Scared to try TDEE, friendly advice please

loves03
loves03 Posts: 73 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
So like a lot of others, the thought of eating more to lose weight frightens me! I've been overweight most of my life and have always been told, eat less to lose weight. I've been eating around 1200-1300 calories and exercising 3-4x a week for 1 hour at bootcamp. One those days I only net about 900 calories. I do weigh all my food on a food scale. I've lost a lot of inches but the weight loss has been slow, I'm assuming because I let myself enjoy Fridays and Saturdays. I still have a good amount of weight to lose. Anyways I'm thinking about giving TDEE a try, even though it scares me, because my weight has been the exact same for the last 3 weeks, it's just not moving. Here are some of my questions:


1. My TDEE at 20% is 1562 without exercise. Can I just add in my exercise calories on the days I do them, or do I need to include them in my TDEE. When I include them my TDEE is 2017, which is just crazy to me!

2. Do I just start eating all 1562 calories, or should I work up to it? Like add 100 calories more a week?

3. How long did it take for it to start working for you? I know many say there will be an initial weight gain, how long does that usually last?

4. Are all calories the same? I guess I'm a little worried about having the wiggle room to eat more.

I'd love to hear some success stories :)

Replies

  • loves03
    loves03 Posts: 73 Member
    Bump!
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,427 MFP Moderator
    Well TDEE considers exercise as part of it, so I would think you would be eating 1800 calories. But more importantly, you can't let yourself go crazy on Friday's and Saturday's. Those days count and it's very easy to let yourself eliminate your whole deficit in those two days. I linked a thread below that should give you some motivation.


    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/506349-women-who-eat-more-than-1800-calories-a-day
  • luckydays27
    luckydays27 Posts: 552 Member
    1. My TDEE at 20% is 1562 without exercise. Can I just add in my exercise calories on the days I do them, or do I need to include them in my TDEE. When I include them my TDEE is 2017, which is just crazy to me!

    I follow the MFP suggestion with a 1 lb a week weight loss and eat my exercise cals back. In the end, it works out to close to TDEE -20% for me.

    2. Do I just start eating all 1562 calories, or should I work up to it? Like add 100 calories more a week?

    I jumped into eating all the cals as I was miserable at 1200 cals a day. Once I started eating more, my headaches and dizzy spells went away. And I was happier in general.

    3. How long did it take for it to start working for you? I know many say there will be an initial weight gain, how long does that usually last?

    I started losing the 2nd week and have kept losing 1 lb a week since doing this.

    4. Are all calories the same? I guess I'm a little worried about having the wiggle room to eat more.

    I think that all cals are the same. I try to make better choices but if I want the food, i will eat it, so long as I have room in my calorie bank for them. But I keep my junk food intake in check because if I dont, I will run out of cals before the day is over and be hungry. And end up going over my limit.
  • geekyjock76
    geekyjock76 Posts: 2,720 Member
    So like a lot of others, the thought of eating more to lose weight frightens me! I've been overweight most of my life and have always been told, eat less to lose weight.
    TDEE - x supports what you've been told because you'd be consuming less than what's needed to maintain body weight and composition when factoring activity.

    There are two issues here. First, I believe most people do not measure and track caloric intake while they are gaining/maintaining weight prior to beginning a diet. Thus, they are unaware of how many calories they are consuming to either maintain weight or gain at a certain rate. The second is that peoples' perception on fat loss seems to belong to one of two camps: the minimalist and maximal. The minimalist believes they must assume a large deficit in order to reduce fat mass (even when they do not have much fat mass to lose); on the other hand, maximals agree that fat loss can be achieved with smaller deficits. For the minimalist, perhaps their reasoning is based largely in part on the fact that they are unaware of how many calories they need to maintain weight prior to weight loss.
  • YesIAm17
    YesIAm17 Posts: 817 Member
    My understanding is that it works like this...

    - TDEE based strategies (properly formulated) are the rock solid scientific approach. Anything that works (healthily) does so because of a reasonable deficit of TDEE. Anything that doesn't work (healthily), doesn't because it is equal to or greater than TDEE (or unreasonable below TDEE).
    - You can choose a TDEE that includes your exercise and eat at a reasonable deficit of that, or... choose Sedentary TDEE (eating at a reasonable deficit of that too) and then also eat back your exercise calories.

    If you choose a TDEE that includes your exercise then you can eat to the same calorie goal everyday making it easier to plan your meals, but if you miss an exercise session or do extra sessions it can throw all your calculations off.

    If you choose Sedentary TDEE you can more easily control and account for adjustments to your calculations. However you have to eat to different calorie goals everyday based on your calories burned exercising that day, making it a little harder to plan out your meals.

    I am sure others here can expand upon this and clear up anything off with the above.

    Hope that helps.
  • loves03
    loves03 Posts: 73 Member
    Thanks everyone for the advice and replies :)

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