BMR + exercise calories vs TDEE minus 20%

Hi everyone, i'm not new to MFP but this is my first post. I've done lots of reading about how important it is to eat your exercise calories and/or to make sure you at least net your BMR. I got stuck in the 1200 mindset for the longest time that i'm sure I did some metabolic damage so i'm slowly starting to increase my calories to 1300 and up. I do calorie confusion quite often where one day a week i'll have a very high day (i.e. 2100) but then it will even out throughout the week as i'll watch my calories and meet BMR or go over based on my exercise for the day. However, at the end of each week, according to the weekly graph i'm almost always 1000+ calories under my weekly calorie goal.

I don't have much left to lose, last i weighed in at 122 but I fluctuate 3-5 lbs regularly so let's just say i'm 125 for ease. I'm 5'3" and 30 years old and i'm roughly 20% body fat. I workout 5 days a week (3 days of running, and 2 days of strength training with a personal trainer along with another 15-20 minutes of cardio after my training session). Ideally I would like to be 120 lbs and I fully expect the last few pounds to take longer to disappear and i'm trying to be realistic that I should be setting a goal of .50 lb a week loss or even less.

My main question is to all of you, and this is purely an opinion based question. Do you prefer to set your calories as your BMR and then include your exercise calories and eat those back OR do you prefer to set your daily calorie goal as your TDEE - 20% and then not include your exercise calories?

Thanks!
Ashley

Considering your goal, to dump those last few lbs and lower your body fat, I would suggest something I did that worked pretty well, but it takes more than a calculator unfortunately, and I suspect what you really want is a lower body fat percentage. I ate what I thought my maintenance was for a few weeks while working out blah, blah, blah and adjusted upwards, in a surplus, but at the same time, upped my weight routine and basically 5X5'd it with the big compound lifts adding weight where I could, added in 2 sessions of burpees a week and added another 3 hours of steady state cardio a week. What actually happened is that surplus of calories eneded up being my maintenancew calories 3 different times over about 16 weeks andI dropped my body fat percentage faster than any other time. I never gained any actual weight to speak of, but muscle mass went up. I'd do it a gain, but it really kicked the shyt ou tof me. Basically forget trying to work out the numbers and just pick one, then work with that in the field and make your adjustments there, not before.

People have a tendency to eat too few calories hoping to lose fat quicker, but end of sabotaging themselves by lowering their metabolism and losing some muscle mass, it's a visous circle because when people fail, they just end up putting on weight, but actually end up with more body fat than when they first started, and each subsequent effort to lose weight, it just compounds itself.

By eating at maintenance like I've described, we gain weight, mostly water at this time, but nevertheless, we as well, start to repair our metabolism and when adding additional calories creating a surplus, like I've described we're allowing our body to make a decision of where that weight is going to go. By either adding exercie or increasing the intensity and duration of our existing regime, the body really doesn't have a choice, it trys to add muscle in this anabolic environment, but because of the added exercise that surplus actually becomes a new maintenance level and if that extra intensity worked properly, we'll soon find ourselves in a deficit all the while not only repairing our metabolism, but increasing it. We then up our calories again' the body has the same options as before, build muscle and/or retain fat. What were doing is trying to gain muscle with our inreased metaolism creating a calorie deficit on the same calorie allotment that was previously a surplus. This works best when someone has been on a low calorie diet and sedentary. Time frame is going to depend on the individual, but generally i would think the more intense and more weight is used the better and quicker results a person gets.