BMR and Maintaining Weight

mistawalka

Greetings MFP'ers

I'm happy to say I'm half-way on my journey having almost reached goal weight and am now thinking about the next half being maintaining the goal.

A couple (well a few) questions I'd appreciate your thoughts on to make sure I'm on the right track....


BMR and 'Maintenance Calories'

If I've read correctly - BMR is a purley sedentary measure of whats needed to stay alive and needs to be adjusted by daily activity levels for desired calorie level to maintain weight . Mine is calculated at BMR=1712 and according to some sites I would increase this by 1.375 (38%) for my 'lightly active' lifestyle - so to maintain my goal weight I should be aiming at around 2350 calories per day - does that sound right?


Also - a couple of days ago I tried testing my BMR by wearing a heart rate monitor for a typical 24 hour working day and it showed I used 2340 calories that day. Whilst this matches the above figure closely, there are a number of 'stress points' (eg we face a fair amount of street violence so adrenalin/heart rate increases) does this heart rate increase without associated muscle exertion burn calories or should I use the daily calorie burn as a top end estimate?


Once reaching goal weight do you just switch to eating maintenance calories or should it be a gradual increase?


Should I continue to 'eat' exercise calories for activities over and above the daily routine?


Thank you for your time

clioandboy

Bump, good questions to which I have no answers!

morganadk2_deleted

bump

lotusfromthemud

Greetings MFP'ers

I'm happy to say I'm half-way on my journey having almost reached goal weight and am now thinking about the next half being maintaining the goal.

A couple (well a few) questions I'd appreciate your thoughts on to make sure I'm on the right track....


BMR and 'Maintenance Calories'

If I've read correctly - BMR is a purley sedentary measure of whats needed to stay alive and needs to be adjusted by daily activity levels for desired calorie level to maintain weight . Mine is calculated at BMR=1712 and according to some sites I would increase this by 1.375 (38%) for my 'lightly active' lifestyle - so to maintain my goal weight I should be aiming at around 2350 calories per day - does that sound right?


Also - a couple of days ago I tried testing my BMR by wearing a heart rate monitor for a typical 24 hour working day and it showed I used 2340 calories that day. Whilst this matches the above figure closely, there are a number of 'stress points' (eg we face a fair amount of street violence so adrenalin/heart rate increases) does this heart rate increase without associated muscle exertion burn calories or should I use the daily calorie burn as a top end estimate?


Once reaching goal weight do you just switch to eating maintenance calories or should it be a gradual increase?


Should I continue to 'eat' exercise calories for activities over and above the daily routine?


Thank you for your time

Yes, your BMR (also called "RMR" in some of the literature) is a purely sedentary calorie burn estimate, and by "purely sedentary" it means bedridden with minimal functions (think: a coma). So, yes, you need to add your daily level of activity into your maintenance calories equation. (this number is referred to in a lot of places as your "TDEE" or "total daily energy expenditure")

Unfortunately, the HRM is not a good way to measure calories burned outside of aerobic exercise, and even then only gives you a very good estimate (how good depending on the model). I'm not even close to an expert here, but if you search the boards for this subject and a user named "Azdak", you'll find a better explanation.

I advise gradually increasing your calories, say by a hundred calories a week (weighing weekly) until your reach a point where you actually start maintaining your weight. Since virtually any TDEE guideline is just a guideline, you need to find your own maintenance sweet spot, which requires patience.

Depending on how vigorous your workouts are, you will most likely still need to continue to eat those exercise calories (or just find a TDEE calculator that allows for a lifestyle that includes your workouts). Otherwise, the exercise will continue to create a calorie deficit, and you may continue to lose weight. Again, you'll have to experiment for a few months or so to discover where your maintenance calories are.

HTH, let me know if anything needs clarification.:flowerforyou:

mistawalka

Thanks Viviakay. I'm thinking a good strategy for increasing calories is adding one or two extra meals or snacks to the daily routine as at present my weight loss regime has limited meals to three a day. I think this would be better than increase portion sizes at current meal times as I'm now used to the palm size pieces of steak and vegies lol.

lotusfromthemud

Thanks Viviakay. I'm thinking a good strategy for increasing calories is adding one or two extra meals or snacks to the daily routine as at present my weight loss regime has limited meals to three a day. I think this would be better than increase portion sizes at current meal times as I'm now used to the palm size pieces of steak and vegies lol.

Yep, that's pretty much the way I did it. An extra piece of string cheese here, a few nuts there...soon...maintenance calories, without eating "more". Well, more at a time....