confused by it all

Long time dieter here,

Calorie deficit is reducing the amount of calories you eat in a day. On average, people say reducing calories by 1000 a day will be about 7000 cals a week which will result in losing around 2 lbs a week.

BMR is your basal metabolic rate, it is hard to measure without VO tests. Your BMR is the amount of calories you burn just breathing each day. It is so different from person to person for many different reasons (I believe muscle mass is a big component for the variance).

If I was to give any advice, it would be simply to reduce your food intake and increase your water consumption.

In addition, I would not suggest running, elliptical or other types of exercises. I would honestly suggest lifting weights instead (if you can) as the more muscle you gain (which will not be alot for women) the better your BMR will be. The last little recommendation I would give is to go from a Diet (-1000 cals a day) for 6-8 weeks and then go to Maintenance (-0 cals a day) for 4 weeks and back to Diet. It is hard when you are motivated and seeing losses, however, jumping to maintenance for a few weeks will help with ensuring you keep the weight off. It will also balance your hormones and help avoid the dreaded plateau.

Good luck with the weight loss.

So based on my daily calorie intake of 2140 i should eat 1140?
even with my exercise or should i just ignore the exercise and concentrate on 1/2ing the daily intake?
Thanks

Not ignore it as in not doing it thou lol

No, the 2140 already has the 1,000 calorie deficit in it. Eat that much, and a bit more when you exercise.

Hi. I'm Claire, I'm confused by the calorie deficit, bmr and other abbreviations (lol)

I'm 34, female, weigh 19 stone 1lb, i put that i want to lose 2lb a week (seen as i weigh a lot) it has given me a calorie daily intake of 2140, i earn anything from 300+ to anything upto 600 calories in exercise a day. I try to eat my daily intake a day (mostly around the 1800+ mark).
Am i doing it wrong? i always thought that eating less and moving more was the right thing to do. I have no idea about bmr or tdee just that i need to eat less food and do more exercise.

BMR - basal metabolic rate - calories your body would use (heart, lungs, kidneys, etc).....even if you stayed in bed all day

TDEE - total daily energy expenditure - calories your body uses to maintain your current weight. This = BMR + activity level + exercise.

Ideally you should be "netting" somewhere in between.

Netting ........in MFP's set up.....you are starting with BMR + activity......you plug in "I want to lose XX pounds per week" ....and MFP does math. Exercise is NOT included in the equation. This is why MPF adds back exercise calories.....and expects you to eat them.

BUT .....TDEE is different. If you use a TDEE calculator - you add exercise up front & then take a % off the top...but eat at least your BMR.. You don't log exercise in MFP....and you don't eat calories back...because they are accounted for.

Things to keep in mind:

MFP & online calculators are estimates
Calorie burns are estimates
Activity level is a range

Finally - weight loss is not linear. If you have lots of weight to lose (>75 pounds).....you can expect 2 pounds a week for awhile. As you get closer to goal, you need to step down your weekly goal because losing weight too fast has a downside. Losing too quickly....your body will fuel heart, lungs, kidneys, etc.......but may run out of "fuel" and turn to existing muscle mass. A moderate weight loss helps you lose mostly fat.

Oh, no, please don't do that! Going to 1140 is a little insane, and it's not sustainable. I can't survive on 1140.

You have the basic concept right -- eat less, move more. There are a ton of ways to tweak that to maximize your weight loss, but it all boils down to burning more than you take in.

If you stick with the goals that MFP calculates for you, eat what they tell you to and then eat back your exercise calories. If that seems like too much, you can eat back half your exercise calories, but I'd stay in the ballpark for a few weeks and just see what happens. You can make little changes later on to speed up/slow down weight loss, but you need a little bit of time for your body and your mind to adjust.

If you follow the MFP calculations, you don't have to worry about BMR or TDEE.

The other method people are talking about involves BMR and TDEE. BMR is the number of calories your body would burn if you did absolutely nothing. Just breathing, pumping blood, etc. TDEE is the estimated calories you burn doing whatever you do in your daily life, including whatever exercise you do. If you want to use that method, you need to eat less than your TDEE.

Thank you for your reply. I will try and eat at least 2000 a day i aim to drink more water also. i am averaging 6 cups of diluted squash a day. Is 8 cups the recommended daily water intake?

8-12 cups of water if you can.