Do I need to eat a minimum of my BMR?

Remember to weigh your foods on a food scale and measure non zero calorie liquid in a measuring cup. Weight loss is not linear and you need more than a week to determine whether or not you're losing weight. Things like consuming too much sodium (holds on to water) or starting a new exercise (muscles need extra water to repair) or not pooping recently will make the scale not accurate on a day to day basis.

thiosulfate wrote: »

If you were to eat 1900 calories per day, you would maintain your weight of 200lbs. Your BMR is how many calories it takes to maintain the weight you currently have (excluding exercise). That's why people who weigh 300 lbs tend to have a higher BMR than people who weigh 150 lbs.

Actually no. Eating one's TDEE would maintain weight. BMR is how many calories one burns doing NOTHING. So any activity of walking to the bathroom, walking to get in the car, etc. is going to burn more calories than BMR.

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pchca wrote: »

Female, 34, 200lbs, 5'4". Been eating at 1400cal for a week per MFP's recommendation as sedentary. I do walk about 12k steps a day. Scale hasn't moved. Should I eat my BMR of 1900cals?

How long have you been at this and have you just started exercising?

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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pchca wrote: »

Female, 34, 200lbs, 5'4". Been eating at 1400cal for a week per MFP's recommendation as sedentary. I do walk about 12k steps a day. Scale hasn't moved. Should I eat my BMR of 1900cals?

No, you don't need to eat BMR. Most people who are sedentary will want to eat below BMR or have to accept a slower rate of loss than necessary when you have lots to lose. The estimates of your BMR are also just estimates (often overstated when body fat percentage is higher than normal, as is the case with most overweight people), and, more significantly, your body doesn't know what BMR is or operate any differently when you are below it. BMR is just our estimate of what you'd need to eat to maintain weight if you weren't moving beyond necessary bodily functions for life.

Eating more isn't going to help you lose (although I would use a Fitbit/pedometer or simply put yourself in as lightly active if you regularly get 12K steps and aren't counting it as exercise -- that will give you an estimate that better fits your lifestyle). If you aren't losing over time it is more likely to be errors in logging, which are easy to make when first learning MFP's system, or in estimating (also easy to make).

However, since you said it's been a week, I wouldn't assume even that yet. If you increased exercise during the same time period (including walking) you could be retaining water for that reason. Depending on the time of the month, weight fluctuates. All kinds of reasons weight could be stalled over a week.

How does your sodium intake look? Are you ovulating or TOM? All of that can mask weight loss

I think its just going to take some time. Have you recently started exercising, because you may be retaining some fluid.