question for people that do tdee - 20%

akilahleemarie

So lets say without exercise my tdee is 1800...lets say my bmr is 1400...since they always say you should never go below your bmr, that would mean the lowest I should consume is 1400, meaning I would "lose" 400 calories a day. So if I worked out, and burned 1,000 calories and got my tdee to 2800 (I have a polar heart rate monitor so im accurate on how many calories a i can expect to burn working out)...if i did tdee - 20% then I would eat 2,240 calories a day, and would "lose" 560 calories? i am just trying to understand the different methods...so basically the higher your tdee, the more weight you can safely lose? The other theory is to eat back your exercise calories, which would put me back at losing 400 calories vs. the 560 with the tdee - 20% method...thanks

SideSteel

So lets say without exercise my tdee is 1800...lets say my bmr is 1400...since they always say you should never go below your bmr, that would mean the lowest I should consume is 1400, meaning I would "lose" 400 calories a day. So if I worked out, and burned 1,000 calories and got my tdee to 2800 (I have a polar heart rate monitor so im accurate on how many calories a i can expect to burn working out)...if i did tdee - 20% then I would eat 2,240 calories a day, and would "lose" 560 calories? i am just trying to understand the different methods...so basically the higher your tdee, the more weight you can safely lose? The other theory is to eat back your exercise calories, which would put me back at losing 400 calories vs. the 560 with the tdee - 20% method...thanks

TDEE is exercise inclusive. Outside of MFP, the majority of methods will average out your net exercise expenditure and include it in the TDEE estimation.

So for example if you burn 2800 calories in total (rest+exercise expenditure) on exercise days and you burn 1800 on rest days, your actual TDEE will be somewhere in between these two values.

For instance, using the above example if you exercise 3 days per week your TDEE would be
(2800x3)+(1800x4) / 7 = a TDEE of 2228 if my math works.

So you'd want to average about 1780 (2228*x80) calories per day for reasonable weight loss.

Consider though, the above example is pretty extreme. Most people will not burn an additional 1000 calories on an exercise day.

If you are going to use the TDEE method I would recommend ditching the idea of micromanaging your exercise expenditure. Use one of the online calculators or read this thread: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

Once you have your TDEE estimated, eat about 80% of that value daily, and monitor results and just adjust as needed. You will find your TDEE through a combination of using an estimation and observing results/adjusting as you go.




EDIT: Lastly, and this is a controversial topic but my opinion is firmly planted here until I see reason to convince me that it's wrong --- there's nothing inherently wrong about eating below your BMR. Most people probably shouldn't but in general if you are sedentary your TDEE may not be much higher than your BMR.

Additionally, for those folks who choose to eat more on exercise days and less on rest days, a reasonable deficit may put those people under BMR on rest days.

amonkey794

What is considered a small enough TDEE/BMR difference to qualify eating below your BMR?