR.

I honestly do think though, that your TDEE is higher, as you don't seem to be lightly active. Running after kids, does not put you in that category. It is not only about your exercise, but also your NEAT. The more you are on your feet, the more you burn. That has to be taken into consideration too when calculating your TDEE.

And even if you had a TDEE of 2200 the cut would still be to steep. As you don't have too much to lose, you should keep your cut at around 10% only.

But having that all said, if you have been on low calories for a while you would want to consider doing a reset before cutting to get your metabolism humming again. You will find a lot of info about it in the stickies or on the EM2WL website.