Should I be increasing my calories?

aliceg94

I was looking at this thread (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/512956-tdee-what-is-it-and-why-you-should-not-eat-below-your-bmr) and I calculated my BMR and TDEE and it came out as the following.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) = 1621
Daily calories to maintain weight (TDEE) = 1945

To lose weight it calculated that I should be eating 1556 calories a day. However I'm currently on 1300 calories a day and I'm working out 1-2 times a week (cardio) as well as doing various other light exercises (e.g. walking). Am I eating too few calories and should I be increasing the amount I eat? I feel like 1500's a big number but I don't want to be sabotaging my weight loss by eating too little.
Thanks.

Zichu

By the looks of it, you aren't looking to lose a huge amount of weight, so you should take this slow and only lose a small amount each week. Like 0.5lb or 1lb at the most. So if your TDEE is 1945, you would have to eat around 1695 calories to lose 0.5lb a week.

For some people, eating a small amount works for them, but you need to try different methods out and find what works for you. So you could try eating at almost 1700 calories for a few weeks and see how it goes, if you are putting on weight at that rate, try lowering it a bit more.


I found it easier to eat my Sedentary calories and manually input my exercise calories in and eat them back because there was no way of knowing what I could be doing during that week.