Seeking feedback on calorie goal math, BMR and

orkilatrish

I am trying to figure out what my calorie intake ought to be, so I've read through a bunch of the forum posts and come up with the following application of the theories I've read. I would love some feedback from anyone who knows more about this than I do though!

So to start, I am female, 5ft. 4in. and currently 217.8 lbs and 27 years old. My goal is to be at or below 148 in a year and a half in time for my wedding (for context, this goal number would put me in the healthy BMI range for the first time in years and isn't just a random number). This is a goal of about a 70 lb loss.

I understand a lb of body fat is about 3500 calories,
which means a 500 calorie deficit/day would yield 1lb weight loss per week
and a deficit of 750 cals/day or 5250/week would yield 1.5 lbs lost per week.

At this current weight, my Basal Metabolic Rate (the calories burnt by simply going about my day if I didn't work out) is 1776 care of http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/. And working in my minimal normal daily activity using Harris Benedict formula my normal calorie expenditure per day (TDEE) is 2350 according to that same site.

So a 1 lb loss/week would mean netting 1850 calories/day
a 1.5 lb loss/week would mean netting 1600 calories/day

BUT I am not supposed to eat less than my BMR to prevent my body from going into starvation mode, so I ought to be eating no less that 1776 cals/day (a deficit of 574 cals/day and 4018 cals/week) which should yield a 1.12 lb weight loss per week?

Then because BMR decreases by 4.35 calories per lb lost, I would bump my calorie net goal down by this much for each lb lost, so that when I eventually hit 148 lbs, my BMR and minimum calorie net goal would be 1472?

Does this make sense and sound reasonable or just like one monstrous math word problem from high school?! Help please?!

Odiliawine

Alright, the first thing is that eating below your BMR might slow things down a little bit, but not enough to be horribly concerned with. Starvation mode take like a month of eating below 1200 calories every day, and some people do not even believe in starvation mode! I think you should start with your original math of 1600 per day and worry about changing it to suit changed weight once you actually lose the weight. Also remember that physical activity adds calories for you to devour later on that day, or even later that week if you choose to.

Take a deep breath and one day at a time. Besides, all the math is relative anyways because your body changes everyday. Just menstrating increases how many calories a day is used and no one calculates that. Also, its almost impossible to properly log EVERYTHING. These numbers are all just a hit and miss equation, so no stress

orkilatrish

aww thanks. Way to defuse my math bomb!