Need help with daily calories!

FranceyPants
FranceyPants Posts: 98 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hey guys, I think I got this, but I just wanted to double check that I am doing everything right! Don't want to screw this up!

I calculated my TDEE using Scooby's Workshop. The results:
BMR: 1389
TDEE: 1910
Daily calories: 1432

So if I eat 1432 calories (my daily calories) and I exercise, I should 'eat back' the calories I burned during exercise.
BUT if I eat 1910 calories (TDEE), I should eat 1910 in total and not 'eat back' any calories I burned during exercise.

Question 1: Is this correct?

Question 2: If I have a day of no exercise should I aim to consume only my BMR calories? Or should I eat the daily calories (1432) or the TDEE calories?

Thank you so much in advance!

Replies

  • rednwhitez
    rednwhitez Posts: 1
    I have just been reading up on TDEE as well. My understanding is that your BMR is the amount of calories needed for you to maintain a healthy body at current weight without activity level affects and your TDEE is your BMR plus a number of additional calories needed to maintain your level of exercise.

    So eat/drink to your TDEE and you maintain weight. So to lose weight you start from your TDEE as that is your daily needs not your BMR. It is only healthy to reduce your needs [which is TDEE not BMR] by 15-20%. If you use your BMR then it is likely to be more than this percentage and you will go into starvation mode and your body actually retains fat to cover. Of course if your activity level is virtually nothing then your BMR and TDEE is nearly the same. If you are very active the difference is high.

    So in essence yes your interpretation is right but a skewed way of looking at it: ie, eat your BMR - 20% and the amount of calories also spent on exercise that day [the eat back bit].

    My understanding is that it takes a while for your body to adjust to this [about 6 weeks]. I use the myfitnesspal to do this on a daily basis. So it starts with the daily amount of calories needed based on BMR then adds on calories based on the exercise I do in the day effectively giving me the daily TDEE value. It seems to work.
  • melaniecheeks
    melaniecheeks Posts: 6,349 Member
    Broadly correct.

    But if you eat at TDEE you wont lose any weight.
  • FranceyPants
    FranceyPants Posts: 98 Member
    OK, thanks for your help!

    So, my TDEE - 20% is around 1528 (I had it set on - 25% before to get the 1432 number)

    So - just to make things clear - in order to lose weight I should eat 1528 calories per day, and if I do exercise, I should eat those calories back?

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