Confused by MFP vs BMR

email68

I started listening to the podcast fat2fit radio that I heard about on the forums here. They say you should never eat lower than your BMR.

According to their web calculator my BMR is 1827. Further F2F radio says you need to eat above your BMR so I should be eating around 2200 calories/day to loose around 1 lb a week. MFP settings for 2 lb/wk sedentary weight loss is 1200 calories/day.

So which is right? 2200 seems like way too much for trying to loose weight.

_GlaDOS_

2200 is actually not that much if you are also exercising.

For example, my BMR is around 1650-1700. This is where I have my calories set. According to MFP, I will lose about a pound a week (more like 1.2 lbs). Today I burned 900 calories, so I need to eat that much more. So today (if I could have eaten that much), I would have eaten nearly 2500 calories and had a net of 1600. So ate above my BMR calories, but I burned a ton of those.

Set your net calories around your BMR, and eat as much of your exercise calories back, and you should be good to go.

BeeHummingbird

I agree to the last post ................ ;-)

I eat around 1200-1300 calories a day more when I exercised because I need to eat my calories back that day,
but I am a female @ 4 ft 11inches weight about 115 pounds, I am mainly wanting to tone and just eat right and build muscle........
and I have been told never never eat under this 1200.......
It's a common mistake not eating enough calories or often enough.. ....
I would expect males to eat more that 1200 calories maybe closer to that 2000 and up.

NotGoddess

I've started following them. Their point is very slow but steady weight loss-if you checked the difference between your current weight sedentary calories and goal weight calories it's probably not that large. My difference was only 105 calories! They encourage the 20% above BMR (which incidentally is your sedentary calories) minimum to make sure you don't create too much of a deficit, but they also say it's fine to eat 200-300 calories below it to start off.

In my case, my goal weight sedentary calories is 1595. I make sure to always eat that. That creates a natural deficit of roughly 100 calories if I don't exercise. I'll add in extra exercise and not eat back all the calories to create a bit more of a deficit-usually no more than 400, but I'll burn 1000 so I'll be eating 2195 calories for the day. Total deficit: ~500 cals.

Going by MFP (1lb/wk loss) my TDEE sedentary is 1640 and it puts my calorie goal at 1200 creating a 440 deficit. I could do this as well but would want to make sure I always ate back all my calories so I wasn't eating too little. So if I burned 1000 calories, I'd eat back all 1000 and my total food calories would be 2200. Total deficit: ~440cals, and if I'm a little under the 1200 (because we like those green numbers) the deficit would be closer to 500.

If you map out the two programs you'll probably find you eat close to the same-MFP just has a larger, adjustable deficit built it, so it seems like you are eating less. There may be more variance at higher weights, but as you can see it comes pretty close for me.

email68

Interesting info. I've been averaging around 1400-1500 calories intake for the last few months. I only exercise between 300-500 calories a day. Just enough to keep my 1200 mark for MFP.

With this, I've lost a little over 30 lbs. I started analyzing the output from my Withings scale and it looks like my loss is from around 20lbs of fat and 12 lbs of lean. So I'm guessing thats from under eating causing me to loose the lean.

So what I'm hearing is that I should never eat less than around 2000 calories including making sure to eat back any exercise to get back to the 2000. So in practice I would be eating 2300-2500 a day.

Sounds like a lot after only eating a net of 1200-1300 for months.

NotGoddess

2200 is the sedentary calories for your goal weight, correct? That's the number you should be looking for.

Fat2Fit way: Eat 2200 when you don't work out and eat back enough of your exercise calories when you do so you don't have a huge deficit. With a BMR of 1827 you should not have a deficit of greater than ~400 averaged over a week. They say not to eat below your BMR but they do say you can do it for a short time to jump start. In your case I would not do that, at least at first...you need to let your body know it's getting all the food it needs.

Or let MFP set your goal to 1700 and eat back all your exercise calories.

_GlaDOS_

Interesting info. I've been averaging around 1400-1500 calories intake for the last few months. I only exercise between 300-500 calories a day. Just enough to keep my 1200 mark for MFP.

With this, I've lost a little over 30 lbs. I started analyzing the output from my Withings scale and it looks like my loss is from around 20lbs of fat and 12 lbs of lean. So I'm guessing thats from under eating causing me to loose the lean.

So what I'm hearing is that I should never eat less than around 2000 calories including making sure to eat back any exercise to get back to the 2000. So in practice I would be eating 2300-2500 a day.

Sounds like a lot after only eating a net of 1200-1300 for months.

How many pounds do you have MFP set for you to lose? If I set mine at 2 lbs to lose each week, then it tells me to net 1200 calories, but I found it was actually stalling my weight loss because that is lower than my BMR, so I reset my goal to around 1.2 lbs per week, and now I am to net 1600 per day. I would try and see what it sets your goals to and gradually work up to that number. I went to 1350, then 1500, then now to 1600. I am still trying to see how the weight loss goes to see if I need to increase that, so it may be that you’ll just have to adjust as you go.

email68

Interesting. I have mine set to 2lbs a week as well. And MFP also has set me to 1200. I'll adjust mine up a bit and see what happens. Thanks for the info everyone.