Silly question.

heybales

Heybales, very interesting read. It all seems very complicated though.
I was doing some reading on tdee. And I found a three or four calculators. They all had me at around 4000 calories a day! Some even more. That sounds nuts to me. But then again what do I know?

The person that honestly logged their normal food intake for a few days to a week prior to starting diet is rare indeed.
Usually the mere act of logging cleans up some habits.

If you used to do a lot of packaged or fast food - you can pick some day in the past prior to starting logging, and log some pretend days and see what you were getting close to, and those levels was likely without current level of exercise too.
Of course memory there is interesting to recall everything eaten, but many are shocked how it adds up.

Spreadsheet on my profile page is a bodyfat calc, Katch BMR based on that, better activity calc, and way to log progress and measurements.
Also, based on real-world results, TDEE calculator.