My BMR is: 2,053 calories/day*

Our church did a weight loss challenge a few years ago with our local hospital. They told us that whatever weight you want to be at, for men, multiply it by 11 and that is the amount of calories you should consume daily. For women it was your goal times 10. Not sure if that helps, but thought it was interesting anyways!

Our church did a weight loss challenge a few years ago with our local hospital. They told us that whatever weight you want to be at, for men, multiply it by 11 and that is the amount of calories you should consume daily. For women it was your goal times 10. Not sure if that helps, but thought it was interesting anyways!

That's interesting....any idea how they worked that out?

BMR = how many calories you burn if you lay in bed and don't move a muscle.

TDEE = BMR * multipler = how many calories you actually burn every day, on average.

Use the TDEE - x calories to determine how much you should eat.

Other people will post links to calculators to use.

So i am thinking this all wrong? Yes, it seems

Many times the wrong terms are used. They may have meant TDEE and said BMR because they didn't know better.

Which is then scary for the advice that was shared.

Same as the advice to eat at goal weight times a simple multiplier with absolutely no consideration of activity level or amount to lose.

In the ball-park estimates may work when you got a big ball-park, beginning of weight loss journey, but that could quickly shrink to being very non useful and slow things down unnecessarily.

And of course some calcs to figure it out yourself!

The spreadsheet linked in this post will also let you record stats, so you can see progress besides weight. Which if your exercising, will be the case many times.

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

When putting in all my information of exercising 3 x 30 mins a week and a 2 pound lost it says 1800 cals....

Listen to Haybales, use his calculator. But I just wanted to say that 2lbs a week is really only an appropriate goal for someone who has a lot of fat to lose. My guess is that 2lbs a week may give you results for a little while with 25 lbs to lose, but the results won't be ideal. 1-1.5lb/wk is probably more appropriate.

ETA: And the exercise you put in to MFP when you're setting goals is meaningless, it does not figure in to your #s at all. You are expected to add your exercise as you do it to earn extra calories, the way MFP is designed to be used.

When putting in all my information of exercising 3 x 30 mins a week and a 2 pound lost it says 1800 cals....

The site is confusing on that.
There is diet goal.
There is exercise goals.

The 2 are not combined.

Your diet goal has an assumption of no exercise done, and your exercise goal numbers have no bearing on that.

It's very sad they do it that way, because then it creates confusion when you log your exercise and are given more to eat. You think it was already included, it was not.
Deficit is there if you exercise and eat back the calories or don't exercise. Same deficit.
But potentially worse if you don't eat them back.

But MFP wants you to see quick weight loss for a bit to get hooked. Active subscribers is required to sell ads, which is how this is paid for after all.