Please help! Eating at TDEE...

sarahkraus1982

I was following a 1200 calorie diet and it worked I lost 50 lbs on it....but eventually stopped and gained back 25 lbs .
I am looking at all the threads regarding eating at TDEE (opps I meant eating with a 20% deficit)? And I would like to try it to see if it works for me. I think I have calculated my daily calories to 1700 and this of course seems high to me. I am 5'4" and 184lbs right now and would like to lose 39 lbs at a rate of about 1lb + a week. Does anyone out there know how this should be calculated and if I'm doing it correctley or not?

Thanks!
:flowerforyou:

nwarguy

Here's two different websites that I've seen strewn around the forums...
http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html
http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

And from everything I've seen so far... 1700 is not high if you're wanting to do the TDEE way.

cwolfman13

TDEE is maintenance. To diet you need to deduct some % of your TDEE (i.e. TDEE - X%...usually 10, 15, or 20% depending on how much a person needs to lose). 1,700 gross sounds about right for the average Jane to lose about 1 Lb per week...most women have true TDEEs around 2100-2300 calories while most men are around 2400 - 2700...of course this depends much on your activity level and lifestyle.

Remember that TDEE includes all of your activity, including exercise. MFP is NEAT method calculator and if you were doing it correctly, you should have been eating most of your calories back...it really comes out 6 of 1 if you're doing it right.

As an example, when I do TDEE - 20% my calorie goal to lose about 1 Lb per week is 2,150 (my TDEE is 2,685)...When I use a NEAT method calculator like MFP my goal is 1,880 net...on average i get about 300 calories burned through exercise so I eat those back and gross to 2,180...but my net is still 1,880 (1,880 + 300 exercise = 2,180). As you can see, there is an insignificant difference of 30 calories for me between the two methods.

Alta2000

I was following a 1200 calorie diet and it worked I lost 50 lbs on it....but eventually stopped and gained back 25 lbs .
I am looking at all the threads regarding eating at TDEE? And I would like to try it to see if it works for me. I think I have calculated my daily calories to 1700 and this of course seems high to me. I am 5'4" and 184lbs right now and would like to lose 39 lbs at a rate of about 1lb + a week. Does anyone out there know how this should be calculated and if I'm doing it correctley or not?

Thanks!
:flowerforyou:

Use scoobies calculator and play around yourself with how much exercise you do. It calculates the % automatically. 1700 sounds about fine. Once you incorporate the exercise amount that you do in your TDEE and subtract the % that you want, then do not eat back the exercise calories!

sarahkraus1982

From what I could figure out, my TDEE is 2213 a 20% deficit it would be approx. 1700 calories.

1223345

I tried this. It was a guessing game really. The first TDEE calculator I used had me eating over 2000. I figured that couldn't be right, so I tried another that had me at 1100. That seemed bogus, so yet another had me at 1500, and another at 1800. I think you just have to try different intakes to see what works. Unless of course there is a way to get this number that is accurate. I tried some spread sheet, but I couldn't get it to let me enter my info. I don't know what I was doing wrong. You have to download it and it is supposed to let you put in your numbers. If I can find it, I will post it. Maybe it will work for you.

Here it is. This explains it well.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/813720-spreadsheet-bmr-tdee-deficit-macro-calcs-hrm-zones

This is the spread sheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amt7QBR9-c6MdGVTbGswLUUzUHNVVUlNSW9wZWloeUE#gid=14

sarahkraus1982

Thanks guys! :flowerforyou:
I'm going to try this for 4 weeks and see how it goes.