TDEE v. Calories Burned

jchadden42
jchadden42 Posts: 189
edited February 8 in Goal: Maintaining Weight
I am not a careful counter of calories, to begin with, and I don't wear a HRM--I rely on the estimates from MFP, and I'm okay with that. When I started using MFP, I was merely trying to balance input and output for calories. While losing 5-10 pounds was fine by me, I find that I am continuing to lose weight at a rate of 0.5-1.0 pounds per week. My fault, I have a hard time eating when I'm not hungry.

My question is: MFP gives me 1850 calories/day to "maintain" my current weight. I have averaged what that would be including calories burned, and my average is 2438 calories/day going with base plus calories burned. My TDEE is 2303 calories/day. Over the past week, I consumed an average of 2354 calories/day, putting me between TDEE and base plus calories burned. I lost about 0.6 pounds over this week.

I obviously need to reset my goals. While I'm not underweight (130 lbs at 5'5"), I'd like to keep my figure. Should I set my base consumption to 2400 calories/day and ignore exercise?

Replies

  • emAZn
    emAZn Posts: 413 Member
    Possibly... from my research I've read that TDEE is based on averages so you may need to adjust by a few hundred calories up or down to reach your goal. In your case up till you reach your true maintenance and stop losing.

    Lucky duck!
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Don't you think you are over complicating this?
    To summarise - you don't accurately count calories, you use a generic way to estimate exercise calories. So trying to set a precise number of calories is pure guesswork.

    As you are losing half a pound a week why don't you simply add a snack or side dish of approximately 250 cals to your current daily intake? Perhaps a protein shake if you are low on protein, nuts if you are low on fats? Or just 250 fun calories!
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