By the numbers -- your opinions please

424a57

Height: 5'8"
Weight: 200
Est BF%: 30

From http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/
(Mifflin-St Jeor with "daily exercise")

Your BMR is: 1739
Your TDEE is: 2847
TDEE-20% is: 2277


Extracted from September food and exercise diary:

Cal Total=68938 days=30 Cal/Day=2297.93 (C=58% F=27% P=15%)
Exe Total=19476 days=27 Cal/Day=721.333

Avg Daily Net: 1648

EDIT:

One more number

Weight on Sep 1: 204.8
Weight on Sep 30: 201.4

Loss = 3.4 lbs (-.88 lbs/week)

jwdieter

Those are numbers. Perhaps a little more information about what you are trying to get at?

fivethreeone

If your TDEE-20% is 2200 and you've averaged 1600, you are undereating.

Eat more.

jwdieter

If your TDEE-20% is 2200 and you've averaged 1600, you are undereating.

Eat more.

If he eats back exercise calories on a TDEE-20% plan, he'll likely be at or above maintenance.

424a57

"Thank you" to the two people who posted (fivethreeone & jwdieter).

I guess I got what I expected... one said I was eating to little, and the other said the first was wrong.

OlyTriNoob

So...you should have lost ~1/lb a week and you lost ~.88lbs/wk. I'd say the calculations are within margin of error and what you are doing is working.

jwdieter

"Thank you" to the two people who posted (fivethreeone & jwdieter).

I guess I got what I expected... one said I was eating to little, and the other said the first was wrong.

You didn't post a question, or results (pre-edit). Your expectation was unclear. OlyTriNoob is correct - you're losing consistent with your methodology.

You're supposed to eat your target calories with a TDEE-20% approach, and you are. As it happens, the intake is around 570/day deficit, which should produce around 1 lb/week loss.

If you were using a NEAT approach (MFP method) with a 1 lb/week loss target, you'd start with a target around 1700, and eat back your exercise calories. This would produce a similar gross intake to the TDEE approach, if activity/exercise calorie estimates were on target.

What you shouldn't do is eat back exercise calories that the TDEE-20% approach already accounts for. That would be double-counting and, in this case, would result in no weight loss due to eating at maintenance, assuming accurate inputs.

wild_wild_life

So...you should have lost ~1/lb a week and you lost ~.88lbs/wk. I'd say the calculations are within margin of error and what you are doing is working.

This. What was your question?

The person who thought you were only eating 1600 and said to eat more was wrong -- you are netting 1600. The concept of net should be tossed out the window when you use TDEE-X%. Gross calorie intake is all that matters.

Nice job!

424a57

---
Calories: 34290/14=2449 Carb: 57% Fat: 29% Prot: 13%
Workouts: 13 TotCal: 9685 TotMin: 925 Cal/WO: 745 Cal/min: 10.5

Net Calories: 1757

Plan: 2277-2847 = -570/day (1.14 lbs/week)
Actual: 2449-2847 = -398/day (0.79 lbs/week)

Results: 2013-09-24 to 2013-10-08
Last Lb/wk kCal Min. Mean Max.
14 d -0.24 -122 201.0 201.3 201.7
---

This is what prompted me to post -- a plateau. For the past two weeks, by the numbers, I should have lost about 0.8 lbs/week but I didn't. I lost only 0.24 lbs/week. Over the past 5 months, doing the same thing did produce the weight loss I expected.

So here is my question: Is this reasonable, given that practically all we do for logging (food and exercise) is an estimate? Is this, as OlyTriNoob says, "within the margin of error"?

jwdieter

If the long term is working, probably should give it a bit more time than 2 weeks to modify. Might see a flush.

That said, being off on intake estimates by just 10% would produce your observed results. Something as simple as a bad MFP entry on a common meal item can do that. So maybe double-check the entries. Looks like you're careful so probably using a food scale, but if not, pick one of those up.