Beginning to think it's Calories consumed vs. NET instead

2BeHealthy4Life

Bump....will read later ...

ElizaGeorge

I've never really understood the need to eat over your BMR. I get eating your exercise calories back, but once you take exercise calories out of the equation, it seems you'd need to eat under your BMR to lose weight (gross would likely be over, but net should be under).

No, not true. Your BMR is what your body uses if you were in a coma. So you need that much just to stay alive and not have organ failure. Once you start moving around, shopping, cooking you're already burning more than your BMR. Eating under your BMR is not only unnecessary, but it's harmful to your vital functions. Why eat under what you need to survive when you can eat more food and still lose weight?

heybales

HOLY CATS.

Whoever you are, you have seriously answered any and all desperate questions I've been having lately- I've tried measuring portion sizes and 'eating back' my excersize calories, and I've gained and lost the same 7 pounds so often that I've been SO confused as to what's really been going wrong- I can do all the 'perfect' math I want with this, but it virtually means nothing because as you said, a one-size-fits-all intake formula is bound to be faulty with certain unlucky individuals... Such as me

I feel SO stupid for falling victim to this misconception for almost 5 MONTHS now! Even though I train hard, I've been gaining when I should be cutting recently and it's frustrated me beyond belief.

Would you recommend eating at or below BMR and not doing the 'net' thing at all?
Also, if I feel genuinely hungry beyond that threshold, to listen to my body to an extent and eat just enough to keep me going?
(Since that may mean I overestimated calorie intake or underestimated caloire expenditure?)

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/599949-tired-plateaud-scale-not-moving-found-my-answer

A perspective to take on this too, with this idea that perhaps your system is reacting totally differently.

You can come at this from 2 directions.

Eat very close to estimated TDEE. Which will frankly still be below what got you here in the first place. If you make a cut of say 500, and you do indeed lose 1 lb, then the estimated TDEE is dead on. Probably impossible, but still, you get the idea.
If you lose 1/2 lb for several weeks, then true TDEE is lower.
If over 1 lb, true TDEE is higher.
But at least with a full burning metabolism, you can find out and lower as needed, slowly. You already wasted 5 months, think about if you had done it this way first.

Other direction, end up eating too low. Weight loss is slower than expected. Now, is that because you need to lower it even more? Or because metabolism is slower than needed and hence weight loss slower than needed?
Do you cut more, and risk it slowing down again, possibly stalling out?
Or do you have trouble raising the level and the body reacting as it should.

It is much easier to ease down into the correct goal, than flounder below it and wonder if you are really raising or lowering correctly.

You can listen to your body - but the problem there is that exact method is what got many here in the first place, listening to body.
Also, if your metabolism slows, it gets used to less food, you can actually stop feeling hungry.
So it's great you are still hungry, beyond twinges right before next meal anyway, which may indeed happen.

One of the effects of the metabolism going up when folks finally allow it to burn fully, is feeling hungry again.

So just think about best direction to go as you read that other thread.