BMR and TDEE Explained for Those Needing a Guide
Options
Replies
-
The military fat2fitradio.com calculations say I am at 30% body fat and 50 pounds of my body consists of fat. Yikes! I didn't realize this as I THOUGHT my BMI was only a bit overweight at 25-26%. Why the discepancy? Shocker for me!
0 -
If I use an external calculator to calculate my tdee with a light exercise as activity level. Does that means that the activity level has already include the calories burned if I were to exercise? Therefore me not needing to key in my calories burned from exercises?0
-
reidsilver311 wrote: »If I use an external calculator to calculate my tdee with a light exercise as activity level. Does that means that the activity level has already include the calories burned if I were to exercise? Therefore me not needing to key in my calories burned from exercises?
Yes, TDEE already includes exercise so there's no need to log/eat the calories back1 -
bump0
-
I do like using the TDEE calculator so I don't have to fiddle with eating back calories or overestimating on exercise.0
-
The military fat2fitradio.com calculations say I am at 30% body fat and 50 pounds of my body consists of fat. Yikes! I didn't realize this as I THOUGHT my BMI was only a bit overweight at 25-26%. Why the discepancy? Shocker for me!
Nobody answered this @debsozo and I know it's months old and you've hopefully learned some things in your time here but
BMI is not a percentage it's a maths formula for height and weight, it's generally a population guideline but provides the vast majority with a great scale weight range (18.5-25) where there are lower statistical health risks
T
BF is a percentage and women's average ranges tend to max at 33%
1 -
The military fat2fitradio.com calculations say I am at 30% body fat and 50 pounds of my body consists of fat. Yikes! I didn't realize this as I THOUGHT my BMI was only a bit overweight at 25-26%. Why the discepancy? Shocker for me!
Nobody answered this @debsozo and I know it's months old and you've hopefully learned some things in your time here but
BMI is not a percentage it's a maths formula for height and weight, it's generally a population guideline but provides the vast majority with a great scale weight range (18.5-25) where there are lower statistical health risks
BF is a percentage and women's ranges for health tend to max at 33%
Thanks for the answer and for posting the charts. I've fortunately lost weight and my BF % has gone down since May, thankfully.
I have learned a lot since I joined MFP last April! I realize now that back in May I posted body fat and BMI questions on a BMR thread. Haha.
0 -
Little_Miss_Kriss wrote: »I have A question...
So my starting weight was 252 pounds, I have worked hard for well over a year and am now somewhere between 135 and 140 pounds depending on my bodies mood lol
I am 5 foot 3, 30 years old.
I have my calorie goal set to my BMR of 1350 calories.
On the days that i work i eat to maintenance, which is 7 out of 14 days every two weeks. I have a very active job and walk about 16-18,000 steps per day.
On the other 14 days i will eat probably around 1700 calories and then go to the gym and burn somewhere around 600 to 1000 calories over a span of 90 to 150 min, depending on how much energy i have, i do cardio, running at an incline of 2.5% and the elliptical with a 6% resistance. I weigh all my food on a scale. Which is why im kind of confused as to why this last 5 pounds is so hard to come off, according to my body fat percentage i have almost 30 extra pounds of fat on my body and 98.2% lean muscle. Is my math wrong? If i am netting around 700-900 per day on my days off, shouldn't i be losing SOMETHING just slowly since i am eating to maintenance the rest of the time? I've been trying for almost 2 - 3 months just to get down passed 135 again.
I'd open my diary but this is a new account and it's not going to show much of anything, sorry lol
Set your goal at 0.5lb per week
Your figures for BF, which I highly doubt by the way cos I bet you're using a bio impedence scale but even so those stats show 27% BF which is well within a healthy range
Tighten up your food logging you've probably for error creep0 -
Damn I'm kind of confused. So basically to lose weight in the most efficient way possible you should eat at your BMR correct? What if I've been told by my doctor to eat at 500 calories less than my bmr? ~2000 (bmr) down to 1500 calories daily? What is wrong wrong with that exactly?0
-
Damn I'm kind of confused. So basically to lose weight in the most efficient way possible you should eat at your BMR correct? What if I've been told by my doctor to eat at 500 calories less than my bmr? ~2000 (bmr) down to 1500 calories daily? What is wrong wrong with that exactly?
That is pretty low for a guy. You could figure your TDEE and cut 500 calories from that to lose a pound a week. Otherwise you could get really tired and hungry going too low. Double check with your physician to be sure he or she meant 500 below basal metabolic rate because no one on MFP is going to advise against what a doctor has told you. There might be reasons that we don't know about.0 -
This explanation was so incredibly helpful! I have been stuck gaining and losing the same pound for 6 weeks. I redid my calories using TDEE - 20% and it actually increased my daily caloric intake by 200+ cals (I didn't take the entire increase). I set my intake at 1700 instead of the 1800+ it was allotting me. I ate like that for 2 days and finally dumped over that stupid pound. Finally! I have been so close to the 20# loss mark for so long I was getting frustrated. I'm sure it depends on the person, but for me, using TDEE less 20% definitely seems to be the better gauge calorie wise. Thank you OP for taking the time to put this all down and thanks to the others who posted their thoughts, websites, info, etc. Taking it all into consideration and working through it I was able to finally break through.2
-
Little_Miss_Kriss wrote: »the BF % is based on the site that was posted in this first post on this thread..
My calorie goal at half a pound per week is 1650, which is what i am eating anyway... then i subtract cardio from that on my days off, so again, back to my question.. if im eating the same way i always have been to lose 120 pounds already, how much tighter do i need to be? im using the food scale, what else can i do?
If you decide to do TDEE instead of the MFP NEAT method you just have to recalculate TDEE minus 20% every so often as you lose weight. The closer you get to goal the slower the weight loss. You don't subtract exercise calories or eat back calories from TDEE because activity and exercise is built in to the calculations.
When I started MFP I should have calculated for a 0.5 pound a week weight loss instead of being so aggressive because I don't have a lot to lose. It helped me to learn on MFP that losing 2 pounds a week was best for those who have over 50+ pounds to lose. People who hsbe under 50 pounds to lose should aim for losing 1 pound a week. And the last 10-20 to come off might slow done to 0.5 pounds a week.
I personally was not eating enough calories and was causing myself to go too hungry and suffer at 1200 calories. But that number was unrealistic because I should have been moving closer and closer to my maintenance weight.
Now I eat at my maintenance weight but plan to nip off a pound or two as I gain them with the less aggressive method of TDEE minus 20% periodically to keep from gaining weight back over time. That is my favorite way as I don't like to track exercise calories or eat back any.
But all of this is personal preference for me. I see plenty of people who prefer to adjust for exercise. I would probably use exercise to justify eating more which I just don't want to play around with.0 -
But all of this is personal preference for me. I see plenty of people who prefer to adjust for exercise. I would probably use exercise to justify eating more which I just don't want to play around with.
This was the issue I was having with exercise. Using TDEE allows me to just track my exercise and not worry about "eating back calories" or having to figure out how much I should or shouldn't eat back. If exercise calories are there, I justify eating them. Much better for me just having it worked into my regular day of calories.1 -
ronjsteele1 wrote: »But all of this is personal preference for me. I see plenty of people who prefer to adjust for exercise. I would probably use exercise to justify eating more which I just don't want to play around with.
This was the issue I was having with exercise. Using TDEE allows me to just track my exercise and not worry about "eating back calories" or having to figure out how much I should or shouldn't eat back. If exercise calories are there, I justify eating them. Much better for me just having it worked into my regular day of calories.
It is less stressful. If my weight starts going up I readjust TDEE. Usually it slows in the winter and speeds up in the early summer.0 -
Damn I'm kind of confused. So basically to lose weight in the most efficient way possible you should eat at your BMR correct? What if I've been told by my doctor to eat at 500 calories less than my bmr? ~2000 (bmr) down to 1500 calories daily? What is wrong wrong with that exactly?
You are confused @jeremy
No you should not eat your BMR, it's an irrelevant number apart from being a stepping stone to working out TDEE
Your doctor told you to eat 500 calories below your TDEE
Why would your TDEE be only 2000? That's the average for a female. Are you very sedentary?
Here use this http://www.weightloss-calculator.net0 -
Damn I'm kind of confused. So basically to lose weight in the most efficient way possible you should eat at your BMR correct? What if I've been told by my doctor to eat at 500 calories less than my bmr? ~2000 (bmr) down to 1500 calories daily? What is wrong wrong with that exactly?
You are confused @jeremy
No you should not eat your BMR, it's an irrelevant number apart from being a stepping stone to working out TDEE
Your doctor told you to eat 500 calories below your TDEE
Why would your TDEE be only 2000? That's the average for a female. Are you very sedentary?
Here use this http://www.weightloss-calculator.net
Actually I looked into it some more. Firstly, my doctor didn't mention BMR, he just recommended I eat 1500 calories per day. Afterwards I was the one who used a formula I found online to determine my BMR, which was ~2000.
Now I think my BMR is closer to 1750 and my TDEE 2150 using the Katch-Mcardle formula (which I'm told is the most accurate?). Unfortunately I'm not that active at all either. I have a part-time accounting job and I go to school full-time. The majority of my week is spent sitting down counting inventory, sitting down during lecture or sitting down studying.
From what I understood from the OP, it is bad to eat under your BMR. I wanted some more info on this to bring to my doctor next month and see what he has to say. I just didn't want to show up and say, "Hey doc, you sure about my calorie intake? Some stranger on the internet told me otherwise..."0 -
It is not bad to eat under your BMR
It is, she repeats, an irrelevant number
As a male the minimum advisable calories is 1500 to ensure nutritional needs can be easily met
Doctors do not have that much experience in weight loss or nutrition, if you want professional help with this you need a specialist l..a registered dietician
Also get up and move more, there's no reason you can't walk part of the way to work or take a walking break ...1 -
It is not bad to eat under your BMR
It is, she repeats, an irrelevant number
As a male the minimum advisable calories is 1500 to ensure nutritional needs can be easily met
Doctors do not have that much experience in weight loss or nutrition, if you want professional help with this you need a specialist l..a registered dietician
Also get up and move more, there's no reason you can't walk part of the way to work or take a walking break ...
Thanks for the info! As long as 1500 calories is "acceptable" then I'm good doing what I've been doing.
I do try and look for ways to be bit more active such as parking on the opposite side of campus or taking the stairs, it just doesn't seem significant enough on a day to day basis. I usually do have enough free time at the end of most days for some actual exercise but it's difficult to find the motivation when I'm so mentally exhausted. It's definitely something I'm working on.0
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.7K Introduce Yourself
- 43.5K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 394 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.3K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 943 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.3K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions