Which BMR do I look at?

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Meraid
Meraid Posts: 148 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I was just trying out http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/ and got confused. I know my body fat % (39% sadly) and on there it tells me without body fat % my bmr is 1610 (Okay I knew this) But then with the Katch-McArdle formula using my %, my bmr is 1391.
(Edit: the fit2radio site says my body fat% is 24%-27% but in my bio class the scale said 39%. I tmight be wrong but if I go with fit2radio's info, my bmr is about the same either way. 1624.)

Which number should I be looking at? (This is sort of related to TDEE and I know how you need to subtract 20% of it but at 1600 I will only lose 1.2lbs/week and I want to make that 1.5lbs/week but I can't do that with a bmr of 1600.) Is the Katch McArdle number more accurate?

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  • Meraid
    Meraid Posts: 148 Member
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    Sorry to bump and double post but yet another site is telling me 41%. Umm.
  • hippietofugirl
    hippietofugirl Posts: 430
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    I never use those online calculators for body fat percentage because they are usually off. I would say use the BMR that doesn't need your body fat percentage to calculate it.
  • hippietofugirl
    hippietofugirl Posts: 430
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    And I just re-read part of your post and honestly I tried doing the 20% cut from TDEE and never eating below my BMR etc. and it didn't work well enough for me, so my suggestion to you is if you want to lose 1.5lbs per week, just eat the amount that MFP tells you to at a 1.5lb/week loss and eat back your exercise calories if you want.
  • Meraid
    Meraid Posts: 148 Member
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    My BMR is a little bit below the 20% cut and ideally I would lose 2lbs a week but I've been hearing from so many people that eating below your BMR is a bad idea xD Although it seems like you've lost a lot. And you're right, because everyone's body works differently so I guess I'll try eating my BMR and below and above and see what ends up working best! :D
  • mywayroche
    mywayroche Posts: 218 Member
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    Just use trial and error. Use MFP, if you lose too fast then eat more, if you lose too slowly then eat less. So many people get tied up with the ESTIMATIONS made that they forget the basics
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    All BMR calcs are predictions, 70% or less of people fall within 10% of the prediction (either way).

    For larger people Katch-McArdle seems more logical to me, fat doesn't use a lot of energy whereas muscle does, so a calculation that uses %fat to get to lean body mass chimes with me.

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