TDEE v. Calories Burned

jchadden42

I am not a careful counter of calories, to begin with, and I don't wear a HRM--I rely on the estimates from MFP, and I'm okay with that. When I started using MFP, I was merely trying to balance input and output for calories. While losing 5-10 pounds was fine by me, I find that I am continuing to lose weight at a rate of 0.5-1.0 pounds per week. My fault, I have a hard time eating when I'm not hungry.

My question is: MFP gives me 1850 calories/day to "maintain" my current weight. I have averaged what that would be including calories burned, and my average is 2438 calories/day going with base plus calories burned. My TDEE is 2303 calories/day. Over the past week, I consumed an average of 2354 calories/day, putting me between TDEE and base plus calories burned. I lost about 0.6 pounds over this week.

I obviously need to reset my goals. While I'm not underweight (130 lbs at 5'5"), I'd like to keep my figure. Should I set my base consumption to 2400 calories/day and ignore exercise?

emAZn

Possibly... from my research I've read that TDEE is based on averages so you may need to adjust by a few hundred calories up or down to reach your goal. In your case up till you reach your true maintenance and stop losing.

Lucky duck!

sijomial

Don't you think you are over complicating this?
To summarise - you don't accurately count calories, you use a generic way to estimate exercise calories. So trying to set a precise number of calories is pure guesswork.

As you are losing half a pound a week why don't you simply add a snack or side dish of approximately 250 cals to your current daily intake? Perhaps a protein shake if you are low on protein, nuts if you are low on fats? Or just 250 fun calories!