How many cals should I be eating?

Ah ok. I thought this said how many CATS should I be eating. The correct answer to that is 5.... 5 cats per day.

You lose weight by being under your BMR, which is higher than 1200 cals. Never eat less than 1200, and eat back all your exercise calories.

Gack. No no no.

So, you use energy all day long. You eat food to replace/fuel that energy expenditure.

Exercises come in calories, food comes in calories.

Your body uses a lot of energy to process toxins, and circulate blood, and exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. BMR, your basal metabolic rate, is the amount of calories your body uses to perform those functions. Comatose in a bed, you burn your BMR.

Never eat less than your BMR, because you need to circulate blood and process toxins and have hair that doesn't fall out.

Now, over and above your BMR, you walk around. You pick things up and put them down. You have conversations and blah blah blah. The sum of all the energy you burn all day, including BMR and these extra things, is your Total Daily Energy Expenditure or TDEE.

You lose weight by eating less than your TDEE. Conservation of mass, conservation of energy. More calories out than in equals weight loss.

But if you eat too little, you can screw that up. Your metabolism is like a fire, and you want to keep it stoked and roaring with fresh fuel. If you stop fueling the fire, it dwindles. Your body doesn't perform certain functions optimally anymore to conserve energy. You're not as hungry anymore. Your caloric deficit isn't as great, and your weight loss hits the brakes.

Edited to add: And absolutely, under no circumstances, EVER eat less than five felines of average weight per day.

You lose weight by being under your BMR, which is higher than 1200 cals. Never eat less than 1200, and eat back all your exercise calories.

Actually, you should not eat below your BMR. This is the number of calories your body would burn if you were in a coma state. If you eat less than this your metabolism will slow down in response.

So far what's worked for me is calculating TDEE and subtracting 15-20%. My BMR is a little above 1400 and I'm eating about 1650 a day.

I've chosen to eat dogs instead of cats. How many?

*sigh* So the 1590 calories I've been consuming are too little?

*sigh* So the 1590 calories I've been consuming are too little?

Unless you're deceptively short, probably. Don't get down about it though. It takes quite some time, from what I understand, to do irrevocable metabolic damage.

Try to run your numbers and arrive at a reasonable deficit from TDEE. In measuring progress, look at long trends and not daily fluctuations, and I think you'll see consistent losses. Works for everyone as long as you estimate your TDEE within a broad margin and you don't cheat or inaccurately measure food.

Holy crap! That's low intake for your size. Good news, you can and should eat more.

Try 15- 20% less than TDEE. You may notice a short term fluctuation but you won't undo your work. I got big eating whatever whenever, not from being a hundred calories off in my deficit.

The projections won't mean much now. If you reset your goal manually to a deficit off TDEE, then do not log exercise calories, eat to your calorie goal regardless of exercise.