Confused about BMR and TDEE

muppet1501

Ive been set a calorie intake of 1360 by MFP if I wanted to lose 1.5lb per week but to me this seems a bit drastic for my weight so I looked up my BMR and TDEE that ive seen many posts go on about and it says my BMR is 1506 and my TDEE is 2036. Does that mean I have to eat over 1500 calories without exercise? I have changed my settings to lose 1lb a week and its put my calories upto 1600. Help :ohwell:

Ready2Rock206

Take 20% off of the 2036 and that would be your calorie goal. (Do not eat back exercise calories.) I like this website: http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/

__freckles__

Here you go:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/818082-exercise-calories-again-wtf 

Good luck!

SnuggleSmacks

BMR is what your body would burn if you were in a coma. It's the energy needed just to function.
TDEE is your BMR plus all the calories you need to fuel all of your activity throughout the day.

MFP uses another figure, called NEAT, which includes all non-exercise activity...so this would be your basic walking around for your job, housework, shopping, that sort of thing. It asks you to pick an activity level and calculates your NEAT based on that, and then subtracts a set number from it. So, if you want to lose 1 pound per week, MFP will subtract 500 from your NEAT because 500 per day would be 3500 for a week, and 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat.

MFP also expects you to log all the exercise you do so that it can add those calories to your goal, because they aren't accounted for in your NEAT...only your normal daily activity is counted. Exercise is extra.

With TDEE, you average your exercise, so it is included. It asks you to choose an activity level based on how much you exercise and how active your job is, so the exercise calories are already included. It also lets you subtract a percentage (10-20% is usually good) which means if you're very large and have a high TDEE and you subtract 20%, you may end up with quite a large deficit, which is fine at that size because you're still getting plenty of nutrition. When you're smaller, so is your TDEE, and 20% might not even add up to 500 calories. Your calorie goal isn't as big so you have less room to play around and still get the proper nutrition.

You can change your goals in MFP if you want to use the TDEE method. Just remember if you do that, don't log your exercise and don't eat those calories back since they're already accounted for in your TDEE activity level.