Help please! Confused re: BMR & TDEE

OK, big picture.

1) TDEE or Total Daily Energy Expenditure. Is the amount of calories you burn all day. From before you wake up in the morning to the time you lay your head down at night to sleep and into the night. This number depends in large part on how active you are during the day (active job or hobbies) and whether you exercised that day or not. Knowing TDEE allows you to understand that calorie intake above TDEE is a calorie surplus and you will "eventually" gain weight. Anything below TDEE and you will lose weight to some extent. (see BMR)

2) BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate or RMR Resting Metabolic Rate. Is how many calories your body burns just so operate its systems, even if you don't get out of bed. If you were in a coma and in the hospital, the doctors would feed you your BMR in calories. This amount of calories ensures you have enough nutrients for vital organs to function.

Eating at BMR and staying in bed should maintain things as long as you do nothing at all. The only people who should be eating below BMR are folks who have had Gastric Bypass, 500-700 cals/day, or people who are morbidly obese and only for an extremely short time and only prescribed by a Certified Nutritionist/Dietician.

Ideally you should be eating something like 500-760 cal below your TDEE every day. I know this is controversal and some will tell you to eat less than this because it worked for their cousin, but most knowledgeable people will not advocate dramatic calorie cuts becuase it tends not to work and could even be detrimental to your health. The tricky part is that BMR and TDEE are both ESTIMATES based on formulas that work for most people. If you actuall ate less than TDEE for a long period of time and didn't lose weight, then you weren't eating below TDEE (Keep in mind that almost all calorie figures are also estimates unless you cook all of your own food, log everything and weigh everything to the last gram, and that almost all exercise "calorie burn" figures are also estimates based on your age and weight and their accuracy varies widely. Sadly most gym machines and most people underestimate their intake and overestimate their calorie burn).

Plateaus are pretty common. If you are sure you are eating below your TDEE every day, then keep doing what you are doing and the weight will come off in time. Remember, there are lots of other things going on that can keep the scale from moving even though you are below calories for the week (water retention, undigested food, muscle repair which retains water), but over the long term, it will even out. If you really aren't moving on the scale after 3-4 weeks of being below TDEE, then you probably need to adjust your calories downward a couple of hundred and try that for 2-3 weeks. You appear to be well below your BMR, which is not healthy in the long term. If you follow the instructions used by MFP when you sign up, that process should work for you as it isn't bad. If you insert your BMR, tell them how active you are and your goal. The MFP calorie goal should be what you try to eat every day. 3200 sounds about right if your BMR and TDEE calculations are correct. Exercise calories is another hot topic. MFP includes them in your daily calorie goal, and if all your figures are correct there is no problem with that. I usually try to eat back 70-75% of those exercise calories to try to even out overestimations by myself or by my HRM.

I hope that helps a little.

MFP does not factor in your exercise but the TDEE method does. If you use MFP's method you want to NET 2120, eating back the exercise calories you burn. If you use the TDEE -20% method then you need to GROSS 3248 calories, and you don't eat back the extra exercise calories. In the end, they're all estimates, so pick one and see if it works for you.

Hi and thanks for the response.

So, according to MFP, if I use their guided goal setting, my daily net calorie goal should be 2,120.

If I go by your calculation of 760 below TDEE, I should be at 3,248 net calories (which is 4,008 TDEE minus 760).

So...sorry, but I'm still not clear. Should my daily net be 2,120, or 3,248? This isn't making sense for me...I've always struggled with numbers :-)

OK, big picture.

1) TDEE or Total Daily Energy Expenditure. Is the amount of calories you burn all day. From before you wake up in the morning to the time you lay your head down at night to sleep and into the night. This number depends in large part on how active you are during the day (active job or hobbies) and whether you exercised that day or not. Knowing TDEE allows you to understand that calorie intake above TDEE is a calorie surplus and you will "eventually" gain weight. Anything below TDEE and you will lose weight to some extent. (see BMR)

2) BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate or RMR Resting Metabolic Rate. Is how many calories your body burns just so operate its systems, even if you don't get out of bed. If you were in a coma and in the hospital, the doctors would feed you your BMR in calories. This amount of calories ensures you have enough nutrients for vital organs to function.

Eating at BMR and staying in bed should maintain things as long as you do nothing at all. The only people who should be eating below BMR are folks who have had Gastric Bypass, 500-700 cals/day, or people who are morbidly obese and only for an extremely short time and only prescribed by a Certified Nutritionist/Dietician.

Ideally you should be eating something like 500-760 cal below your TDEE every day. I know this is controversal and some will tell you to eat less than this because it worked for their cousin, but most knowledgeable people will not advocate dramatic calorie cuts becuase it tends not to work and could even be detrimental to your health. The tricky part is that BMR and TDEE are both ESTIMATES based on formulas that work for most people. If you actuall ate less than TDEE for a long period of time and didn't lose weight, then you weren't eating below TDEE (Keep in mind that almost all calorie figures are also estimates unless you cook all of your own food, log everything and weigh everything to the last gram, and that almost all exercise "calorie burn" figures are also estimates based on your age and weight and their accuracy varies widely. Sadly most gym machines and most people underestimate their intake and overestimate their calorie burn).

Plateaus are pretty common. If you are sure you are eating below your TDEE every day, then keep doing what you are doing and the weight will come off in time. Remember, there are lots of other things going on that can keep the scale from moving even though you are below calories for the week (water retention, undigested food, muscle repair which retains water), but over the long term, it will even out. If you really aren't moving on the scale after 3-4 weeks of being below TDEE, then you probably need to adjust your calories downward a couple of hundred and try that for 2-3 weeks. You appear to be well below your BMR, which is not healthy in the long term. If you follow the instructions used by MFP when you sign up, that process should work for you as it isn't bad. If you insert your BMR, tell them how active you are and your goal. The MFP calorie goal should be what you try to eat every day. 3200 sounds about right if your BMR and TDEE calculations are correct. Exercise calories is another hot topic. MFP includes them in your daily calorie goal, and if all your figures are correct there is no problem with that. I usually try to eat back 70-75% of those exercise calories to try to even out overestimations by myself or by my HRM.

I hope that helps a little.

If your caloried intake is doable and you are not feeling hungry, I would leave it where it is at. It may be the content of what you are eating. Our fitness coach has given us food intake guide lines: 1) Minimum 25 grams of fiber, 2) max of 25 grams of Fat, Minimum of 64 oz of water, eat mini meals about every 3 hours. 200-250 calories per mini meal. When I really focus on this I do not have any cravings and I shaved off 19.5 lbs in six weeks.

It could also be that your exercises are the same day to day. (not sure what your exercise routines are) Our coach tells us to confuse the muscles. Use a different machine. If you do the treadmill all the time try the bike or the elliptical, or increase your crossramp or incline and resistance. On the ellipticle try a auto program if yours have them and try to keep the strides per minute increased from where you currently are now. For example: if your strides average in the 140's, push them to the 150's. It may help to get the motabilism going again.