BMR and Exercise calories???

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HottByForty
HottByForty Posts: 5
in Health and Weight Loss
Today is my first day. I have been kind of playing with my account and the site. I love it! I have decided that I would eat my BMR calories but not my exercise calories. I am not sure if this is the best way and would love some input! I have 70 pounds to lose. Thanks!

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  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    No, it's not.

    The mere fact you have to ask means you don't have enough background to try to use the tool differently.

    In this case with your desire, using the tool wrong.

    Any tool used wrong can hurt you, as would your suggested use.

    You know the term BMR, but do you know what it represents?

    Do you really want to feed your body the calories it would like to burn merely sleeping all day - but then you don't, and you actually exercise on top of it?
    Do the math and think about that, what would you really be leaving your body to work with?

    TDEE is what you burn in total, everything included.

    You should also forget time based weight loss goals, or you will be sadly disappointed and frustrated, and likely make unwise decisions that will actually drag it out longer, perhaps resulting in binging or falling off the wagon, ect.
    Search the forums for those that have loss plateau's of 3-12 months, always attempting the wrong direction to fix it, never working.

    Setup MFP settings correctly.
    Non-exercise Activity level Sedentary is for 40 hr desk job sitting the whole time, long commute sitting both ways, and bump on a log all night and most of the weekend.
    Most find they are Lightly Active outside exercise very easily.

    At this point you can get by with 2 lb goal loss weekly, but that should change to 1.5 lbs at 30 lbs to go.

    Don't worry about execise goals, they are separate from diet goals, and don't effect the math, and you'll probably never even notice them on the Exercise Diary.

    Then log and eat back your exercise calories. Because that deficit to reach 2 lbs weekly is already in your NET eating goal, burning exercise calories just raised the deficit higher if you don't eat them back.

    And bigger is not better, unless you feel like losing muscle mass and repeating this all over again, but with more difficulty next time.
  • erikkmcvay
    erikkmcvay Posts: 238 Member
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    Actually eating BMR rather than daily caloric needs should technically result in weight loss -- albeit SLOW weight loss that's likely prone to be depressing and not work too well with most.

    Then eating back exercise cals would be ok as long as you actually recorded them accurately (do you have a heart rate monitor?) and of course there is the whole miscalculating the value of the foods you eat thing.

    So BMR is ' Basal Metabolic Rate' and in order to know how much you need daily you must multiply that by your activity level (most people who need to lose a lot of weight are sedentary so you would multiply your BMR times 1.2 (You can use this site to get your BMR: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ and this one to get your daily needs http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/)

    Once you have that it's a simple matter of determinging how fast you WANT to lose the 70lbs AND THEN determining a more realistic time frame if doing it as fast as you want takes you below 1200 calories per day.

    Example:
    If you want to lose 70lbs in 3 months you'd need to lose 5.83lbs per week which is a LOT -- in fact you would have to reduce your caloric intake by 2919 calories PER DAY. If I were to try that I'd be eating negative calories.

    So, what to do? Extend that until you are at a more reasonable (and likely to maintain) length of time such as 35 weeks which will put you at 2lbs per week or 1000 calories below your daily caloric needs per day.

    This is how MFP works (it is not a TDEE system as mentioned above).

    Once you do this, and assuming that does not put you below 1200 cals a day you can then exercise and eat back those cals but I recommend NOT eating all of them back as you are most likely to underestimate what you eat and overestimate what you burn.
  • erikkmcvay
    erikkmcvay Posts: 238 Member
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    Here is my example: I'm 48yrs old, male, weight 230lbs and my BMR is 2080.55.

    I work from home on a computer all day so my Daily caloric needs are: 2080.55 (BMR) * 1.2 (sedentary) = 2496.66 calories per day.

    For me to lose 2lbs per week I need to eat 1496 calories per day, every day, unless I workout and burn off some cals. Today I burned 1083 calories according to 'mapmyride.com' but I've used MFP's exercise calculator to give myself 767 calories I can eat back (MFP's calculator isn't as nice as mapmyrides is it? lol).

    So for today I can eat 2263 calories and will still make my goal (and be nice and full :) ) or not but my motto is 'Don't worry, by hungry' :)

    [Edit: forgot to deduct the 1000 cal goal and corrected]

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