BMR--Do I Need All Those Calories?

fabulis1

Good morning everyone.

I just calculated my BMR and it was a bit over 1800 calories per day. But I'm am starting a 1400 calorie per day diet.

Is this ok or am i lowering my calories too much? The statement "you need this many calories to stay alive" concerned me that I am doing something wrong....

Thanks!

UponThisRock

1800 is probably your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), which is your BMR + daily activity

Mike523

1800 is probably your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), which is your BMR + daily activity

What criteria did you use to come up with that assumption?

Fabulis1, you probably don't want to eat under your BMR for an extended period of time.

ekz13

This is kind of what I'm doing (again) and from my OPINION I can offer this..

- what was the weight that you put in? was it the weight you are now, or the weight you want to be? reason I'm asking is this.. for example, what you are now (say 200) needs 2000/day to maintain min.. but the weight you want to be (150) needs say 1500 and you take in 1400/day, you are technically only cutting 100 less than the weight you wanted to be..

I normally do this too, HOWEVER.. based off this run and my past one, couple things to be aware of..

- this is somewhat radical (depending on the cut in cals) and could be very bad for you
- you'll probably lose muscle first when your body starts feeding on itself (which isn't good)
- be flexible.. you are cutting out a majority of what your used to eating. there are some days you will be ready to eat your arm off, have an extra snack or additional cals, it won't kill you, closely monitor how you "feel" you may need a bit more one day than others.
- exercise, make sure you eat those or at least almost all of those back, because your eating so little if your taking in 1400, but burn 1000 working out that means you'll only have eaten 400 for the entire day, and that's not good.

anyway... just my thoughts, not sure if they are good, bad, indifferent, but they work for me, you might be different, or someone will have something better to offer you.

fabulis1

very good advice EkZ13.

I used the calculators on this site to find out how many calories a day I should be consuming based on current weight (257) and goal weight of 175 and muscular. Right now light activity for the next couple of weeks getting back into weight lifting and adding some cardio to burn fat. Once I've established the habit of 4:30 am workouts, I'll add more in the AM and add in PM workouts as well.

I also used this sites BMR calculator to find out how many calories I need in a day.

It's all confusing! I know it's calories in and out, but how many should be my goal?

Diggy2011

Mines 1305 thats what I eat even thou MFP says eat 1200 cos I'm short and have a about a stone to lose

olivia3263

When you have more to lose, it's ok to eat less than your bmr because your body will feed off the extra fat you have stored. When you have less body fat %, your body will panic if it doesn't get enough calories (at least bmr) and will fight the weight loss initially. Keep eating what MFP suggests - when you get to a healthy bmi then you'll have to be more aware of that bmr number.