basal metabolic rate?

blueviolet20

I just checked out what my basal metabolic rate is or should be and it's at 1600 calories, roughly. My calorie recommendation before exercise is 1530 calories, according to MFP. Should I bump up my calories slightly so I'm over my BMR, or just stick with my recommendation?

bethvandenberg

bump them up. I had to learn the hard way.

starrlight23

Why would you bump them up? Someone please explain

cocoavery20

Don't bump it up at all. What you take in and burn does work as simple math as it comes. You get out what you give in. You want fat out don't give in a lot.

DopeItUp

I'm confused, why do you think you need to bump the calories up? You didn't include any of the relevant info such as how much you want to lose, what your activity level is, etc so there's no way anyone can answer that.

What MFP does is:

BMR x activity level - desired calorie deficit == daily goal. Your desired calorie deficit depends on how much you want to lose. 250 deficit for .5lbs a week, 500 deficit for 1lb a week, etc... Simple.

My advice is to just leave it alone if you're not familiar with how it works.

blueviolet20

I'm confused, why do you think you need to bump the calories up? You didn't include any of the relevant info such as how much you want to lose, what your activity level is, etc so there's no way anyone can answer that.

What MFP does is:

BMR x activity level - desired calorie deficit == daily goal. Your desired calorie deficit depends on how much you want to lose. 250 deficit for .5lbs a week, 500 deficit for 1lb a week, etc... Simple.

My advice is to just leave it alone if you're not familiar with how it works.

I didn't think that what I wanted to lose or my activity level had anything to do with my basal metabolic rate, but I am looking to lose about 50 lbs, and I'm lightly active. Going off of the weight I just weighed myself at, I'm now at 177...therefore my BMR by most standard calculations would be at 1613. Going off of my activity level, my maintainance would be 2218, and if I'm wanting to lose about 1 pound a week, my calorie intake would be 1718. So...that comes out to be about 100 calories over my BMR. When I plug in the numbers to MFP, I get 1580 calories. Now...if I were be a sedentary level, that puts me at 1935 for maintainance, and 1435 for weight loss. This matches up more with MFP. Now, it could be that the calculations could be off, considering my body composition, but I'm not sure how most standard calculations would account for this, or even know to account for it. In any case...my issues with weight loss are more than likely poor habits than miscalculations in calorie intake needed...especially right now because my schedule is all messed up. But, I have looked into this. I understand how to crunch the numbers and make weight loss very simple on paper. But, weight loss is typically not as simple as numbers on a page, is it? I have been told that it is not wise to dip below your BMR in weight loss efforts because it can be counterproductive, in that your body no longer has the nutrition it needs to simply run in a day. It would make sense that your body would burn fat in order to get that nutrition. But, sometimes, the body just does silly things. Like hold on to the calories it does have for dear life by dropping your metabolism. I mean...it does take a while for your body to catch on to a lower calorie intake, so for a while, a person can get away with very small amounts of food and actually lose weight (I'm not just talking about dipping below the BMR a little bit either, I'm also talking about the below 1200 to barely sustaining life amount of food). And I've been then done that....I was anorexic for a time until I was saved by the hospital that I got to live in for 2 months. But once your body and mind start to bounce back after that, you're in for a world of hurt. It's been two years since my lowest point and weight, and I have pretty much about doubled in weight, going from 95 to 177 pounds. The reason for this is after a long period of deprivation, the body and mind just naturally crave food...and sometimes, a lot of it. And these cravings continue hardcore even when you've hit a healthy weight...and surpassed it. And it is hard to say no when all of you is screaming 'Food!' But, I digress. The main point I'm trying to get at is that I want to lose weight in the most healthy weight possible, not through deprivation as I did before, because honestly, that was hell and look where it's gotten me. So, if not going below my BMR is the most healthy way, that's what I want to do. My question was moreso, is it healthy to dip below the BMR? I'm concerned about losing weight, but not the extent that I'm willing to hurt myself trying to accomplish it. Thank you for your input. I apologize if this post comes across as snippy. That is not my intent.

*edit* The BMR calculator I was using was the Harris Benedict Equation, not the Mifflin-St. Jeor's Equation that MFP uses. This accounts for the differences. And this one does take into account your activity level and your current calorie intake. So, I apologize that I was using and referencing a different system. I had forgotten that MFP has it's own BMR calculator.