Confused about BMR and TDEE

perfect10isha

I'm 5'6" and as of today weight 142, 32 year old female. So the past 3 weeks I had been stuck at 144 lbs. I stopped working out three weeks due to returning to work from maternity leave and adjusting to my new schedule. I'm confused because I've been eating about 1550 calories a day for the past 3 weeks and the scale didn't move. The last couple days and last weekend I had high calorie days, probably closer to 1700-2000 calories a day. And today I step on the scale and I'm 2 lbs lighter. If I"m eating between my BMR and TDEE (1441-1921) I should have been losing the last three weeks right? I guess my question is if my recent spike in calories resulted in weight loss could I be eating too few calories?? Maybe I've underestimated how active I am, I chose lightly active, but between walking all over my college campus and running after two kids, is it possible I need to simply up my calories?

I thought I had it all figured out once I started reading up on BMR and TDEE on MFP but now I'm just not sure... thoughts anyone??

perfect10isha

bump... anyone??

Gloria67648

I've used fitnessfrog to figure out tdee and fat2fit to figure out bmr. I upped my calories so as not to eat below my bmr. I really think that eating too few calories slows weight loss. I know as a mom that getting enough sleep is a challenge especially after you go back to work. Play with your numbers. Good luck

yarwell

If I"m eating between my BMR and TDEE (1441-1921) I should have been losing the last three weeks right?

yes you should, but the BMR is only an estimate in the first place and the 33% factor for activity level to your TDEE may not be spot on either.

The difference between 1800 and 1921 for example is only 6.7%.