I Had My BMR Tested - It's 1032 Calories

CATindeeHAT

Well yeah that's good, I'm hoping most of us shower. :bigsmile: I do think it's an interesting number to have. I'd get mine if someone wanted to pay for it. I'm pretty active though....running after kids and working out. I'm wondering how much it would actually help me to know. And as I said before I think you learn a lot from tracking calories and seeing what happens. For example I set mfp up to lose 1 pound a week but averaged 2 pounds a week so now I'm playing with my calorie number. I'm trying to focus on losing slow so that I don't lose too much muscle.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

That's an AWESOME goal! For me though I LITERALLY sit on my butt all day long. I feel as if there should be a setting to calibrate how many children you have into the weight-loss equation. Sometimes just watching them run around burns a gazillion calories

love4fitnesslove4food_wechange

Well it's BMR...not TDEE...HUGE DIFFERENCE..my BMR is about 1100 calories or so. I figure 1300 net calories for maintenance is about right.

Mama_Jag

Makes sense to me. I tested at 1498, online calcs give me 1661. Not a huge difference, but enough!

runbyme

Very interesting and thank you for sharing. My only question would be is did they take into consideration getting you up every 4 hours to walk on the treadmill? If they had let you alone and let you sleep, I would think it would be easier to calculate your BRM. With waking you up and making you walk, you would think that would throw your count off a little!

Thanks again for posting!

NeuroticVirgo

BMR is the amount of calories I would need to survive while in a coma.

But the BMR that MFP uses is got some activity figured into it doesn't it? Even the sedentary setting isn't assuming coma is it?

This is what I thought to. That the BMR that MFP is using has some activity in it, assuming that we aren't sleeping 24/7. I think its adding in an average of what a person might burn doing small normal activities like cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping etc.

geekyjock76

This is why I tell people to establish what their maintenance calorie needs are prior to beginning a fat loss intervention. Without knowing a baseline figure, you have no reasonable manner in which to choose a proper deficit. There is too much variation within the population as a whole to put faith entirely into prediction equations.

Justkeepswimmin

I had my tested at a university, and it again tok all day, but to their shock my BMR was 2346, I am 5ft 2 inch

Lucky.

CATindeeHAT

Well it's BMR...not TDEE...HUGE DIFFERENCE..my BMR is about 1100 calories or so. I figure 1300 net calories for maintenance is about right.

Being that I sit on my butt all day (and probably take about 100 steps TOPS a day) it does turn out to be a pretty big deal.

I agree, anywhere between 1200-1300 sounds good

CATindeeHAT

This is why I tell people to establish what their maintenance calorie needs are prior to beginning a fat loss intervention. Without knowing a baseline figure, you have no reasonable manner in which to choose a proper deficit. There is too much variation within the population as a whole to put faith entirely into prediction equations.

THIS ^^^

deannarey13

That's really interesting. I had no idea there was even a test to measure the amount of calories one needs to consume to be healthy/alive.

Does it mean, then, that that's the amount of calories one can consume while living a somewhat active lifestyle? Like in order to burn fat you would need to go lower than 1032 calories? Or is the BMR the amount of calories one can consume to maintain weight while sedentary?

BMR is the amount of calories I would need to survive while in a coma.

Exactly. Which means that you likely need more than 1200 per day, even if you aren't very active. Just sitting in a chair all day, typing away on a computer burns more than 100 calories per day. If you exercise, your caloric needs are even greater.

CATindeeHAT

Very interesting and thank you for sharing. My only question would be is did they take into consideration getting you up every 4 hours to walk on the treadmill? If they had let you alone and let you sleep, I would think it would be easier to calculate your BRM. With waking you up and making you walk, you would think that would throw your count off a little!

Thanks again for posting!

That's why they tested me right when I woke up and again right before I went to sleep again, after walking on the treadmill. They did this several times to get an average in an attempt to rule out any extremes.

yarwell

Don't TDEE calculators use BMR as a starting point? If the starting point is incorrect, then it seems logical that the end point would also.

Yes indeed, the BMR estimate / correlation is then multiplied by a factor to account for activity, eating, etc.

deannarey13

Well it's BMR...not TDEE...HUGE DIFFERENCE..my BMR is about 1100 calories or so. I figure 1300 net calories for maintenance is about right.

Like you said, the difference between BMR and TDEE CAN be huge. Much more than 200 calories. This does also depend on how physically active you are on a daily basis, but even sedentary people have a caloric difference of more than 200.

Lindsay_N

Thanks for sharing, good info.

mulderpf

Dont forget that BMR is: Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the minimum amount of energy required for the functioning of vital organs, such as the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, muscles and digestive organs.

This is what they would give you if you were in a coma to survive. This does not account for even simply moving around while awake, or food digestion. That is why it is also important to know your TDEE.

This site tells you more about the test.
http://www.mun.ca/hkr/ahs/BMR.php

Yes it is good to know what your BMR is, but you need to take in more than that in order for your body to function normally.

+1

The initial post sort of make it sound like BMR is "maintenance calories" - which it's not. It's maintenance calories if you were to be in a coma. People tend to get very confused between BMR and TDEE or use BMR to justify ridiculously low calorie diets. You need energy to burn energy!!

love4fitnesslove4food_wechange

Well it's BMR...not TDEE...HUGE DIFFERENCE..my BMR is about 1100 calories or so. I figure 1300 net calories for maintenance is about right.

Like you said, the difference between BMR and TDEE CAN be huge. Much more than 200 calories. This does also depend on how physically active you are on a daily basis, but even sedentary people have a caloric difference of more than 200.

1300 NET calories--not TDEE. My caloric difference between my BMR and TDEE is about 1000 calories.

CATindeeHAT

Exactly. Which means that you likely need more than 1200 per day, even if you aren't very active. Just sitting in a chair all day, typing away on a computer burns more than 100 calories per day. If you exercise, your caloric needs are even greater.

This completely depends on the person. I now believe that simple overestimations such as these are a huge part of why losing weight is difficult for so many people.

Scarlett_S

Hmm it actually makes perfect sense. of course your BMR is going to be 1032. BMR represents your body's energy consumption if you were just to lie down and do nothing (or in this case, the above BMR you got from the test represents what what you were doing during that test) basically the energy your body with its organs etc needs to live. TDEE is the energy your body needs when you do regular activities everyday (and that differs from person to person) . To lose weight, from my understanding is to cut the intake from your TDEE NOT your BMR. Say, if your TDEE is an average of 2100, then losing weight would mean about 1800 or so depending on how much you want to lose in a specified period. I hope this clears up the confusion.

THIS!! BMR and TDEE is not the same......

Oh I ABSOLUTELY AGREE!!

But with my BMR being so low, it's very easy to overestimate my needs.

Great information. thank you for posting your experience. I've been in a plateau for four months and can't lose my last fifteen pounds, even with 6x a week workouts, 2 a days, eating more, eating less, 200 grams of protein, yada yada yada. I shoot for 1500 calories a day or an average of that over the week and I usually go over a bit and I am maintaining on that. I have hesitated to drop down to 1200 with the amount of working out I do but its a consideration. I wonder how much the body fat percentage plays into it? I had mine done a few months ago and its at 22%, compared to 35% when I started.

CATindeeHAT

The initial post sort of make it sound like BMR is "maintenance calories" - which it's not. It's maintenance calories if you were to be in a coma. People tend to get very confused between BMR and TDEE or use BMR to justify ridiculously low calorie diets. You need energy to burn energy!!

Agreed. But I don't need 1700 calories of energy (which I have been eating faithfully now for about 2 months and have gotten nowhere).

love4fitnesslove4food_wechange

The initial post sort of make it sound like BMR is "maintenance calories" - which it's not. It's maintenance calories if you were to be in a coma. People tend to get very confused between BMR and TDEE or use BMR to justify ridiculously low calorie diets. You need energy to burn energy!!

Agreed. But I don't need 1700 calories of energy (which I have been eating faithfully now for about 2 months and have gotten nowhere).

If you've gotten absolutely nowhere then you seem to have found your maintenance. a 15% cut from 1700 would suffice for slow, healthy weight loss. ~1450 calories a day.