Should calories stay the same

katieeblanton

I know not to go over on calories but I was wondering if you should try and stay consistent with your calories or if its ok to eat like 1600 one day and 1200 the next and if that would effect my weight loss either positively or negatively. Also I'm very new like a week in and I only came across the bmr and tdee stuff yesterday so I'm still kind of figuring it out. Will someone please help me figure my numbers. Somehow my bmr is showing 25 lower than my tdee and I thought it was supposed to be a larger gap. But my stats are- female 5'3 , 205#, 25 years old little to no excersise besides what I do trying to chase a one year old. Plus any other advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

7deadly

This can be complicated but the simple version is it depends on how much exercise you do and your goals.
Even then the answer could be 'maybe'.

Assuming a non-carb cycling diet then I generally eat slightly over BMR.
In my case slightly is around 300 calories over.

Once a week it is a good idea to vary your calorie intake- have a meal where you eat what you want, within reason.
I call these free meals (not cheat meals- you aren't cheat in as it is written into the diet).

That said if you are the sort of person that cannot bare leaving cookies in the jar then maybe don't have a 'free meal' where you can eat anything you want but rather structure some extra clean calories (so a meal rather than sweets) into your week.
This isn't gospel- it really depends on what you are wanting to do.

DeguelloTex

A lot of people look at weekly calorie goals, not daily ones. If, for example, your goal were 1400, then 1600 one day and 1200 another would be perfectly fine.

katieeblanton

My biggest thing was soda. I would drink 5 to 6 a day. First 3 days I drank one then went down to a half a one a day and now I've completely quit and started drinking water and one to 2 glasses of sweet tea.

lemurcat12

I know not to go over on calories but I was wondering if you should try and stay consistent with your calories or if its ok to eat like 1600 one day and 1200 the next and if that would effect my weight loss either positively or negatively.

It depends on what works better for you. I tend to vary it based on exercise only, but a lot of people work in a higher calorie day, and if you aren't exercising much (so don't get higher calorie days that way) it might make it more sustainable for you. But other people find it easier to be consistent and either works for weight loss, so maybe pick one and try it and then if you want try the other and compare. Whether it affects you positively or negatively is going to depend on which one you prefer and thus makes your eating plan easier to stick with. It would seem too much of a sacrifice for me if I couldn't have restaurant days or the like, so I've always made sure I could fit in a slightly higher calorie day.

If you change your calories around (other than with exercise), what you'd do is figure out total calories for the week and then allocate them to different days (for example if you are doing 1500/day, maybe do 6 days of 1450 and use the 300 extra (50x6) on the 7th for a 1800 calorie day). I think you can see the weekly calories on the app.

Also I'm very new like a week in and I only came across the bmr and tdee stuff yesterday so I'm still kind of figuring it out. Will someone please help me figure my numbers. Somehow my bmr is showing 25 lower than my tdee and I thought it was supposed to be a larger gap. But my stats are- female 5'3 , 205#, 25 years old little to no excersise besides what I do trying to chase a one year old. Plus any other advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Check out http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/. As you will see, there are a few different ways of calculating the numbers, so all are just estimates, but they will give you a starting place if you want to do it that way. I'm getting a BMR for you of 1650-1725, the non body fat percentage way (from experience, if you are overweight your BMR will likely be lower if you include body fat percentage, but most people don't know it, so I am skeptical about BMR estimates unless someone is already in shape) and a TDEE of about 1975 to 2050 (but again it would be likely be lower if you included body fat).

Chances are you do exercise at least a little more than you think anyway (chasing around a toddler is not nothing!), so you could try 20% off TDEE (say, 2000) giving you about 1600 calories for a goal. My warning is that that would be a deficit of 400 calories which--if you really aren't that active--is less than a lb a week. I'd be inclined to start with at least a deficit of 500, or 1 lb goal, which would be about 1500. Given your numbers that's not especially aggressive. (People may tell you that it's bad to eat less than BMR, but I've not seen anything to substantiate that when doing so would not require a high deficit. But it all depends on how you feel and how fast you actually end up losing. It's totally fine to aim for a slower rate or to gradually decrease calories if that feels more comfortable and sustainable. Better than getting too aggressive and giving up.)

Another thing to think about is if you are going to be planning to add exercise. If so, eventually you will want to recalculate TDEE to include it, as you don't eat it back if you do TDEE. You will also want to recalculate as you lose weight, after each 10-15 lbs or so.

katieeblanton

Thanks everyone. It sure is a lot easier to gain weight than figuring out how to lose it, but I know I will eventually get the hang of what I'm doing.

KylaDenay

It all depends what you prefer. If you are eating back exercise calories, then it may not always be the same every day. If you are following TDEE then it will be the same amount of calories eaten everyday. Some people like to eat less throughout the week so they can spurge on the weekends, but staying within their weekly goal.

Its all up to you.