Confused about net calories, BMR.. stuff

bearxfoo

So I thought I understood BMR, net calories but...

According to MFP, my BMR is at 1,404. (I've used other online calculators that had me much higher, but never have I seen it lower)

But my calorie intake for the day is set at 1,200, without exercise.

How can I loose weight if I'm continually ending under my BMR, which, wouldn't that cause my body to retain its weight, because I'm not even giving it enough to maintain its basic functions, like my organs and cell growth?

I don't think I've had many days where I've ever netted 1,200. I'm so confused.

Lukazetta

Eat above your BMR!

Find your TDEE too, the total number of calories that your body expends in 24 hours, including all activities.

For body fat % loss, people aim around 15-20% under their TDEE and set macros to 30% fats/30% protein.

This will also help you:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/538381-in-place-of-a-road-map

BLy82

BMR is the basic number of calories required to get you through the day if you do absolutely nothing other than breathe and maintain life, correct.

What you're forgetting is that your body is entirely capable of running its basic functions making use of the body fat calories it is holding in storage. In fact, any time that you're losing weight, you are almost certainly eating fewer calories than your body is using up, and supplementing it from fat storage.

As far as I know, no one has done any definitive research to show that BMR calories are somehow special and can not be maintained from fat stores, while other calorie use can.

Look at it this way, people on The Biggest Loser are typically assigned to eat sub-BMR calorie levels as part of their weight loss efforts, and they drop weight at a far larger rate than most of us ever will. Now, I don't advocate trying to match their results, there are reasons that it would be a bad idea to do it. I'm just offering it as a clear counter-example to the idea that decent weight loss is not possible at sub-BMR calories.

In a similar way, people who get gastric bypass drop to sub-BMR calories. People who use HCG diets do so, people who use other medically supervised diets do so (Medifast runs about 800 per day or so). They lose weight just fine.

There are some valid arguments in favor of the idea that losing weight more slowly (and therefore eating at a higher calorie level) is more healthful and sustainable, but it is absolutely possible to lose weight eating at levels below your BMR.

Lukazetta

There are some valid arguments in favor of the idea that losing weight more slowly (and therefore eating at a higher calorie level) is more healthful and sustainable, but it is absolutely possible to lose weight eating at levels below your BMR.

In short, yes you can eat under your BMR and starve yourself.

However, if you want to maintain the lean muscle mass you already have, there is NO WAY you can do it by eating under your BMR while losing weight.

To maintain muscle mass while cutting body fat %, you have to do some strength training and cardio while feeding yourself with enough nutrients to recover (with calories above your daily BMR).

So if you still want to have a higher body fat % but at a lower weight, I say go for it and eat under your BMR.

gemiwing

So I thought I understood BMR, net calories but...

According to MFP, my BMR is at 1,404. (I've used other online calculators that had me much higher, but never have I seen it lower)

But my calorie intake for the day is set at 1,200, without exercise.

How can I loose weight if I'm continually ending under my BMR, which, wouldn't that cause my body to retain its weight, because I'm not even giving it enough to maintain its basic functions, like my organs and cell growth?

I don't think I've had many days where I've ever netted 1,200. I'm so confused.

If you haven't yet- go change your settings to something other than sedentary and set your weight loss for less than a pound a week. The number MFP gives you should increase. If not you can manually enter it in your goals.

You are right to not want to eat under your BMR.

BLy82

There are some valid arguments in favor of the idea that losing weight more slowly (and therefore eating at a higher calorie level) is more healthful and sustainable, but it is absolutely possible to lose weight eating at levels below your BMR.

In short, yes you can eat under your BMR and starve yourself.

However, if you want to maintain the lean muscle mass you already have, there is NO WAY you can do it by eating under your BMR and losing weight.

To maintain muscle mass while cutting body fat %, you have to do some strength training and cardio while feeding yourself with enough nutrients to recover.

So if you still want to have a higher body fat % but at a lower weight, I say go for it and eat under your BMR.

Actually, no. That's not a valid paraphrasing of what I said at all.

To my understanding, there are no scientific studies and consensus clearly demonstrating that maintaining lean body mass during fat loss is specifically tied to the BMR calorie requirement.

To say that eating more calories has a tendency to protect your lean mass is true. However, this would presumably remain true all the way up to the point where you have only a 50 calorie per day deficit. I have never seen anything that clearly demonstrated that BMR calorie requirements represent a magic tipping point where the retention of lean mass is suddenly and dramatically impacted.

You do need to eat enough to permit muscle repair and recovery, but I have yet to see anything that definitively indicates that 'enough' is defined as equal to BMR requirements.

bearxfoo

I was under the impression that when you start to eat under your BMR, your body will convert muscle first to energy.

And, people who are on those TV shows tend to have extreme amounts of weight they need to lose, therefor calling for a more "extreme" approach to losing, no?

According to that link, (http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools) my BMR is 2050.
Adding 20% as the post suggest for my TDEE is an insane amount of food I don't even think I can eat if I wanted to.

WHAT DO I EAT? lmfao

busymom50

thank you for the info--I wondered about this subject a lot and this answered my question.

bearxfoo

I thought about changing my goals but I'm confused, because I do sadly have a desk job + school, so while I may walk around on campus a lot, I'm also sitting in a class room for an hour and a half to 3 hours at a time.

So would I really want to change it from sedentary? I DO try and exercise EVERY day, whether it's the gym, biking outside, treadmill in the basement or just going for a walk outside after dinner.

Lukazetta

There are some valid arguments in favor of the idea that losing weight more slowly (and therefore eating at a higher calorie level) is more healthful and sustainable, but it is absolutely possible to lose weight eating at levels below your BMR.

In short, yes you can eat under your BMR and starve yourself.

However, if you want to maintain the lean muscle mass you already have, there is NO WAY you can do it by eating under your BMR and losing weight.

To maintain muscle mass while cutting body fat %, you have to do some strength training and cardio while feeding yourself with enough nutrients to recover.

So if you still want to have a higher body fat % but at a lower weight, I say go for it and eat under your BMR.

Actually, no. That's not a valid paraphrasing of what I said at all.

To my understanding, there are no scientific studies and consensus clearly demonstrating that maintaining lean body mass during fat loss is specifically tied to the BMR calorie requirement.

To say that eating more calories has a tendency to protect your lean mass is true. However, this would presumably remain true all the way up to the point where you have only a 50 calorie per day deficit. I have never seen anything that clearly demonstrated that BMR calorie requirements represent a magic tipping point where the retention of lean mass is suddenly and dramatically impacted.

You do need to eat enough to permit muscle repair and recovery, but I have yet to see anything that definitively indicates that 'enough' is defined as equal to BMR requirements.

You're right, there is no study to that definitively puts BMR as the threshold for lean muscle loss.

But BMR is set up based on muscle mass - so the more lean muscle mass you have, the higher your BMR will be . Also, keep in mind that your BMR is nothing but an estimate (different for everyone) basted on your gender/age/height/weight...etc.

So ultimately, OP has to decide what's more healthy. Feeding herself enough nutrients required (estimated) for her body to recover or to eat under that calorie range while losing weight and sacrifice lean muscle mass.

BLy82

I was under the impression that when you start to eat under your BMR, your body will convert muscle first to energy.

And, people who are on those TV shows tend to have extreme amounts of weight they need to lose, therefor calling for a more "extreme" approach to losing, no?

According to that link, (http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools) my BMR is 2050.
Adding 20% as the post suggest for my TDEE is an insane amount of food I don't even think I can eat if I wanted to.

WHAT DO I EAT? lmfao

Strictly speaking, each pound of fat has a theoretical maximum number of calories that it can release and that the body can use under optimal conditions. This is a big part of why it's considered to be 'safe' to lose larger amounts of fat per day when you have a very large amount of fat from which the calories can be drawn. (There are people who actually go so far as to do things like calculate their maximum theoretical weekly fat loss to use as one of the factors they take into account when deciding how much they should eat, can't say that I remember what the number was off of the top of my head, though).

I've never seen any study at all that demonstrated that your body preferentially burns muscle at sub-BMR intake as opposed to above-BMR intake. By which I mean, if your BMR is 1650, I've never seen anything demonstrating that muscle becomes the preferred fuel if your intake is 1630 as opposed to when your intake is 1670.

There is potential for protein to be used as fuel (or for muscle repair in non-critical places to be ignored in an effort to keep repairs up in places like your heart). This is why it is often recommended that people on a reduced-calorie diet take in a higher % of their calories as protein than a person who is eating around their maintenance level.

There is typically definitely a trade-off being made between the pace of weight loss, and the risk of losing lean mass as a portion of the weight loss. (There are also definitely ways to mitigate this, and on relatively rare occasions people have actually managed to simultaneously lose weight and increase lean mass.) It doesn't necessarily follow that BMR is clearly a magic number where the behavior of the body in weight loss changes dramatically.

gemiwing

I thought about changing my goals but I'm confused, because I do sadly have a desk job + school, so while I may walk around on campus a lot, I'm also sitting in a class room for an hour and a half to 3 hours at a time.

So would I really want to change it from sedentary? I DO try and exercise EVERY day, whether it's the gym, biking outside, treadmill in the basement or just going for a walk outside after dinner.

Sedentary= non-active wheelchair user or bedrest. Not working, walking to class, walking to get food, walking to the car, sitting in class, walking back to the car, cooking dinner etc- it adds up.

Another option is to figure out your TDEE and take twenty percent off of that and enter that as your daily goal and ignore exercise cals.

BLy82

You're right, there is no study to that definitively puts BMR as the threshold for lean muscle loss.

But BMR is set up based on muscle mass - so the more lean muscle mass you have, the higher your BMR will be . Also, keep in mind that your BMR is nothing but an estimate (different for everyone) basted on your gender/age/height/weight...etc.

So ultimately, OP has to decide what's more healthy. Feeding herself enough nutrients required (estimated) for her body to recover or to eat under that calorie range while losing weight and sacrifice lean muscle mass.

You're mistaken. BMR is estimated partly based on assumptions about lean mass and what the body needs to support itself, but lean mass is most definitely not the sole determining factor in establishing your BMR. The numbers produced by the BMR calculators that you can find online actually are an estimate. People who really feel strongly about knowing their actual BMR can arrange for testing that should return a very nearly exactly correct number.

It is incorrect to assume that consuming adequate nutrients is necessarily going to happen better at one calorie count than another. It is not at all, emphasis on NOT AT ALL, uncommon for people who consume far too many calories to be simultaneously malnourished because the quality of the calories that they consume is so poor. Assuming that the general quality of a diet will remain stable while moving from say... 1200 to 1800 calories (not an assumption you can necessarily get away with making in the real world, but one I'm making for the sake of argument), there is of course going to be a higher total nutrient intake at 1800 than at 1200.

However, once again, absolutely nothing has been provided to demonstrate that the estimated BMR of an individual is really the correct number of calories to consume in order to avoid malnutrition.

For example, people who make use of CRON for health reasons (Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition) take in fewer calories than the average person (often slashed by 25% or so). If we were to actually compare their nutritional intake with the average person who is consuming a more average number of calories, we would probably find that the people under the calorie restricted regime had a better nutrient intake.

You can absolutely give someone valid advice that, for example, adequately nourishing yourself on 1200 calories a day is extremely tricky and should probably not be attempted for any length of time by the average person. The average person probably actually is better off in the long term eating a few hundred more calories per day on average. That still, however, does not establish BMR as a special required number or make it reasonable to give someone the impression that there is a firm reason to believe that it is.

BLy82

I thought about changing my goals but I'm confused, because I do sadly have a desk job + school, so while I may walk around on campus a lot, I'm also sitting in a class room for an hour and a half to 3 hours at a time.

So would I really want to change it from sedentary? I DO try and exercise EVERY day, whether it's the gym, biking outside, treadmill in the basement or just going for a walk outside after dinner.

Sedentary= non-active wheelchair user or bedrest. Not working, walking to class, walking to get food, walking to the car, sitting in class, walking back to the car, cooking dinner etc- it adds up.

Another option is to figure out your TDEE and take twenty percent off of that and enter that as your daily goal and ignore exercise cals.

Sedentary means a person who does little to no exercise and does not have an active occupation. It could very well include things like spending 8-10 hours a day working at a desk job. That's why it's roughly 1.2 x BMR. It gets you an extra 20% to cover what little moving around you do.

Lots of people actually fall into the sedentary range, or prefer to use the sedentary range and then calculate their exercise separately rather than relying on a multiplier against BMR.

gemiwing

Sedentary means a person who does little to no exercise and does not have an active occupation. It could very well include things like spending 8-10 hours a day working at a desk job. That's why it's roughly 1.2 x BMR. It gets you an extra 20% to cover what little moving around you do.

Lots of people actually fall into the sedentary range, or prefer to use the sedentary range and then calculate their exercise separately rather than relying on a multiplier against BMR.

And here we disagree

tjones0927

I found this to be helpful....just playing around with numbers bettered my understanding.

http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-goal.php

Lukazetta

BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate or RMR Resting Metabolic Rate.
If you were in a coma and in the hospital, the doctors would feed you your BMR in calories.
This ensures you have enough nutrients for vital organs to function.
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/science-homework-help/107443-ten-essential-organs-in-the-human-body/
This is just a small list of vital organs in the human body.
Eating at BMR and staying in bed should maintain things as long as you do nothing at all.
Most people who start using MFP dont really understand the importance of this BMR number.
They jump in with both feet thinking "I'm going to lose soooooo much weight and be fantastic!"
What they dont understand is by not eating back calories from working out, they are netting below BMR.
The only people who should be eating below BMR are folks who have had Gastric Bypass, 500-700 cals/day, or people who are morbidly obese and only for an extremely short time and only prescribed by their "Nutritionist".

From:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/538381-in-place-of-a-road-map

bearxfoo

I'm confused about sedentary now... lmao why is weight loss so confusing!

I bounce back and forth between having a "sedentary" lifestyle, especially if I'm making time every day TO be active at some point, like working out at the gym, or biking, etc.

Are you still "sedentary" even if you're going over an hour, perhaps a few hours (2 to 4) a day, of exercise?

Lukazetta

I'm confused about sedentary now... lmao why is weight loss so confusing!

I bounce back and forth between having a "sedentary" lifestyle, especially if I'm making time every day TO be active at some point, like working out at the gym, or biking, etc.

Are you still "sedentary" even if you're going over an hour, perhaps a few hours (2 to 4) a day, of exercise?

I think you'd fall into the moderate lifestyle if you exercise at least 3-4 days a week. You just have to make sure if you're eating in that TDEE range, you don't skip out on the workouts...otherwise just set it up as sedentary and work up by adding calories with every workout.

bearxfoo

I'm confused about sedentary now... lmao why is weight loss so confusing!

I bounce back and forth between having a "sedentary" lifestyle, especially if I'm making time every day TO be active at some point, like working out at the gym, or biking, etc.

Are you still "sedentary" even if you're going over an hour, perhaps a few hours (2 to 4) a day, of exercise?

I think you'd fall into the moderate lifestyle if you exercise at least 3-4 days a week. You just have to make sure if you're eating in that TDEE range, you don't skip out on the workouts...otherwise just set it up as sedentary and work up by adding calories with every workout.

I exercise 5 days at week, but more often then not I'm exercising 7 days a week.

Lukazetta

I'm confused about sedentary now... lmao why is weight loss so confusing!

I bounce back and forth between having a "sedentary" lifestyle, especially if I'm making time every day TO be active at some point, like working out at the gym, or biking, etc.

Are you still "sedentary" even if you're going over an hour, perhaps a few hours (2 to 4) a day, of exercise?

I think you'd fall into the moderate lifestyle if you exercise at least 3-4 days a week. You just have to make sure if you're eating in that TDEE range, you don't skip out on the workouts...otherwise just set it up as sedentary and work up by adding calories with every workout.

I exercise 5 days at week, but more often then not I'm exercising 7 days a week.

You're def not a sedentary.

You can go here and look up your TDEE: http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html

It should give you an estimate based on your activity/exercise level.
The estimate is the amount of maintenance calories you need every day. To cut body fat %, most people eat 15-25% under that calorie range with 30% fat and 30% protein set as their macros.