Very confused- BMR, TDEE,etc; How much to eat each day?

katmumn

I'm 42, 5'3", 140 lbs. I've been trying to figure out my TDEE and BMR. I tried the calculator that someone had posted earlier (scoobysworkshop) but I'm still confused. It returned a TDEE of BMR of 1356, TDEE of 2102. Keeping to 80 % of my TDEE would put me at 1681. The 1681 is considerably more than I'm currently eating which has been close to my BMR. (1200 + most of my exercise calories is usually putting me between 1350 and 1450.)

Am I one of those people that probably needs to eat more to lose? This seems a little counter-intuitive to me but I've been stuck at around the 140 mark for a while so I'm open to suggestions.

katmumn

bump. Hoping for replies.

gemrat

Struggling with the same issue. I'm scared to eat more and if I do, what macros work best!?

JamesChargerWolf

For a full month I barely lost anything. Looked into TDEE numbers and saw I wasn't even eating the bare minimum to run my organs (BMR) after exercise. Switched to doing TDEE - 20%, which is A LOT of food. Lost .8lbs the first week. My 2nd week at TDEE-20% will end Friday but I'm already down another full lb.

It is completely scary at first but I am very happy with it.

Read this.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12

Yooperm35

If you've been stuck for awhile, it won't hurt to try, right? Good luck!

katmumn

Thanks all fo rthe replies. I'm going to try setting my base calories to 1500, figuring with my exercise calories I will be close to the 1680 80% of TDEE mark.

I'm hoping this works. I'm trying to lose at least 10 lbs, not just for the weight loss , but I'm hoping it will help bring down my cholesterol numbers a bit.