Confirming TDEE experimentally

Wiseandcurious

I am a newbie here, been on MFP for about 6-7 weeks. What I did is not rocket science, and many experienced nice people here on the forum have suggested it and explained in detail how to do it. Just reporting the results so other newbies like me who may be interested in the TDEE approach but afraid to try it may be encouraged to give it a go. If you don't like it - you don't have to do it, but for me it's been the key to sanity.

I started MFP, and losing weight, on January 14. After a couple of days of starving combined with diligent reading of the stickies here, and a couple of weeks experiments, I decided to try the TDEE approach because it seemed so reasonable. I had assumed I was sedentary, but figured my three hours of excercise total per week make me more lightly active; calculated it using the calculators at fat2fitradio inputting BF%, age etc. Still felt unsure, it gave me about 2430 which I was afraid was high. In the end decided to just try to find sustainable calorie level for myself and check at the end of a period.

I calculated today my intake from the last 28 days (everything is weighted and logged) so excluding initial water weight loss, and added 3500 cal for every pound shed during that period. This should be a fairly close approximation of my TDEE.

Surprise, surprise... It's 2430 calories.

An interesting side fact is that my weekly average intake hovers b/n TDEE - 30% and TDEE - 20% naturally of itself, just eating reasonably and trying to get my protein up and enough veg/fruit to go with it, the rest as per mood and how I feel.

Upshot is I am now not only in a comfortable range of losing, moving and eating, but also have the psychological reassurance that the approach I picked is right for me and the calculator doesn't lie.

(Note: my calorie intake goal in my diary is set at 100 calories or so below my actual goal because experience shows whatever figure I put there, I average that much above it - I guess restrictions seriously bug me )

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marjoleina

Thanks for sharing, I find that very interesting. Whenever I don't eat enough I def. don't lose, and now that I am eating at TDEE - 20% I am losing again, pretty soon I may have lost enough that it will show on my progress ticker again...