TDEE and all that jazz.

baileybiddles

So, I was told by a friend here on MFP that I should calculate my TDEE and then eat either 15, 20 or 25 percent below it depending on what I'm looking to lose each week.

Fitness frog gives me a TDEE of 2326. Scooby's Workshop gives me a TDEE of 2331. So, I guess we could meet in the middle at 2330? Anyway, when I try to update my goals manually here on MFP, for some reason it's telling me that I'll only be at a deficit of 240 and I'll only lose 0.4 pounds a week. Both sites tell me to eat 1860ish calories a day.

There's so many different things to change manually on here - I am so confused. Anyone willing to help me out?

baileybiddles

Bump!

prattiger65

I'll help, what is your BMR? From there, what is your age, weight and height? Without exercise, how active are you?

tryclyn

Since you plan to use the TDEE-20%, you will be ignoring part of MFP math.

Sara and Dan explain fairly well
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/937712-in-place-of-a-road-map-ver-3-0

If you're not afraid of a spreadsheet
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/813720-spreadsheet-bmr-tdee-deficit-macro-calcs-hrm-zones

neandermagnon

So, I was told by a friend here on MFP that I should calculate my TDEE and then eat either 15, 20 or 25 percent below it depending on what I'm looking to lose each week.

Fitness frog gives me a TDEE of 2326. Scooby's Workshop gives me a TDEE of 2331. So, I guess we could meet in the middle at 2330? Anyway, when I try to update my goals manually here on MFP, for some reason it's telling me that I'll only be at a deficit of 240 and I'll only lose 0.4 pounds a week. Both sites tell me to eat 1860ish calories a day.

There's so many different things to change manually on here - I am so confused. Anyone willing to help me out?

it does that to me. According to MFP, I'm going to weigh around 135lb in five weeks when I eat at my TDEE... and here I am still at 130lb, in fact less than that, was 127 last time I weighed myself. It's annoying, but I just ignore it. They use a different calculator, which underestimates my TDEE by over 300 calories. Katch McArdle or Harris Benedict are better calculators for most people. Harris Benedict is better if you have a lot of fat to lose, Katch McArdle is better if you have more lean body mass for your height than average and are close to a healthy body fat percentage.

The two websites you quote use one or other of those, and they sounds like reasonable estimates, I'd go with those and not the MFP estimates.