TDEE / BMR question

TDEE - that is your total daily energy expenditure. It is the amount of calories your body needs every day, so that is the one you need to eat less than.

Forget about BMR for the most part although a lot of people recommend eating above your BMR so your number should be somewhere between your TDEE and your BMR.

Just make sure you eat above your BMR. I was told to not worry about my BMR, so I was doing my TDEE -20% and was only netting like 500 cals a day, because my workouts were so vigorous.

Just make sure you eat above your BMR. I was told to not worry about my BMR, so I was doing my TDEE -20% and was only netting like 500 cals a day, because my workouts were so vigorous.

When calculating your TDEE, you have to state your level of activity. So if you set that to "vigorous" the calculator should automatically adjust the suggested intake (up it).

Right, but on the calculator I used... I have a desk job and I only workout 5 times a week for an hour/hour and a half.. SO, it wasnt telling me to choose vigorous, I had to figure that out by looking at my net cals.

The Scooby calculator allows you to select how often you work out. Try that

I too find it a bit bewildering the BMR and TDEE.
I get the BMR you can't eat below that regularly without consequences, but TDEE seems to be a useless stat, i've lost weight eating at and below BMR, i've lost weight eating below TDEE aswell, TDEE is too high for an obese person, so to eat healthy requires either eating way too little or forcing yourself to eat alot of uneccesary stuff to pad out the nutrients/calories and then if you add exercise it's even worse. Least that's my take

so if eating below the TDEE by any amount and then exercising on top of that would put you below BMR overall unless you ate back those calories or limited your exercise which defeats the purpose of exercising them away in the first place other then increase in fitness, but that in turn pushes your TDEE and BMR up so you have to eat more the next time, am i missing something here?.

I went with MFP's advisory to lose 1Kg a week and did that for the first 3 months and lost around 1Kg a week almost on an exact schedule, i was eating well below what i should've been based on the knowledge i have now, but it was working. Then i hit my first stall accompanied by an increase in Cross Training/Biking over the Treadmill and introducing a regular weight routine. still losing some weight since currently hovering around 20Kg's lost for 3 weeks but every now and then my fat % drops a little bit too.

My job as a Forklift/Storeman in a usually busy warehouse, puts me around 3400 a day as TDEE including sleeping and after work sitting around.
eating 20% below that is still too much calorie intake for me, don't know how i managed it b4, well yes i do junk food, sugar drinks, and half chicken and chips almost every day now i struggle to get in 1600 let alone over 2000 but it's much healthier food options.

My BMR would be around 1800 if it's normal which i doubt thats the case. i did a baseline 24hour Heart Rate monitoring of an average day from 10pm the night b4 to 10pm the following day, included sleep, getting ready for work, work (driving to and from) and post work sitting at home entertaining myself.

6 hours of sleep = 555 calories
11 hours - getting ready for work. work and coming home = 2186 (this was a light/moderate day as far as workload can be alot worse like today which no doubt woulda been 15-25% higher)
6.5 Hours - at home again, watching TV and gaming on the computer = 676
missed a half an hour somewhere i think i started the previous night at 10:30pm not 10pm

on a workout day which is 5-6 days a week i burn between 700-1000 calories in a 60-80min session.

doing the calculations based on that day my TDEE was 3417
-20% 683 = 2736, no way in hell i could eat that much and that wasn't even an exercise day.
2000-2100 is more achievable if i force it but still feels too filling specially on a work day when we get no set breaks so it's eat on the go. 1600 without eating back the excessive calories i was burning was my sweat spot when i started, that was below my hypothetical BMR.