Spreadsheet for bodyfat, BMR, TDEE, progress tracker

heybales

I noticed you entered a field for a body composition scale or handheld device for bf.

Any recommendations for how best to use the composition scale for accuracy? I have one but I don't ever use it.

You do need to look at the manual, some are very different, even among same manufacturer.

I've had one, your feet were supposed to be moist. Another one dry.
One said in the morning, when normally best weigh-in is. Saw another manual that said before dinner was best time.

Since hydration levels affect the electrical impedance, anything to keep that consistent is needed.
Current athletic one does mention the other facts that should play a part, and I include these in all comments about valid weigh-in day.

Morning (or afternoon if your scale says to) after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout.

Rest day means no lowered glucose and water weight from a workout you have topped off from. Normal sodium eating means no unusual gain or loss of sodium retained water. Not sore means usually no retain water in muscle for repair process, though you don't have to be sore to still have that extra water.

Just as those things affect a weigh-in day, also a comp scale.

But feet moist or dry has big bearing, and when they say to use it. Confirm other settings are correct to. The more specific the better it can estimate from the tables/formula it's using. Like height is nice (unless it merely uses it to tell you your BMI, some do), had one with neck size, wrist size, gender, ect. Just confirm those are correct in case they are used in the formula.

heybales

:flowerforyou: Thank you haybales ... yes i was as honest as possible (i may tend to over estimate my activity not the opposite since i prefer to consume more calories than less) ... but as you said i may have found my own estimate which i haven't noticed till you pointed it out ...

I hope what you said about my high metabolism is true ... ... because from my experience in the past 7 months i cannot eat any less than 1600 calories (1700 being what i call my sweet spot where i feel fine and still loose) ... and not because less than 1600 makes me hungry ... it drains me totally ...
I live a sedentary life ... i have no kids ... and rarely do any real moving ... but i am an academic and researcher (maybe that consumes more calories i don't know) and i spend a lot of time writing and reading

So you might want to use the Progress tab, far right, and enter in a month of actual eating amounts, and how much was lost then.

You really need complete days too, one or two with a meal missing may not be bad, but an estimate of any sort is better than 0.

It'll tell you how many hrs to add to the Activity Calc to make the TDEE match what your weight loss and eating level have actually shown.

Then you can see if the TDEG recommended is what you are hitting already. If lifting, it may still be saying less than desired for performance.
Then again for safety of retaining muscle mass, it may recommend less deficit than you currently are causing.

Paula038

Thanks for a great spreadsheet! I have spent almost two days playing around with it. I seem to have added a considerable amount of LBM from strength training in the last six weeks - yay for the newbie effect. Two questions, though. I have the 10/30 spreadsheet, which I exported to Excel. I notice the LBM and BF numbers always don't add up to my weight - the difference ranges from -2 to 2 lbs. They do add up on two occasions - did I simply type something wrong on the other three, or is there a reason they don't always add up? Also, at what average HR does medium cardio become high cardio? I walk at 3.5 mph at an incline of 6, and my average HR is often in the late 130s (138 today). Since my max HR is about 175, does this count as medium or high? (If it is medium, my TDEE is only 6.5% more than BMR, but it looks much better if it is high cardio - over 20% difference).

Paula038

Thanks for a great spreadsheet! I have spent almost two days playing around with it. I seem to have added a considerable amount of LBM from strength training in the last six weeks - yay for the newbie effect. Two questions, though. I have the 10/30 spreadsheet, which I exported to Excel. I notice the LBM and BF numbers always don't add up to my weight - the difference ranges from -2 to 2 lbs. They do add up on two occasions - did I simply type something wrong on the other three, or is there a reason they don't always add up? Also, at what average HR does medium cardio become high cardio? I walk at 3.5 mph at an incline of 6, and my average HR is often in the late 130s (138 today). Since my max HR is about 175, does this count as medium or high? (If it is medium, my TDEE is only 6.5% more than BMR, but it looks much better if it is high cardio - over 20% difference).

Actually, forgot to update the information from the avg eaten daily calc in the progress sheet, and the new TDEE is only 6.7% above BMR. Yikes.

heybales

Thanks for a great spreadsheet! I have spent almost two days playing around with it. I seem to have added a considerable amount of LBM from strength training in the last six weeks - yay for the newbie effect. Two questions, though. I have the 10/30 spreadsheet, which I exported to Excel. I notice the LBM and BF numbers always don't add up to my weight - the difference ranges from -2 to 2 lbs. They do add up on two occasions - did I simply type something wrong on the other three, or is there a reason they don't always add up? Also, at what average HR does medium cardio become high cardio? I walk at 3.5 mph at an incline of 6, and my average HR is often in the late 130s (138 today). Since my max HR is about 175, does this count as medium or high? (If it is medium, my TDEE is only 6.5% more than BMR, but it looks much better if it is high cardio - over 20% difference).

Actually, forgot to update the information from the avg eaten daily calc in the progress sheet, and the new TDEE is only 6.7% above BMR. Yikes.

LBM + BF should always equal cell B15 of current weight, except for rounding errors at display, it should never be off that much.
Did you enter the results of the average BF calcs in to the yellow BF cell? The calc averages is not used automatically, because some have their own figure from Bodpod or hydrostatic test.
I hope Excel isn't doing something funky. Just looked at it in Excel, nothing funky in mine anyway.

The avgHR where medium cardio becomes high cardio is whatever yours is when walking 4mph flat. It's individual. It's no comment on the level of effort, but merely to estimate the calories burned best, since walking is very tested and formula's highly accurate. So comparing everything to that helps.
And as you get more fit - that will change too. Your HR for walking flat 4mph should lower over time until it reaches a stopping point. Now, if weight stays the same the burn stays the same, and the calc does that correctly. That's why normally if you don't increase your effort as weight drops, you burn less.

And during any of that time of improved fitness, that makes it very personal to you. I'm betting 3.5 mph 6% incline is higher HR than walking flat 4 mph. Maybe not, you'll need to test. And that would probably never change, even though the HR of both would lower. Incline would always be higher than flat.
Just warm-up walk for about 5 min, then see what the HR is after 5 min at 4 mph flat.

Any workout you do 5 bpm or more over that is high cardio, anything less is medium. You can test 3 mph too for seeing what falls under low cardio. So a yoga class may spike higher, but the avg of the whole workout is likely less. Except hot yoga which is artificially raising the HR because of the heat, not the effort so much - that doesn't count.
Like aqua aerobics in a hot tub, or stair stepping in a sauna. Especially naked.

If your TDEE is very close to sedentary, not much activity in the activity calc, it should be 1.2 x BMR, plus a little bit for the exercise. Something sounds messed up.

Google does appear to make mistakes converting the spreadsheet sometimes. Might download another copy under another name and see if that still happens.

In reality, your TDEE is lower than a males of the same LBM by 5-10%, I selected avg 7.5%.
The most accuracy came from examining the sedentary TDEE, but really the BMR was lower too, because women have smaller organs that are the main metabolic burners.
But I didn't adjust the BMR because it wasn't as universal a difference as sedentary TDEE was.

So really, your BMR is lower too.

Still something up with your copy though.

Paula038

Thanks for a great spreadsheet! I have spent almost two days playing around with it. I seem to have added a considerable amount of LBM from strength training in the last six weeks - yay for the newbie effect. Two questions, though. I have the 10/30 spreadsheet, which I exported to Excel. I notice the LBM and BF numbers always don't add up to my weight - the difference ranges from -2 to 2 lbs. They do add up on two occasions - did I simply type something wrong on the other three, or is there a reason they don't always add up? Also, at what average HR does medium cardio become high cardio? I walk at 3.5 mph at an incline of 6, and my average HR is often in the late 130s (138 today). Since my max HR is about 175, does this count as medium or high? (If it is medium, my TDEE is only 6.5% more than BMR, but it looks much better if it is high cardio - over 20% difference).

Actually, forgot to update the information from the avg eaten daily calc in the progress sheet, and the new TDEE is only 6.7% above BMR. Yikes.

LBM + BF should always equal cell B15 of current weight, except for rounding errors at display, it should never be off that much.
Did you enter the results of the average BF calcs in to the yellow BF cell? The calc averages is not used automatically, because some have their own figure from Bodpod or hydrostatic test.
I hope Excel isn't doing something funky. Just looked at it in Excel, nothing funky in mine anyway.

The avgHR where medium cardio becomes high cardio is whatever yours is when walking 4mph flat. It's individual. It's no comment on the level of effort, but merely to estimate the calories burned best, since walking is very tested and formula's highly accurate. So comparing everything to that helps.
And as you get more fit - that will change too. Your HR for walking flat 4mph should lower over time until it reaches a stopping point. Now, if weight stays the same the burn stays the same, and the calc does that correctly. That's why normally if you don't increase your effort as weight drops, you burn less.

And during any of that time of improved fitness, that makes it very personal to you. I'm betting 3.5 mph 6% incline is higher HR than walking flat 4 mph. Maybe not, you'll need to test. And that would probably never change, even though the HR of both would lower. Incline would always be higher than flat.
Just warm-up walk for about 5 min, then see what the HR is after 5 min at 4 mph flat.

Any workout you do 5 bpm or more over that is high cardio, anything less is medium. You can test 3 mph too for seeing what falls under low cardio. So a yoga class may spike higher, but the avg of the whole workout is likely less. Except hot yoga which is artificially raising the HR because of the heat, not the effort so much - that doesn't count.
Like aqua aerobics in a hot tub, or stair stepping in a sauna. Especially naked.

If your TDEE is very close to sedentary, not much activity in the activity calc, it should be 1.2 x BMR, plus a little bit for the exercise. Something sounds messed up.

Google does appear to make mistakes converting the spreadsheet sometimes. Might download another copy under another name and see if that still happens.

In reality, your TDEE is lower than a males of the same LBM by 5-10%, I selected avg 7.5%.
The most accuracy came from examining the sedentary TDEE, but really the BMR was lower too, because women have smaller organs that are the main metabolic burners.
But I didn't adjust the BMR because it wasn't as universal a difference as sedentary TDEE was.

So really, your BMR is lower too.

Still something up with your copy though.

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I assume I simply made a copying error when I typed the red values into the lower section of the progress tab. Since the first one and the last one happen to be correct, I will just ignore the middle ones. Too much effort to recalculate them since I won’t use the old values much anyway.

The tiny difference between estimated BMR and TDEE is why I joined this group in the first place. When I suddenly picked up weight after maintaining for years, I assumed it was age-related, and eating less and doing more would soon sort it out. At 6’1”, my Katch BMR at my current weight is 1685. My average calorie intake in the first 4.5 weeks was 1370 and I worked up to 9:20 hours of exercise a week, including both cardio and strength training. I lost 7 lbs at first (goal 26 lbs), but then picked up 1.5 lbs.

Worried, I read up about BMR/TDEE, and upped intake to BMR (and added protein) while cutting exercise to 8 hours (just saw from the spreadsheet that a 300 calorie jump may have been too much too soon). Total gain so far is 2.7 lbs, although my measurements haven’t changed.

I have spent days reading the forum, and am quite confused as to what to do next. I thought of eating at TDEE for a while, but have no idea what my real TDEE is. The calculated figures are impressive (2764), but I then did the “Avg eaten daily calc” in the progress tab (I extended the table to include all values since I started dieting). It estimates my TDEE at only 1795 (a -177 adjustment in the daily activity cell). Slightly frivolously, I calculated that, if the BMR multiplier of 1.64 were correct, my actual BMR would be less than 1100, or almost 40% less than Katch. Or else my body is just really efficient at exercising! I will do the 4 mph test this afternoon, so these figures may change a bit.

Sorry to bother you about this, but I have come across many of your posts in the last week or so, and you seem particularly well informed. Any advice on what to do next would be appreciated.

heybales

The tiny difference between estimated BMR and TDEE is why I joined this group in the first place. When I suddenly picked up weight after maintaining for years, I assumed it was age-related, and eating less and doing more would soon sort it out. At 6’1”, my Katch BMR at my current weight is 1685. My average calorie intake in the first 4.5 weeks was 1370 and I worked up to 9:20 hours of exercise a week, including both cardio and strength training. I lost 7 lbs at first (goal 26 lbs), but then picked up 1.5 lbs.

Worried, I read up about BMR/TDEE, and upped intake to BMR (and added protein) while cutting exercise to 8 hours (just saw from the spreadsheet that a 300 calorie jump may have been too much too soon). Total gain so far is 2.7 lbs, although my measurements haven’t changed.

I have spent days reading the forum, and am quite confused as to what to do next. I thought of eating at TDEE for a while, but have no idea what my real TDEE is. The calculated figures are impressive (2764), but I then did the “Avg eaten daily calc” in the progress tab (I extended the table to include all values since I started dieting). It estimates my TDEE at only 1795 (a -177 adjustment in the daily activity cell). Slightly frivolously, I calculated that, if the BMR multiplier of 1.64 were correct, my actual BMR would be less than 1100, or almost 40% less than Katch. Or else my body is just really efficient at exercising! I will do the 4 mph test this afternoon, so these figures may change a bit.

Since you were clearly under-eating for a while, you can't confirm how much of your weight lost was muscle mass, so that calculated TDEE from eating levels and weight lost won't work. Muscle when broken down only provides 600 calories per lb, not 3500 like fat. Much easier to burn through a pound of muscle. And much harder to make it. Not so bad to retain it.
Also sounds like you increased your exercise routine, so again, you are coming up with an average TDEE over a span of time where actually the TDEE value changed a lot.

You can't use that method yet, you'll be chasing inaccuracies and probably a spiraling down metabolism, as evidenced by the fact you came up with 1795, when the 2764 sounds much more realistic for your current level of activity.

I'd indeed suggest removing some stress from your body. Either by exercising less (since that's not going to cause weight loss but body improvement if you have enough food), or by eating with less deficit, closer and/or up to estimated TDEE for a couple weeks.

You likely gained some desired glucose stores so far, body has probably been running on some level of depleted, and was glad to get some. That increased your metabolism right there.

I'd increase cal's for a week at a time, about 200 extra daily. Then the next week, another 200. Until at TDEE for a couple weeks. Then take the TDEG given.
And keep the math in mind.
If you increase 200 calories and in 3-4 days gain 1-2 lbs, it can't be fat. You'd have to eat over maintenance for 2 weeks 250 daily to gain 1 lb of fat, if not doing any exercise that would actually use the extra calories to improve your body.

As to how long to really reset - when eating at 1370, did you follow MFP correctly and eat back your exercise calories? Or that was it?
If that was it, ya, you need a reset from the massive stress you put on your body.

Paula038

As to how long to really reset - when eating at 1370, did you follow MFP correctly and eat back your exercise calories? Or that was it?
If that was it, ya, you need a reset from the massive stress you put on your body.

Er, yes, the 1370 was gross. My doctor had wanted me to do 1200, so I felt a bit guilty about over-eating. Average net intake over the period was in the 800s, and I was so terribly pleased that on major workout days I posted 1400 cal deficits. (I log on a different site, which seems to encourage big deficits.) Now I shudder.

Thanks so much for the advice. I will swop some cardio sessions for gentle "recovery" walks, keep training to failure on the weights, and eat more in the manner you suggested. And try not to freak out every time the scale jumps overnight.

mazmataz

Can I just pipe in and say how awesome this spreadsheet is? Like really, if you are lifting you need it in your life! I started NROL4W about 3 weeks ago and I've gained 2lbs. Although it was expected it's always a little disheartening.

HOWEVER...because of this amazeballs tracker, I just figured out that I actually GAINED 5.6lbs of LBM and LOST 3.6lbs of fat...yaaass!!

BJC78

Bump

cupcakes_and_cardio

I don't have excel, so I download another spreadsheet program, but it says it's "delimited" and won't let me open it correctly. Any advice?

heybales

I don't have excel, so I download another spreadsheet program, but it says it's "delimited" and won't let me open it correctly. Any advice?

Ah, delimited would be if it was purely data, and then you could import the data in to something that can use delimited.
That means each cell of info is separated by a comma.
Won't work for this spreadsheet at all.

If no Excel, then having a Gmail account and Google Drive means best option is to copy it your own Drive as your own spreadsheet - then you'll be allowed to change it.

akarney

Bump to read later

BJC78

Bump

jonesin_am

save

CM9178

bump

EllyG08

BUMP.

kittymoney

bump

itskcoughlin

Hi

I am going to be starting You are Your Own Gym soon. How would I mark this in the spreadsheet? Is it considered weight lifting?

Thanks so much!

heybales

Hi

I am going to be starting You are Your Own Gym soon. How would I mark this in the spreadsheet? Is it considered weight lifting?

Thanks so much!

That line for calorie burn lifting is based on sets and rests of 2-4 between, and lifting range of reps up to probably 20 max. Because that form of lifting burns less calories.

Many bodyweight workouts can be in that description at the start, well, for a while, like with pullups or dips or pushups for instance.
Eventually it may be easier and some of it doesn't fall in that range anymore.

So that program may start out with telling you to keep rests to less than 1 min, move on to another muscle exercise, only do so many reps or for only so long, and you'll come back around again.
That would be more metabolic lifting, circuit training, and burns more calories.
That style belongs in high cardio.

So still resistance, but more calorie burn that lifting line won't cover.

kiekie33

Bump for later

mkplant

Thank you haybales saving for later

whizzlers

Bump to look at later nx

btwinkyb

Just want to say heybales ROCKS! :OD

heybales

Just want to say heybales ROCKS! :OD

That's nice an obsession can be described positively. ;-)

Tanya949

bump

justdoit1106

Bump for later, thanks!

iwishihad

I am ever so thankful for this!!! I'm a numbers junkie and things just haven't been working out for me. Now hopefully I'll be able to make some progress and not have to scrap my BodyMedia Link out of frustration!

heybales

I am ever so thankful for this!!! I'm a numbers junkie and things just haven't been working out for me. Now hopefully I'll be able to make some progress and not have to scrap my BodyMedia Link out of frustration!

You can easily confirm if the BM sensors are working well for you.

Look at your avg low sleep time calorie burn per minute.
Now find some awake but unmoving time - reading, movie, TV, ect.
Take both x 1440.
There is your sleeping BMR they are using.
There is your awake RMR they are using.

RMR should be about 150-250 over BMR. If exactly the same, the sensors aren't doing well for you, which means the BMR may not have adjusted to your BMR.
Now true, that only means that 1/3 to 2/3 of your day non-moving is wrong values, but that could be 200-400 calories off in total.
Moving time would still be step based at least, but increased burn the sensors are missing, so still off.

psylvester1

bump