TDEE calculator

leebeebumble
leebeebumble Posts: 45 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
When I set up my account on this site is magically gave me the amount of calories I should be taking in everyday, I haven't changed them, don't even know if you can! However, after hearing a lot of talk on the boards about TDEE calculators I was interested, I went and checking on one and it said I should be eating about 400 more calories than I am. What is that about and which should I listen to? I don't feel hungry now at the calorie level this site put me on so should I just stay here?

Replies

  • skivinspannah
    skivinspannah Posts: 5 Member
    I need to know this too! Somebody please answer!! :-)
  • wild_wild_life
    wild_wild_life Posts: 1,334 Member
    TDEE means total daily energy expenditure, which is just how many calories you need to eat on an average day to maintain. It includes both daily activity (like how active you are at your job) and exercise. Many people will take a cut off their TDEE (say 20%) as their deficit. So if your TDEE is 2000, you would eat 1600 if you were doing TDEE-20%. You could also use a higher or lower percent. 20% is what most people recommend.

    MFP sets your calorie goal based on a modified version of TDEE (including daily activity but not exercise, which it expects you to log and eat separately) and how fast you tell it you want to lose. Rather than taking a percentage off, it takes a set number off for your deficit, so 1000 per day to lose 2 lbs/ wk, 500 per day to lose 1 lb/wk, etc (3500 cal deficit is 1 lb of weight loss). This works fine too, but sometimes people are too ambitious in how fast they want to lose, so their deficit will be too high, and they wont stick with their diet or will stall. The TDEE method ensures that you won't have too high a deficit, although your weight loss may be slower this way than with what MFP gives you.

    Does that answer your question?

    75+ to lose = 2lbs 
    50-75 to lose = 1.5-2lbs 
    25-50 to lose = 1-1.5lbs 
    15-25 to lose = 1lbs 
    0-15 to lose = 0.5lbs 

    This chart is meant to be a guide for how many lbs per week you can lose depending on your weight. You can lose faster if you have more to lose.
  • brisingr86
    brisingr86 Posts: 1,789 Member
    From my own experience, most of the TDEE calculators were giving me about 300 higher than what I was eating (1200). I was feeling hungry on my rest days and getting worried about starvation mode because 1200 was also a few hundred lower than what most calculators were giving me for a BMR. Anyway, I found the spreadsheet that someone was so kind as to post (search in place of a road map for more info on this topic) which gave me a goal of 1333 and that's what I've been doing with ok results. If you are looking to up calories (if you're seeing results and not feeling starved, you may be fine to stick with what you're doing), the recommendations I've seen are to gradually increase to a TDEE-(20)% number (100 calories every two weeks or so?). I put the 20 in parentheses because I've read that if you have more to lose, you can increase the percent deficit. There is definitely a lot of info on this topic in the forums. If you like having a more consistent calorie goal, then TDEE is a good way to go because you aim for the same number every day. If you tend to not have much of a routine with respect to your workouts, you may want to stick more to the MFP that only gives you the exercise calories when you log the exercise (TDEE figures the exercise into your target number; if you don't do the exercise you told it, you have less of a deficit and will lose more slowly; if you do more, you will have a bigger deficit and lose more quickly). Hope that made sense and helps somewhat. Good luck on your journey. Find the system that works for you!
  • rhonnik
    rhonnik Posts: 32 Member
    I am also interested in a simple answer to this question. This site has so much information, but it can be overwhelming.
  • karlalband
    karlalband Posts: 196 Member
    bump? Eat to lose?
  • AbsoluteNG
    AbsoluteNG Posts: 1,079 Member
    You are getting more calories in TDEE calculators because they account for exercise before you do it which makes myfitnesspal more accurate. Go to options, set it to 1 pound per week, and eat all of your exercise calories back. That should be extremely close to TDEE-20%. So stop confusing yourself and just use MFP.


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  • krisam06
    krisam06 Posts: 27
    bump
  • mcintyremedia
    mcintyremedia Posts: 1
    TDEE calculators are not an exact science. If you are trying to lose weight, start eating 500 cals a day less than your estimated TDEE. If you are losing, keep doing what you are doing. If not, then adjust accordingly and eat less.

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