BMR? TDEE?

Queen_JessieA

What do these mean?? I keep seeing them and I just have no clue!

Thanks!

diannethegeek

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories your body burns keeping you alive. It's what you'd burn if you were in a coma.

Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the number of calories you burn waking up, going to the bathroom, cooking, exercising, etc. It's the number of calories you would need to burn to maintain your current weight.

You can look them up on sites like: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

cwolfman13

BMR - Basal Metabolic Rate. The calories your body needs just to breath, pump your heart...other organ functions. Basic life support. This is what they would feed you through a tube in the hospital if you were in a coma.

TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure - What you expend above and beyond your BMR during a given day, from sitting up and crawling out of bed to driving to work, to doing your exercise routine.

You eat less than your TDEE to lose weight...above TDEE to gain weight (including building muscle mass). You should not eat below your BMR. There are numerous calculators out there...just google. I personally like the calculator at fat2fit radio...also IIFYM has a great TDEE calculator.

An example of my stats:

BMR - ~ 1,794 calories (just what my body will burn in a coma to keep me alive

TDEE - ~ 2,650 calories (Everything thing I do, including my exercise)

Calorie Goal - 2,150 (500 calorie deficit to lose ~ 1 Lb per week.)

As you can see, my calorie goal is above my BMR and under my TDEE. Because I use the TDEE method, if I do something out of the ordinary...like skip workouts, I would need to adjust my calorie goal. Conversely, I would need to make an adjustment on a day where I hiked 10 miles in the mountains and burned 1,300 calories as well, as it is outside of my normal routine and thus outside the parameters of my usual TDEE...not adjusting this would result in being net below my BMR. Usually it just means I have a few good beers though and all is well.

Queen_JessieA

Thanks.

I am seriously confused with the whole percentage/ratio thing, tho. I have never been good with numbers. LOL. I went to the website and it was asking about how much I wanted to do carb/protein/fat (percentage wise) and how many meals I eat a day. I generally do three meals w/ two snacks.

Does that really make a big difference?

It said my BMR cals would be 1779 but the daily cals were 1957. My TDEE was 2446.

Which one of these numbers would I try to hit after exercise? :huh: