What's the reasoning behind eating AT LEAST your BMR?

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  • naomibabes3
    naomibabes3 Posts: 23
    Please help with this one.........Can I ask what you're supposed to do if 20% off your TDEE is less than your BMR?

    Should I up my exercise/activity so my TDEE is higher so minus 20% is still more than BMR? - Seems the healthiest most sensible way to follow this rule.

    Just eat my BMR?

    OR

    Eat TDEE minus 20% anyway?

    I'm not convinced my numbers are right, I worked out BMR to 1700 (roughly) and TDEE to 2100 which is you take 20% means I should be eating 1600 calories. Does my BMR sound high at 1700?? I figured it would be around the 1200 calories mark! I've been following a 1300 hundred calorie diet (on the advice of MFP) and I'm worried I'm actually eating far too little.

    Any help would be much appreciated, it may sound ignorant but I've never heard these things before and I'm now thinking I'm not losing weight in the healthiest/most effective way.

    Thank you.
  • jst1986
    jst1986 Posts: 204 Member
    Does the same theory work for all weights? As a big guy my BMR is way up above 2750 and I'm really struggling to eat healthily and get anywhere near that number!
  • 3foldchord
    3foldchord Posts: 2,918 Member
    I would guess, if your TDEE and BMR are that close, you probably don't have much to lose and -10% might be a meter, healthier, more maintainable goal.
    Please help with this one.........Can I ask what you're supposed to do if 20% off your TDEE is less than your BMR?

    Should I up my exercise/activity so my TDEE is higher so minus 20% is still more than BMR? - Seems the healthiest most sensible way to follow this rule.

    Just eat my BMR?

    OR

    Eat TDEE minus 20% anyway?

    Thanks!
  • sanndandi
    sanndandi Posts: 300 Member
    It's more about establishing a healthy body economy. Calories are the monetary system. Your BMR is the bill your body has to pay to sustain the roof over its head. Think of a bank where you keep your calories. You have to keep paying your BMR or the bank will start seizing your valuable property (muscles). You invest calories into a diversified portfolio and you can watch your body prosper (muscle growth) while trimming away unnecessary expenditure (fat stores). It's pretty basic budgeting really only with some slight mechanical differences.
    Like how you explained that. Makes a lot of sense
  • IntoTheSky
    IntoTheSky Posts: 390 Member
    can your body tell the difference between losing calories to exercise and losing calories to BMR? my guess is probably not.

    Yes. It can. In exercise, you are working muscles. Even in cardio. You are strengthening your heart and lungs and legs. If you do not eat enough to feed those muscles, your body will pull from THEM to find the energy it needs to still function. Assuming that you are not bedridden, you at least move *some*. Yes, you will still lose weight. However, you will lose muscle and will be all weak and jiggly. If that is your goal, then, by all means, go for it. But, most people would like to have good skin and hair and be firm (not even ripped, just firm) and have all of their organs work properly.
  • tgotthold
    tgotthold Posts: 7
    I am no fitness guru or nutrition expert, but I would guess that BMR would be based on your LEAN body mass and not your ACTUAL body mass. That is something that the BMR calculators cannot even come close to estimating. Meaning that the calculator would be more accurate the "skinnier" you become (or the closer your lean body mass is to the "estimated percentage" the calculator uses).

    For a lack of articulation....fat is stored energy. The less you have of it, the more important it becomes that you eat at or above your ACTUAL BMR. The more you have....well....it shouldn't be an immediate concern since your body has stored energy for times of hardship.
  • naomibabes3
    naomibabes3 Posts: 23
    Thanks 3foldchord, I've got about another 40lbs to lose to get within a healthy BMI which I would have considered a lot! I'm still in the Obese catergory of things. I put Sedentary in as my activity because I do a desk job so maybe that's why the difference is so small? I really don't know and this is all so new to me!
  • fbmandy55
    fbmandy55 Posts: 5,263 Member
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  • AnabolicKyle
    AnabolicKyle Posts: 489 Member

    Your maintenance numbers are reversed, it takes 6 calories to maintain muscle, and only 2 or 3 to maintain fat.

    thanks!

    thats what i meant.
  • 714rah714
    714rah714 Posts: 759 Member
    It's just far too much of a deficit. You will lose a lot of muscle mass along with some fat loss. If you lose a lot of muscle, your weight loss will slow.
    Because we all have so much muscle, oh wait a minute, no, thats fat, never mind.
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
    How did thread last past 3 or 4 posts? There's no arguing the other side. Whatever. Thread needs more dancing



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  • KathrynKennewell108
    KathrynKennewell108 Posts: 72 Member
    Here here!! OMG! The self righteous crap!
  • KathrynKennewell108
    KathrynKennewell108 Posts: 72 Member
    Exactly! Hey, let's all eat 1200cal of crap (say, 1200 cal worth of Tim Tams for example for those chocaholics out there) and compare the real life results to 1200cal of quality nutrition (1200 is just a hypothetical number for all you namby pambies out there). It's not rocket science. How many times do you want to headbutt the wall before turning to plain ole every day common sense. I used to be on a similar support group forum, and it was day in day out *****ing over mere grams of consumption, and then listening to these same people have endless conversations at a Relay For Life event over pizza delivery fantasies, and hearing their stats that they were all hovering around their ideal weights ranging from 50 odd kgs to 60 odd kgs was enough to make me sick. Who gives a ****e about the finer points? Go have a nutritious meal, look in the mirror, learn to like yourself again, and get on with your life!
  • lazykerry
    lazykerry Posts: 31 Member
    It's probably a good rule of thumb not to eat below your BMR if you're already at a healthy weight, but your organs are not going to starve to death if you have 100 pounds of fat on your body to feed them.
  • BlackTimber
    BlackTimber Posts: 230 Member
    It's probably a good rule of thumb not to eat below your BMR if you're already at a healthy weight, but your organs are not going to starve to death if you have 100 pounds of fat on your body to feed them.

    Sounds logical but it doesn't typically work that way. If a person is 100 pounds overweight then they are most likely insulin resistant to some extent and will most definitely be leptin resistant. Leptin is the "satiety" hormone that is located mainly in your adipose tissue and makes a connection with your hypothalamus. Leptin is what tells your body that you have had enough to eat, it also plays a part in controlling your metabolism. When eating at a deficit beneath your BMR, your endocrine system will see that as a time of famine. Your metabolism will slow down and your body will start saving your fat and using your muscle as energy. On top of that by being insulin resistant you will have more insulin in your blood stream than you should, this also prevents your body from being able to use the stored fat. You actually have it completely backwards. A body that is in the "normal" fat range will have a more "normal" reaction to the reduced calories. Our bodies want homeostasis, but at some point things get out of control and we enter the world of the obese. It's at this point that our bodies no longer do a good job at increasing or slowing our metabolism to keep thing under control. It's all about hormones. Hunger is hormonal, as is satiety. The problem in part is that no one really know the whole story - new things are being discovered all the time.
  • WendyTerry420
    WendyTerry420 Posts: 13,274 Member
    Just something I was thinking about, as I see people repeatedly say that you shouldn't eat below your BMR. The only explanation I've seen is along the lines of, "Because that's what your body needs to do its most basic functions," but that doesn't really make sense considering the whole point of a caloric deficit is to eat less than what your body needs to function so that it takes from its stored energy.

    By that logic, and overweight person could still survive off their body fat without eating a single thing. It simply doesn't work that way though. If you don't eat a minimum amount of food each day, then you are putting undue stress on your body. In the long term, it can wreak havoc on hormone levels, especially cortisol.
  • DawnieB1977
    DawnieB1977 Posts: 4,248 Member
    I doubt your BMR is 1500. That's Probably TDEE.

    Um, yes it is. I'm a 35 year old 5'6 female who weighs 163. I workout 5 times a week as stated and am always on the go. I calculated my TDEE once, but can't remember what it was. It was over 2000 though.

    According to this http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ my BMR is 1509.

    K


    k - very humble!

    So is my personal trainer wrong saying I should eat between 1400 and 1500 calories a day? My friend is shorter than me and weighs more than I do and she eats around the same and is losing steadily.

    I honestly think I would gain weight if I ate more!
  • Greenrun99
    Greenrun99 Posts: 2,065 Member
    k - very humble!

    So is my personal trainer wrong saying I should eat between 1400 and 1500 calories a day? My friend is shorter than me and weighs more than I do and she eats around the same and is losing steadily.

    I honestly think I would gain weight if I ate more!

    Depends on how many times and how much you workout.. Most PT's aren't nutritionists and they give bad advice.. Reasoning?? You lose weight, they look good, you start eating, you gain weight, then you go back to them to lose more weight = More $$ for them.

    If you ate correctly for your activity level, you wouldn't gain weight.. most people would be shocked to know what they could eat and don't.

    This whole topic should just be closed when it turned into the first poster arguing with everyone.
  • WendyTerry420
    WendyTerry420 Posts: 13,274 Member
    I've been averaging nearly 1000 calories burned a day and lemme tell ya its hard to eat that back without cheating.

    It is *never* "cheating" to maintain a reasonable calorie deficit. WTH?
  • WendyTerry420
    WendyTerry420 Posts: 13,274 Member
    I doubt your BMR is 1500. That's Probably TDEE.

    Why? That seems reasonable to me. My BMR is around 1500 and my TDEE is closer to 1900-2100 (I forget it's been awhile since I calculated it.)

    1500 is an awfully low TDEE.

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