BMR vs. Maintenance Calories

NightOwl1

I've seen this misconception floating around a lot on the boards, so I thought I would go ahead and clear it up. Your BMR and you Maintenance Calories are NOT the same thing.

Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the amount of calories your body would burn if you did nothing but rest for 24 hours straight. So unless you are in a coma, you BMR will never be your maintenance calories.

Your Maintenance Calories (the number of calories you need to consume to keep your current weight) is calculate by taking your BMR, and multiplying it by your activity multiplayer, based on your lifestyle. When you create your profile on MFP, the site asks you to put select your activity level as either Sedentary, Lightly Active, Active, or Very Active. This is based off of the type of work you do, NOT based off of your exercise. Your exercise is logged separately. So based on the activity level of your job and your BMR, MFP will give you both a Goal Calories (the amount of Net Calories you need to consume to lose your desired amount of weight) and your Maintenance Calories (again, the amount of calories you need to stay the same weight).

This is why you can eat more than your BMR, more than your goal calories, or eat back your exercise calories and still lose weight. Your goal calories are a certain deficit below your maintenance calories. So even if you go over, you will still lose weight as long as you do not exceed your maintenance calories. Likewise, if you eat back the calories you burn from exercise, you will still maintain a deficit, and continue to burn weight.

Hopefully this helped clear this up for some of you.