What is My Daily Calorie Count?

alyssareyans
alyssareyans Posts: 88 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
What should be my daily calorie count? Am I eating appropriately or should I increase/decrease? I used a couple different online TDEE calculators. And they were all within 3-4 points of each other. This is what I got:

TDEE is 2380

BMR is 1739

Just some info about my current calories and exercise:

I currently eat 1400 calories a day. That's consumed calories. I don't eat back burned calories.

I exercise 6 days a week. I run 5K 4 days a week (increased recently from 3 to 4 days) and do strength training 2 days a week. I still have about 70 lbs to go to reach my goal weight.

I've been losing about a pound a week but have started to slow down the last 3-4 weeks. I wanted to adjust calories and/or exercise routine which is why I went up a day in exercise. I know there's ups and downs. I know there's fluctuations and mini plateaus.

I just wanted to see if I'm understanding the calorie count properly or if I'm eating inappropriately. I'd never heard of TDEE until I joined the forums here and am not sure I really understand exactly how to use it. So I'm just asking if I should increase/decrease/just continue doing what I'm doing based upon the above calculations.

(Oh and thank you in advance for answering all of my questions)

Replies

  • marissanik
    marissanik Posts: 344 Member
    You don't want to eat below your BMR. You want to take your TDEE and subtract 10-20% of those calories depending how much you have to lose.

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    There are several schools of thought. I think you're fine at 1400. MFP would say you have to eat 1200 and also your exercise calories back. If you tell MFP that your exercise is part of your activity level, then you don't have to eat it back.

    If you feel like shaking things up, try eating more for a week or two. Or working out less. Or more. Or staggering calories across the week. Or really anything. Sometimes it's just time that breaks a plateau, sometimes we feel like we caused it to break.

    Science would suggest eating more overall isn't going to increase weight loss, though. But I think it makes people more patient and less likely to fudge the numbers.

    Good luck!
  • alyssareyans
    alyssareyans Posts: 88 Member
    Thank you both!

    I've been on MFP for several months but just started being on the forums for the last couple weeks. I have learned so much and it's great to have so many people who understand the difficult journey.

    I just wanted to be sure I was using all of the tools appropriately and the TDEE was just very confusing and seemed very high. It kind of scares me to even think about eating that many calories. I already have days where I'll use smoothies to supplement my calorie intake because I'm not hungry.

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