Figuring out calories to eat and how active am I really.

monkeygirl351

Hi all,
I'm new to this and just started figuring this out. I want to get healthier and lose about 20 pounds in the end. I have set my goal to 10 pounds for now as it seems extremely hard for me to lose weight as I get older, (i am 33 yo female) . Anyways I have done my calculations as sedentary and lightly active but not sure which to choose. I have a desk job, but I walk my dog for 60 minutes every day, I do housework (vacumn, dishes, make bed and feed and clean cages for all my pets everyday.) I have also added jog/ power walking for 30-40 minutes 3-4 days a week. My bmr is 1650 and I would guess it is on the lower side as I have a slow metabolism. My tdee I've estimated at 2200 - 15 percent to be 1870 calories at lightly active. For sedentary my tdee is 1920 - 15 percent to be 1632 calories. Which should I set my goal calories to be on MFP based on the activities I do? Also do I eat the calories back from exercise or let the net calories stay at my bmr? So confused! I just don't want to gain anymore weight and eat more than I should but I also don't want to eat too little either.

wonderkitten711

I would try 1870 as a goal for a couple of months and see what happens. Based on your activity description, lightly active sounds right, especially as you're adding the workouts. And using this method of TDEE-15%, you do NOT eat back exercise calories as they're already figured in to the calorie calculation. After a couple of months, if you're losing too fast (with 10-20 pounds to lose, I'd say anything faster than 1lb/week is probably a bit too rapid), up your calories by 100-200 a day, and if you're not losing at all, cut a hundred or so and try that new number for a couple of months.