What if your BMR is too close to yor TDEE

Katch-McArdle is the most accurate. Buy a pair of calibers for $5 and figure out your LBM. 30 percent below TDEE would be an aggressive diet. That's about 1100 calories if 1600 is what you get for KM TDEE. If you go under BMR, just make sure you get enough protein to support muscle mass (.8g/pound body weight).

Health benefits come from losing weight, but more health benefits come from physical activity. If you TDEE is that low, you need to move a lot more.

raquel424 wrote: »

Ok, so I already increase my TDEE by cardio and lifting weights. I was averaging 350 to 400 calories a day burn at the gym. I do have my activity as sedentary because I like to calculate it separately, my only concern is, when you increase your TDEE because of exercise shouldn't that also raise your BMR?

TDEE includes exercise. Full stop. It is Total Daily Energy Expenditure.

If you are calculating your activity level then adding exercise, that is NEAT. Non-exercise activity thermogensis. That is how MFP figures your calories goal.

BMR does not change when you increase activity. BMR is what your body requires to survive if you were basically in a coma. It does not include activity at all. Adding muscle may slightly increase your BMR but activity alone will not increase it.

MFP does not work off TDEE. It works on NEAT.
It gives you a deficit based on you doing no real exercise, just living you life (working, sleeping, sitting around, a bit of everyday walking), so when you exercise you eat those cals back as you already have your full deficit built it.
Exercise in MFP is for health, not for weight loss.
Some people choose to use TDEE (I do) and just enter their own numbers into MFP.

Are you dieting to lose a few pounds or making changes in your life towards a healthier you?

Establishing new habits takes time. A 300 calorie a day deficit/increase in daily activity combo will burn through 52500 calories in less than 6 months. That's about 15lbs of fat.

1200 calories a day is a semi-sane recommendation by MFP for a multitude of excellent reasons. This acts as the floor of a generic recommendation which is that you should probably cut, AT MOST, 20% off your TDEE.

YES, you ARE supposed to eat back your exercise calories if you follow the MFP method.

Exercise is *not* included in your MFP "TDEE" calculation.

You should first of all do a sanity check to determine whether the exercise calories you've been given make any sense at all. It is unlikely that an hour's walk will burn 1000 calories. Google is your friend for that.

Then, since most machines and calculators give you a "gross" burn, at the very least you have to deduct 1/24 of your total MFP predicted burn per hour of exercise.

Huh? Well, if MFP guesses that you "burn" 2400 calories in a day then you should deduct from your gross exercise burn 100 calories per hour of exercise.

So, if your one hour jog burns 625 calories, deduct 100, leaving you with a 525 calorie jog.

Then deduct your 20% TDEE reduction, from this 525 calorie "net" burn, i.e. another 105 calories.

And eat back the remaining 420 calories.

And if you want to be a rebel only eat back 375 to 400 of them just to show MFP who's the boss!

MFP sedentary = about 5500 steps a day. Just a couple of hours of walking around a day is going to push you above that level.

And yes, you do have to recalculate based on how closely your expectations match reality!

One correction: I said deduct 20% off your net exercise.

This is NOT the correct "MFP" method as your normal MFP recommendation already includes your "500/750/1000" cal deficit.

However, because of the "floor" effect MFP sometimes is recommending a smaller deficit than what you desire. That would be the situation where you would only eat back PART of your exercise calories.

Note too that there is considerable discussion as to how to protect your muscle mass and that when you diet and exercise you are NOT only losing fat.

A low calorie diet, lots of cardio, big cut off TDEE are NOT good for preserving muscle mass!