How do I stick to my BMR of 1460 calories per day?

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India2612
India2612 Posts: 4
in Food and Nutrition
I recently had a body composition scan and one of the things I learned was that my Basal Metabolic Rate should be 1460 per day. This is how many calories I supposedly need to just be alive everyday. I had thought up until now that my BMR was just over 1600 and so I had set my calorie limit to 1600 per day. The upper limit was working well for me. I could eat comfortably and not be over eating. Or so I thought. It's only been a week since I had my body scan and my 'true' BMR was revealed and I'm having a lot of trouble sticking to it. I am eating more than my calorie allowance every day. I don't know how I'm going to stick to this calorie limit without beginning to feel deprived and negative. What can I do?! Has anyone else had this scan and what did it tell you?

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  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    Are you trying to lose weight ? Your calorie burn will be at least 1700 calories so eating 1500 or less should see you lose weight.
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,136 Member
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    If you're doing anything other than laying in bed 24/7, you can probably eat a bit and lose weight (if losing is your goal).
  • rsclause
    rsclause Posts: 3,103 Member
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    Remember that you are not laying in bed all day. You move around and spend additional calories with activity. I always exercised to allow me to eat more calories and received the added benefit of becoming fit. Just keep an accurate log of calories eaten, calories burned and weight. After several weeks you should see some trends and can "tweak" your calories to see what happens. As I did this I found that going way below my deficit with exercise calories added back in didn't work well. When I was closer to my goal of deficit plus exercise I saw better weight loss results. Its also fun to analyze the numbers over longer time spans.
  • _Terrapin_
    _Terrapin_ Posts: 4,301 Member
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    What is your current weight, height, and body fat? If we can start there it would be beneficial to know for those who want to help you.
  • wonderwoman234
    wonderwoman234 Posts: 551 Member
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    If you were eating more and losing weight, why did you stop doing that? You said it was working well so why change it?

    How was your metabolic rate "scanned"? Sounds kind of suspect to me, to be honest.
  • CupcakeCrusoe
    CupcakeCrusoe Posts: 1,382 Member
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    You don't eat at your BMR, you eat at your TDEE, your total daily energy expenditure, minus some percentage to lose weight. That's your BMR + what you need to do things other than lay in bed. If you walk around at all, you're going to need more than your BMR calories to stay alive, and you'll still lose weight. I don't know about your body scan, but use iifym.com to find your TDEE.Then, subtract somewhere between 10-20 percent from that number at eat at that.

    If what you were doing before worked, stick with it.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,090 Member
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    It's not suspect wonder woman, any body composition analyser scale, combined with your age, can work this out.
    I had mine done, which showed up as 1283.
    Of course, it is not totally accurate, but is a fairly good guide.

    It doesn't mean you eat to that level though OP - by the time you factor in activity, even sedentary lifestyle activity, your daily goal will be higher than your BMR.

    As a comparison for you, I lost eating 1460, with a BMR of 1283 and 'lightly active'
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
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    This is actually good news for you!

    In general, if you are not active and do little to no exercise (but are not bed bound) you need to eat 1.2*BMR to maintain. This means 1752 calories.
    If you exercise regularly 5 times a week you're looking at 2000+ calories to maintain.
  • India2612
    India2612 Posts: 4
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    Thanks everyone, this makes me feel better. I am currently 88.2KG, 166CM tall. I lost 30 kilos in three years just by eating less over all and being more mindful of the foods that I ate. I have been at a plateau for the last two years so I have started back up at the gym in the last 6 months. I'm finding I'm getting fitter but have only lost a couple of kilos so far. I had thought that I just needed to increase my exercise but this part of my scan results really threw me. I know if I was a very active person I could eat more calories than 1460 but I'm still fairly sedentary, I only get to the gym a couple times per week. I usually eat somewhere between 1500 and 1700 calories per day, more towards 1700 than 1500 though.

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