Should I be netting my BMR?

Here's the deal with the TDEE method...you're going to have days when you're over your BMR and days where you might be slightly under. I don't look at it day to day...I look at it over the course of a week. If I'm netting below my BMR calories for a week I make adjustments...if I'm netting over my BMR for the week things are fine. I have different burns on different days, so I have to look at a longer time frame than day to day.

If you are occasionally below your BMR, it's not a big deal...it's when you consistently net below your BMR for extended periods of time that issues can arise.

If you are doing the TDEE - 20% method, then forget logging your exercise and "net calories". Your exercise should be all included in the TDEE. You could eat a little less on days you don't work out or a little more on days you do work out.

I log my exercise as 1 calorie so I can keep track of the days I work out but it doesn't change my net calories on my food log.

I am reading a book called, The New Rules of Lifting for Women. It is a book on adding resistance training (weight lifting) to your workouts. I found a couple of interesting passages that I want to share with you. This is in reference to how many calories we should be eating in a day. (I am still working on wrapping my head around the concept that I need to eat more calories to lose weight!) The first passage is in response to the common practice of cutting 500 calories from your daily requirement in order to lose one pound a week:

“It takes about 2,800 calories to build a pound of muscle. If you’re slicing 3,500 calories a week from your diet while at the same time engaging in a workout program desiged to increase strength and thus build new muscle tissue, from where will you get those 2,800 calories? My guess is that you’d actually lose muscle if you did these workouts with a 500 calorie a day deficit.”

“If you feel that you must eat below your predicted maintenance level, cut a maximum of 300 calories a day. No matter what, eat more calories on workout days than on nonworkout days. Reassess your strategy after four weeks. If you are chronically tired, having lousy or unproductive workouts, and losing sleep ...then you need to increase your calories until the problems go away. That is, eat more HIGH QUALITY calories from all three macronutrients.”

So I guess my point here is that you need to question your diet strategy. If you are trying to lose weight by severely restricting calories you may end up losing muscle, which will cause that rebound effect when you stop dieting. If all of your exercise is aerobic/cardio, you might be losing muscle and slowing your metabolism as well. The trick is figuring out how to balance your macronutrients so that you are getting enough protein to allow your body to build muscle while at the same time losing weight. My new goal is to do resistance training three times a week. On those days, I increase my protein/carb intake (probably about 250-300 calories). Specifically, I add a protein shake to my diet immediately after my workout. From what I read, it is important to give your body the essential amino acids right away so it can use it to rebuild your challenged muscles. On the other four days, I am going to eat my regular number of calories. In any event, from all that I have read, eating below your BMR is really tough on your metabolism.

Do you think that my exercise that I listed is lightly active? Bear in mind, when I am not doing these things I am sitting doing nothing.

Not likely. Go and use a real TDEE calculator like this one: http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/

If you use the TDEE method and take exercise under consideration in the calculation, then when you log the exercise in mfp just put as calories 1 because the nutrients would be adjusted as well. But make sure that TDEE-% is above your BMR. If your exercise schedule varies a lot and it is quite unpredictable, then you can do TDEE sedentary -% and log your exercise as full calories burnt and then you eat them.

Do you think that my exercise that I listed is lightly active? Bear in mind, when I am not doing these things I am sitting doing nothing.

I used Fat 2 Fit Radio's calculators, and I settled my calories between light and moderate to give myself a cushion either way (I lift heavy 3x weekly and do light cardio on off days, with 1 rest day). I'm probably close to moderate, but that way if I go over with eating, it's fine. If I stick to it I'm still only at a 100-200 kcal deficit. I have the whole thing printed out and stuck on my fridge, and I set MFP to those calories, with 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat.

If I find in a month that it's not working because I've set myself too high or too low, I will make adjustments. But I do think a cushion is important because you're not going to eat the same every day, you're not going to move the same every day, and there's going to be special occasions and such where you're going to eat twice what you should, and that way you're covered. Look at the long term and use patience.

I was getting way too involved logging every single exercise and trying to figure out how much that burned. It's much easier for me to pick a number and just log what I eat. Either way, I'm eating healthier and about as much as I should be eating, I'm moving in some way every single day, and it's a vast improvement from where I was 3 months ago.

Don't get too hung up on the details and keep the big picture in mind.

I found Fat2Fit's method of "eat like you're at goal weight" very fascinating and thought "ok why not? makes sense" so that's what I'm doing. So that when I do hit my goal weight, I can just keep going and don't have to change anything and it'll definitely be a lifestyle for me then, so that's win/win in my book because that won't put me in danger of having to make major adjustments yet again and risk falling off the wagon and the weight coming back (again).

Edit: Here's the link: http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/