Please explain BMR

your BMR (basic metabolic rate) is how many calories you burn from daily activities. you should eat at or below your BMR and exercise to lose weight. you may also want to change your exercise to help fight your plateau

your BMR (basic metabolic rate) is how many calories you burn from daily activities. you should eat at or below your BMR and exercise to lose weight. you may also want to change your exercise to help fight your plateau

This is incorrect. TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) "is how many calories you burn from daily actvities".

You should NEVER eat below your BMR. Other folks have given you a good explanation of BMR.

How long did you up your calories to 1800? If it was less than 4 weeks you probably just gained water weight, as your body tries to get back to normal.

If you ate at 1200 ish for a prolonged time, you may have affected your bodies metabolism.

I'd strongly suggest you talk to your doctor.

You should NEVER net below your BMR. Again, net is calories comsumed minus calories burned through activity.

If you are still confused - I would check out this link: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12

bump

What is the purpose of "bump"?

So it's OK to not eat your exercise calories? (Not saying I don't, ) but just wondering.

Only if your calorie goal already includes any calories lost through exercise (which MFP's standard setting doesn't).

I'm guessing you use MFP's standard setting, so you should eat your exercise calories.

your BMR (basic metabolic rate) is how many calories you burn from daily activities. you should eat at or below your BMR and exercise to lose weight. you may also want to change your exercise to help fight your plateau

This is incorrect. TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) "is how many calories you burn from daily actvities".

You should NEVER eat below your BMR. Other folks have given you a good explanation of BMR.

Any time I get close to my calorie intake for the day I go out and run or something to bring it back down. anyways just go walking or something to do indoors to burn calories.

My starting point is as MFP sets it is below my BMR as their calculator figures it so as I see it I have to go into Cryogenic freeze to not be below my BMR? Tongue in Cheek of course but I keep seeing "DON"TEAT BELOW YOuR BMR" but my plan is below it to start with??

Only you can decide calories, base it on how you feel and what the scale trend is doing, not what anyone here tells you to do. You can always gradually notch your calories up or down by 100 and see how you do. It takes some experimentation to find what works for YOU. What worked for the next person may not work for you just because it did for them. For the most part, if you have fat reserves eating more to lose weight is just plain silly, think about it.

Your body loses weight in chunks, not linear. I have found that you can do everything right and your weight loss seems to plateau but you are patient and keep exercising and eating at a deficit (however slight) you will lose it, it will suddenly "whoosh". There are so many variables for the scale though: water retention, digestion, allergies, sodium, carbs, water intake, DOMS, inflammation, the list goes on. People mistakenly think they lose or gain weight when they eat more or less because of these fluctuations

If you have a lot of body fat reserves you would be surprised at how little you can eat (unless you have emotional eating issues or disorders). The leaner you get the less your body has to draw from and then you have to taper up your calories. There is no such thing as starvation mode for women over 12% body fat or men over 6% body fat. I am a living breathing example of that. I went from obese to now under 12% BF and I've maintained for one year and built muscle the whole time. You don't BUILD muscle in starvation mode, so I proved everyone wrong. You can check out my story on Bobbies Fitness.

Ok, so to help you though. Those BMR numbers are just estimates for any tool out there. The only way to know your exact BMR would be to go to a lab every day for a period of time and let them do the measurements and tests. So, it's a place to start.

I ignore exercise calories anyway so the exercise log is just to track time spent exercising for me. Exercise calories are highly over rated. You can't exercise away eating too much food. I learned this the hard way most of my life running marathon after marathon (and lifting) and not being able to lose weight and in fact continued to gain year after year. And I don't pig out, binge, snack mindlessly, eat out of boredom, etc, but the portion sizes are too big for a small person like me. (well I wasn't small when I weighed over 170 lbs at 51'0"!)

Anyway I found what worked for me was separating out the two things:

Eat less to lose weight
Exercise to maintain or build lean body mass
end of story.

Well, it did work for me. I am the fittest, leanest, strongest, and most muscular I've ever been in my life at age 51 and I'm healthy and don't get sick and have long endurance. Doesn't feel like starvation mode to me. Can you build muscle like I did while supposedly being in starvation mode?

Sorry about the qupte but no reply. BMR is not the only thing I find confuseing at times LOL.
The quote was "You Should NEVER eat below your BMR"
Using MFP calculator my BMR is 2206
my goal input was to lose 1.5 LBS / Week + 750 Cal per day deficit
I input sedentary and now planned exercise so that any exercise done will show that I have to eat them back or exceed my goal.
I can exceed my deficit goal by 250 calories a day and still be safe at a 2 LBS wt loss amount.
MFP says my daily starting Calories are 1800 and change.
So is it not telling me to eat less than my BMR?

See my confuseion?

That is precisely why I use the TDEE method instead of how MFP calcualtes it. - it does the same for me. Says my BMR is 1208 and sets my daily calories at 1200. But then, you eat more as you burn exercise calories - so if you burn 300 calories using MFP's numbers, you eat those back in addition to the initial amount.

Everything I have read posted by trainers or nutritionists and learned from talking with my RN mother (who is also a nutritionist) is that BMR is the lowest number of calories you should eat ever.

That is why I chose to calculate my TDEE and ignore MFP's suggested goals. I set my goals using the custom setting according to my TDEE calculation. When I ate the recommended 1200 calories that MFP assigned, I ended up on a plateau for 5 months because I was not eating enough.

Well I think we need to have someone with some credentials from MFP explain all of this so we have a definative answer because it looks like MFP's numbers may be WAY OFF BASE.
I am 5 ft 11 in weigh 305 and am 62 years old. Facts
BMR calculates around 2446 depending on the site.
TDEE at sedentary with NO planned exercise to cloud things is around 2935 depending on the site.
if my goal at MFP is to maintain it gives me a budget of 2760 which is below my TDEE
goal half pound loss MFP = 2510 Fit Bit says 2830 both still above my BMR
goal one pound loss MFP = 2260 Fit Bit says 2581 MFP is below my BMR
goal one and a half MFP = 2010 Fit Bit 2331
goal two pounds MFP = 1760 Fit Bit is 2084
The Nutritionist my doctor sent me to says I should be at 2000 calories, being obese I can afford to be below BMR for quite awhile. and I should do that while exercising at least 150 hours a week. There was no talk of eating back calories at the 2000 level.

So other than being completely confused on how do determine a "Healthy" target I can conclude a couple of things

One: To say you should "never eat below your BMR" is wrong, at the worst it depends on your starting point weight wise.

Two: If you follow MFP's goal you better eat back your exercise calories to be safe.

Now the problem is I just don't want to eat that many calories, I am not hungry.

Ok I think I have it figured out but it just may be a coincidence. If I have a two pound weight loss goal and input sedentary with no projected workouts than my target calorie budget is 1760, yes I am starting out as obese (303 today). It seems intuitive that the fatter you are the quicker you can lose to some degree and the easier as well. If I calculate my BMR at my gaol weight it comes out to ............drum roll please......................1729.
Kind of makes sense doesn't it. If BMR is what your body needs to maintain in coma as so many say than that is essentially only maintaining your vital organs and lean mass not your fat.. My scales say I have about 152 pounds of fat and 150 pounds of lean mass so my BMR really is closer to what it takes to maintain my lean mass plus an allowance of fat for function. BINGO my target weight of 190 and associated BMR of 1729, MFP says budget 1760. As I grow lean mass and lose fat it will change so I need to redo my goal every 5 pounds or so and the Budget to my BMR numbers will tend to come together.
So to all of you that say "NEVER EAT BELOW YOUR BMR" that may be true from your lean ab rolled perspective, but from my high Profiled perspective you are full of hollow calories LOL