Calorie Decifit/BMI Method (Please Help)

It is assuming you work out what you said consistently and do not eat your exercise calories. My formulas are 10x current weight minus 500-1000 eat most exercise calories back. Or 10x your goal weight and eat only exercise calories over 500. Good luck.

Hello All,

I’m so very confused about what weight loss technique to ultimately use. I hear different things and now I have mixed feelings. I’m going to attempt the Calorie Deficit/BMI technique. Were you use a BMI/TDEE/or Calorie Deficit Calculator to determine the amount of calories you should consume in order to lose.

I’m currently 241.4 and my weight loss goal is 168.0. Based on the various calculators I used, I should consume somewhere between 1800-2400 calories daily with exercise in order to lose weight. This just doesn’t seem or feel right. How can I lose eating this much? Has anyone tried this method? Does it work? I’m starting to think it may be beneficial for slow weight loss only.

I would like to lose 15lbs or more a month. Please help.

I really think you should re-think your goals, 15 lbs a month is 3-4 lbs a week, to do this you will have to eat so little that you will not be able to sustain it for the time your need to - and you will be miserable

If you are serious about this life style change think of it that way - try for 1-2 lbs a week 1 lb is already cutting you calories by 515 a day under your TDEE - I mean this already hard to do why make it like you set yuorself up for failure?

I still don't understand how many calories I should intake to lose 1-2lbs a week...

Have a look at this thread:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12

I did a lot of reading and researched the TDEE / BMR numbers, etc. as I had been eating the recommended 1200 cals for months. I did really well at first and lost 7 lbs pretty quickly. then nada.... I couldn't figure out why since I was only eating between 800 - 1200 cals per day net. Doesn't a large deficit equal large weight loss? Not for me...

After spending a lot of time on different websites, and doing different calculators, here is what has worked for me:

http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator/

I didn't want to base my numbers on exercise that I MIGHT do, even though I'm consistent, so I factored in my TDEE at the Sedentary rate - 15% (I don't have much to lose).

I am 5'5" and currently 136.4 lbs. My BF is 22.7 % and am 40 years old. I went to the Scooby Workshop website to calculate my calorie needs for the day and use those numbers. If you know your bodyfat % then a more accurate calculation is using the Katch-McArdle formula according to them. These stats give me:

BMR - 1405
TDEE - 1686 (at Sedentary)
Calorie Requirements to lose 0.5 lb per week - 1433 (this is at a 15% deficit)

Sooooo, what I did after that is reset my MFP daily goals at 1450 cals per day NET! I eat back ALL of my exercise calories.

The second thing I did was purchase a HRM to accurately guage what I was burning during my workouts. You would be surprised at the discrepancies between estimates! I do an intense bootcamp class 3 x per week and run on my off days. Either a few miles or sprint intervals, depending on how I feel that day. Depending on what we are doing in bootcamp, my burn could be anywhere from 240 cals to 350 cals....WAY under what I thought!!! If I was to eat back what I GUESSED I was burning, then I would be eliminating any deficit I had for the day. Keep in mind that the muscle you're building will burn more calories at rest, and you get a great 'afterburn' from weights that will last for hours after, so even though you're not burning as large of an amount during your workout, the after effects far outweigh doing just straight cardio!!! Heavy lifting is the best thing you can do for your body!! I used to do both on the same day, but have stopped doing that. A little bit of something 6-7 days per week is better than a huge amount of exercise 3-4 days per week. (for me anyway).

The last thing I do is stop stressing and trust the process. I eat whatever I want and try to make sure that it fits into my calories for the WEEK. I've been eating Halloween chocolate like it's going out of style (yesterday that's all I had for lunch), and I was down a half lb this morning. I was way over my calories on wednesday, and was under Monday and yesterday. The little weekly graph on MFP shows me at an average of 1453 cals per day for the week so far.

I weigh myself every morning, but only log the progress if it's less than the last entry. sometimes there will be 2 weeks of no change, but then all of a sudden there's a 1 lb loss showing on my graph. If I take the total loss and divide it by the amount of weeks, then I AVERAGE a 0.5 lb loss per week.

This method has been easily sustainable for me....slow and steady with zero deprivation!!

Hope this helps, and good luck to you!!

You should at least have a 500 a day calorie deficiency. That being said, it's subtracting off 500 calories from your maintenance, or the caloric intake to be the same weight.

This number is stated since 3500 ~= 1lb of fat. If you subtract 500 a day for 7 days, that would be 500 x 7, which is 3500.

The daily goal should be close to your BMR, so your organs and mind stay in tact while you're losing weight. DO NOT dip under your calorie goal on an average basis or your body will start pushing itself into starvation mode (slow weight loss and higher fat storing from foods). You'll ruin your goals that way.

Good luck! Make sure your diet consist of non-factory produced foods and you'll do great!

Have a look at this thread:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12

^^ Much more in detail on the subject.