BMR and TDEE

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I am hoping someone can answer this question. I have spent the last two days reading about BMR and TDEE and I am still a little lost. I have calculated my BMR to be 1215 and my TDEE to be 1883. I exercise 5 days/ week for 60 minutes each session. 3 out of the 5 days I run either outside or on the treadmill. I am currently training for a half marathon.

My question is this: how many calories should I be consuming if I want to maintain and how many calories do I need to consume to lose?

Thanks!

Replies

  • karenmi
    karenmi Posts: 242 Member
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    Hi there - I posted this reply to another thread about this topic earlier today, so thought I'd share it with you here too!

    "I too found the whole idea confusing, but yesterday I went to this website: http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/ and listened to "The F2F Philosophy". Now it all makes perfect sense to me, so perhaps go there and listen to that podcast (it's about 20 minutes long) and hopefully it will help you too! "
  • liftingbro
    liftingbro Posts: 2,029 Member
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    I am hoping someone can answer this question. I have spent the last two days reading about BMR and TDEE and I am still a little lost. I have calculated my BMR to be 1215 and my TDEE to be 1883. I exercise 5 days/ week for 60 minutes each session. 3 out of the 5 days I run either outside or on the treadmill. I am currently training for a half marathon.

    My question is this: how many calories should I be consuming if I want to maintain and how many calories do I need to consume to lose?

    Thanks!

    TDEE is:
    REE+AEE+TEF

    Your REE should be around 1215 (same as BMR). AEE varies depending on weight and height, but a 140 pound woman ran for an hour you might burn 500 caolries. TEE( thermic effect of food) is about 10% set value of your calorie intake.

    So if you average about 500 calories in activity a day and eat about 1600 calories per day you'd probably be around 1875 calories for TDEE. If you eat your full TDEE value (1875) you should be close to maintenance, if you want to lose take off about 500 calories(1375).
  • kirstyfairhead
    kirstyfairhead Posts: 220 Member
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    Are you rather short or very slim?? as your BMR is very low at 1215!!

    However, to answer the question
    Your BMR is your 'doing nothing' number
    You then need to consider how active you are in your 'normal' day and adjust your number accordingly
    (You will find plenty of on-line calculators which will give you a number for various activity levels - sedentary, lightly active etc etc
    You then need to add your exercise burn
    This will give you your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure)
    Some people will average out their exercise so that this number stays the same every day rather than have it fluctuate in line with their actual activity.
    Either way, once you have your numbers it is fairly simple, to maintain you eat the same as your TDEE and to lose you eat less than this. It takes approx 3,500 cals of deficit to lose 1lb in weight.
    It is generally considered bad practice to drop any lower than 1200cals or to have a deficit of more than 500 cals per day.

    Hope this helps
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    Eat your TDEE (1883) to maintain or anything less than that to lose. 15-20% less is usually what's recommended, so you'd be eating 1600-1500 to lose.
  • sweet_little_toni
    sweet_little_toni Posts: 4 Member
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    I am 62 inches tall and weigh about 104 lbs. If I am to eat 1883 calories per day to maintain, what would the caloric intake be to lose weight? And is that before or after my fitbit calculations have been uploaded to MFP? Am I looking at the net calories? I guess I needed to know what number I would be looking at.