TDEE - Explain like I'm 5

First: BMR (basal metabolic rate) - this is the number of calories that they would feed you if you were in a coma just for your involuntary bodily functions.

You need that amount of calories as a bare minimum.

TDEE is Total Daily Energy Expenditure. This is also known as "maintenance calories" because it is the amount that you would not gain or lose weight, it takes into account all of your activity. It is BMR plus a multiplied by a certain factor which accounts if you are sedentary, lightly active, moderate, etc.

A conventional method of figuring out number of calories to lose weight is to find out your TDEE number and eat 20% less than that.

However, there is some confusion on this site because when you do your MFP setup it says it is calculating your BMR, but then it also asks you how active you are. So some people here refer to their BMR without really understanding that the number MFP calculates isn't BMR. Obviously, if you are alive and mobile and doing things you need to eat more than BMR.

It is never going to be a real exact number, it is an estimated formula based on your height, weight and age. Unless you go and have some metabolic testing done, it is sort of a target number. My TDEE is somewhere between 1900 and 2100 depending on just how active I am. I try to eat around 1600 calories.

You need a 3500 calorie deficit in a week (500 calorie deficit per day) to lose 1 pound a week. So maybe there are days you eat a little more or less or you are moving around a little more or less, the goal is to get it to average out so you are losing weight every week.

I am part of a team in Omaha, NE that promotes a health challenge. As part of that, we do a calorie workup for people that gives them an idea of what they should be eating for their level of physical activity. It just uses basic nutrition math (BMR and HBE), but it has helped a lot of people realize where they should be eating for thier bodies to lose weight, and has helped many get off plateaus.

Especially if you are at or below 1200 calories, you aren't eating enough, so your body is holding on to water and anything else it can get ahold of because it is in starvation mode. If you'd like a workup, message me your height, weight and age, or your BMR, and I'll get one to you.

I'll need an email address, too, because the workup is in Excel, and I haven't figured out how (if its possible) to attach anything to a message here. We use Excel because as you lose weight, your BMR will go down and the numbers will need to be adjusted to ensure continued success. The spreadsheet updates everything automatically once the BMR is updated.