Basal Metabolic Rate

MFP sets your BMR based off of you profile (age and height) as well as your selected activity level (most of us are sedentary with desk jobs). For women, the general rule of thumb is this turns out to be your weight times 10. This will give you what you need to eat to lose absolutely no weight and gain absolutely no weight. When you set your goal to lose 1 pound per week, MFP sets your calorie goal at a 500 calorie deficit - but not going below 1200 calories ever. For 2 pounds, it's 1,000 calorie a day deficit, again, not going below 1200 calories.

So, if your BMR is 1800 - and you set to lose 1 pound a week, your calorie allotment should be 1300 calories. Then when you enter exercise, your calorie allotment will go up by the amount of calories you burn doing exercise. So, if you burn 200 calories doing 45 minutes of walking, your calories for the day will go up to 1500.

Does that help?

MFP sets your BMR based off of you profile (age and height) as well as your selected activity level (most of us are sedentary with desk jobs). For women, the general rule of thumb is this turns out to be your weight times 10. This will give you what you need to eat to lose absolutely no weight and gain absolutely no weight. When you set your goal to lose 1 pound per week, MFP sets your calorie goal at a 500 calorie deficit - but not going below 1200 calories ever. For 2 pounds, it's 1,000 calorie a day deficit, again, not going below 1200 calories.

So, if your BMR is 1800 - and you set to lose 1 pound a week, your calorie allotment should be 1300 calories. Then when you enter exercise, your calorie allotment will go up by the amount of calories you burn doing exercise. So, if you burn 200 calories doing 45 minutes of walking, your calories for the day will go up to 1500.

Does that help?

no, this is incorrect. If your BMR is 1800 and you're lightly active that would give you a maintenance calories of around 2350 or so probably (again this varies depending on you), and setting your goal to be 1 lb per week would be a 500 calorie deficit or about 1850 calories (right around your BMR), if you set it to 2 lbs per week then it would be 1350.

But that depends on whether your body can handle that much of a deficit. If you're obese you probably can, but if you only are looking to lose 10 or 20 lbs or so, that's probably going to be to large of a deficit.

Your BMR is calculated as follows:
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

MFP gives you a cal goal below your BMR because one pound is equivalent to 3500 calories. Therefore, if you wanted to lose 1 lb a week you would need to take 500 cal out of every day. So if your BMR is 1800 cal then you would want to only consume 1300 cal a day.

That said, if you work out you can eat those calories back. So if your target for the day is 1300 cal but you go to the gym and burn 300 cal then you would want to eat 1600 cal for that day.

I think MFP is using BMR as a guideline to ensure people will lose weight. Plus I'm sure most people consume more calories then what they log (all those random bite, licks, and tastes).

>>>>>>>
There is a really cool website that allows you to calculate how many calories you burn by doing everyday activities. Therefore, if you want to get a more accurate calorie count log your daily activities in the calculator to find out a better daily calorie target for you.
http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the replies but I'm not sure that people (apart from SH Boss) really understand BMR. BMR is not what you need to maintain, it's what you need to stay alive. To maintain I need 2,400, as you burn calories just by typing on a computer, talking etc. What I was thinking is that I would put my cals up to 1800, and not eat back anything I burn just by walking (which I do a lot of), but just eat back calories when I do a proper workout and burn more than 300 cals. But I worry I still won't be eating enough calories, and at the same time, I wonder that I am eating too much! Help!

if you've accounted for the walking in your activity level, then don't count those. Walking's iffy anyway in my book. The human body is very well adapted to walking, and the calorie burn is far lower for it than people think. This, of course, doesn't necessarily apply to power walking though, unless you do it all day (this concept goes for any moderate exercise by the way, once the body becomes accustom to it, muscle memory reduces the calorie burn, which is why so many of us trainers extol the virtues of muscle confusion).