BMR and TDEE can't be right!

2 things. I think your calorie intake is too high. You can probably bring that safely down atleast another 500 as long as you are eating the right things and following your nutrient intakes, including a vitamin. For females the need of caloric intake is even lower than for men. The BMR tells you what you burn in a day and if you don't eat a lower calorie count than that you will just be maintaining weight less your exercise which sounds like that is very high. Stay away from everything processed, or fake, and have a higher vegetable in take. Carbs at the beginning of the day and more protein later in the day. Smaller meals preferably 6 times will boost your metabolism.

Seconds it sounds like you want to make some serious changes. I just watched the documentary fat, sick, and nearly dead. I will start my juicing fast soon. For me I'm only doing it for 7-10 but you may want to be more lengthy.
Definitely recommend watching that.

Feel free to message me or add me if you need any help. I work in the fitness equipment industry and have many resources to find out what is missing. My job is pretty much to find the missing piece or pieces to your fitness puzzle.

You're new here, aren't you?

If you are sedentary then it is perfectly okay to eat below your BMR. At 2 lb / week loss you should just keep doing what you are doing.

The BMR tells you what you burn in a day and if you don't eat a lower calorie count than that you will just be maintaining weight

Nope, that would be your TDEE, not your BMR.

2 things. I think your calorie intake is too high. You can probably bring that safely down atleast another 500 as long as you are eating the right things and following your nutrient intakes, including a vitamin. For females the need of caloric intake is even lower than for men. The BMR tells you what you burn in a day and if you don't eat a lower calorie count than that you will just be maintaining weight less your exercise which sounds like that is very high. Stay away from everything processed, or fake, and have a higher vegetable in take. Carbs at the beginning of the day and more protein later in the day. Smaller meals preferably 6 times will boost your metabolism.

Seconds it sounds like you want to make some serious changes. I just watched the documentary fat, sick, and nearly dead. I will start my juicing fast soon. For me I'm only doing it for 7-10 but you may want to be more lengthy.
Definitely recommend watching that.

Feel free to message me or add me if you need any help. I work in the fitness equipment industry and have many resources to find out what is missing. My job is pretty much to find the missing piece or pieces to your fitness puzzle.

Please ignore this. Not correct at all. And don't juice, come on now, eat your food. Ah...people...really.

I understand the OP's frustration and confusion about the basic online calculators (though, OP it sounds like you're doing really well). What I've always wondered about is this: shouldn't an obese person actually have more muscle than a lean person, simply from carrying around more weight? In that case, wouldn't a very low calorie diet be counter-productive? Shouldn't the goal be to maintain as much muscle as possible while losing as much fat as possible?

Seriously, though, the amount of focus you are putting into this is great.

A few months ago I started to really track what my calorie intake and calorie burns were.

I created a spreadsheet, I have one sheet for each month, and I have a row for each day. Every morning I input the information from the day before from MFP: calories, carbs, fat, protein, sugar and sodium, as well as minutes of workout time and how much I burned according to my HRM.

From my workout information, I've been able to accurately assess what my BMR and TDEE should be on http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ - From THAT information, I determined how much I HAD been eating in relation to my TDEE - turns out I've been eating an average of approximately 90% of my TDEE per day - I'm currently aiming to steadily decrease that to an average of 85%.

I feel very in-control and aware of my progress. In four months I've lost 2.5% body fat, lost 2 lbs of fat and gained 7.5 lbs of lean body mass. This is great because it's in line with my goals. And you can do the same thing by adjusting your calories and macros to meet YOUR goals, whatever they are.

It's a matter of input and output, you input certain things (calories, nutrients, exercise) and certain things come out of it - your results - weight change, muscle mass change, fat mass change... whatever.

What I'm saying is that it's awesome to try to look at this stuff in detail and to focus on it. People usually worry about getting overly obsessive, but I like the way I'm doing it because it turns into more of a fun experiment, which makes it less stressful.

Anyways I really recommend the http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ calculator, so far it's proven itself to be pretty accurate for ME. No idea if it will work for you, but there you go.

Good luck and keep at it!

If what you're doing now is working and your happy then I wouldn't worry too much. People say A LOT of stuff and of course everyone's an expert!! But if you're ok doing what you're doing then stick with it. Revisit if you stall/get unhappy?

Hmm I can see that you think I am obsessing :-)

But I really want to get this right. If I can lose 3lb a week instead of 2lb, I will go for it! It's really dangerous for me to be this overweight (BMI 60+) and I want to shift the first 100lb as fast as possible. Then, once I am "only" 250lb or so, I don't mind slowing down my weight loss, as I will be able to walk and go to the gym etc.

So I really don't want to be impeding my weight loss by eating 2200 when I could lose more by eating 1600.

Conversely, I don't want to damage my metabolism by going into starvation mode.

I'm frustrated that nobody agrees on anything on here!

If you're looking at anything more than 2 Lbs per week, you should be discussing a weight loss program with a medical professional. Fast and aggressive weight loss should be done under the supervision of a doctor. It is dangerous for you to be obese, but it can also be dangerous to be too aggressive, and you need a medical professional to monitor that.

2 things. I think your calorie intake is too high. You can probably bring that safely down atleast another 500 as long as you are eating the right things and following your nutrient intakes, including a vitamin. For females the need of caloric intake is even lower than for men. The BMR tells you what you burn in a day and if you don't eat a lower calorie count than that you will just be maintaining weight less your exercise which sounds like that is very high. Stay away from everything processed, or fake, and have a higher vegetable in take. Carbs at the beginning of the day and more protein later in the day. Smaller meals preferably 6 times will boost your metabolism.

Seconds it sounds like you want to make some serious changes. I just watched the documentary fat, sick, and nearly dead. I will start my juicing fast soon. For me I'm only doing it for 7-10 but you may want to be more lengthy.
Definitely recommend watching that.

Feel free to message me or add me if you need any help. I work in the fitness equipment industry and have many resources to find out what is missing. My job is pretty much to find the missing piece or pieces to your fitness puzzle.

Wow. The trifecta of broscience. 1. Undereating, 2. Different times for different types of foods, 3. Fasting.

Well done, my friend. Well done!

To the OP: You know if you are worried that the BMR and TDEE calculations are off, you can get more accurate data. For example, if you know your bodyfat percentage you can use the Katch-McArdle formula (which is based on bodyfat) instead of the Miffin-St. Jeor formula, which estimates without bodyfat. This is a great calculator that explains both: http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/ Also, if you want a moment-by-moment day-by-day track of your TDEE try wearing a Fitbit. My Fitbit shows me the days my TDEE is only 2100 and the days it is 2400 and its linked to MFP so it sends over plus or minus exercise calories so I am able to scale up or down my eating to match so that I always maintain the same deficit.

That being said, I was in a similar position to you: I was 323 pounds and I started out eating about 1300 calories a day. I had never heard of BMR and TDEE back then, and I didn't even try for 1300 calories or care about calories. I had just been diagnosed with diabetes and I was just counting carbs and trying to get my blood sugar stable. As I focused on carbs and clean foods, when I started tracking it turns out my calories were at 1300. My nutritionist was aware that those calories were low, but she was monitoring me and told me to keep going if I felt fine. I lost 2.5 pounds a week on average during that period.

However, in the last few weeks, my body changed. It wasn't satified with 1300 any more. I started targeting 1400 anyway to get enough protein. But my body kept giving me more physical hunger and I listened. I've been slowly ramping up to 1600-1700. But then as I researched, I think I found out why: When you are very overweight (have more than 75 lbs to lose), you can actually eat below your BMR for a few months. Your body wants to release fat so badly. Its not sustainable for very long. Maybe its because to weigh that much you automatically have a high bodyfat percentage, I'm not sure. All I know is that after a few months and after dropping below the 75-pounds-to-lose mark, I couldn't tolerate that large of a deficit anymore.

If you are worried that you are eating too little, be alert for signs like low energy or brittle nails, hair issues, etc. So, listen to your body. I eat very regularly. Same time breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, snack, dinner every day. I have timers on my phone. So my body is very used to the habits and its easy for me to notice when my body is acting different - getting hungry early or not being satified with the amount that used to satisfy. I really believe in being attuned to your body.

So far I'm still losing okay as i eat more. I need another week or two of data to establish a trend, but I'm sure that as I get closer to my goal weight I'll have to up my calories and I won't lose as fast. But that's just part of the process.

Thanks for all the replies folks.

I disagree about "mental hunger" because if that were the case it would happen every day. The days I wake up AFTER a day of eating 2100 or 2200 calories I am not hungry and I can do my workout and not eat anything all morning and when I finally get to eat around noon, I've not eaten for 17 or 18 hours.

But on the day after I have eaten only 1600, soon as I wake my stomach is rumbling, before I am even awake enough or conscious enough to remember who I am, let alone what I ate the day before. Therefore this cannot possibly be "mental hunger" - it's my stomach rumbling and screaming out for food.

There has to come a time where we start to listen to our bodies ... IF what they are asking for isn't unreasonable. For example, if it wanted 3,000 calories a day, a Chinese takeaway or a mound of chocolate, then I'd say NO, but if it's just a bit hungry after 1600 calories I can't see that it's a bad thing to eat a little more if that's what it needs.

On a day that I do my workout my TDEE is 3,000 so an intake that averages around 1800 is still a big deficit.

I've lost on average 2.5lb a week for 8 weeks and most days have gone over 1800.

The thing that makes me want to keep it down to 1600 is my impatience to lose faster than 2.5lb a week.

i was not throwing the number 1600 out to you. you stated that at 2000 cals a day you gained at one point in your life, and therefore felt that eating at that level or higher would cause you to gain, then you said that 1600 was suggested to you by a very trusted well known member of mfp... so i siggested that you give it a try. if you feel better at 1800 or more a day, and it works for you, then by all means, go for it. i do want to point out to you that we stretch our stomachs out after years of over eating, so if you belly is growling because you only ate 1600 calories, theres an excellent chance that you have not given enough time for your stomach to return to its normal size, and feel full with smaller amounts. at one point, i could eat 6000 cals a day, easily, and now im lucky if i can get to 2500 without feeling sick and bloated. just because your belly growls, doesnt mean your body wants food. your body has been used to abnormal amounts of food, so it thinks it needs it everyday, you need to understand that this change takes a while before the body catches on. good luck to you.