Does anybody keep track of BMR?

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CamdenHerlihy
CamdenHerlihy Posts: 13 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Aside from calories burned by exercise, does anybody subtract what they've burned from their BMR (either by fitbit or just gussing by using the formula)?

So if I ate 1,500 calories worth of good food and burned off 400 with a cardio workout and was left with 1,100, then subtracted my BMR for the day (lets say hypothetically it was 1,600, would I really have burned more than I ate?

Long story short, does it really work like that?

Replies

  • joncooper1980
    joncooper1980 Posts: 96 Member
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    Short answer.... yes. if your BMR+calories burned through exercise (i.e your TDEE) is greater than the calories you consumed for the day then you are in a caloric deficit so your body will need to balance that energy gap by burning some fat.
  • emmaprocopiou
    emmaprocopiou Posts: 246 Member
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    I think you are confusing BMR with TDEE
    The Fitbit burn for the day is your estimated TDEE. BMR is the basic amount of cals needed to survive if you were not to move at all.
  • CamdenHerlihy
    CamdenHerlihy Posts: 13 Member
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    emmaprocopiou wrote: »
    I think you are confusing BMR with TDEE
    The Fitbit burn for the day is your estimated TDEE. BMR is the basic amount of cals needed to survive if you were not to move at all.

    Yes, I'm sorry about that. Basically I want to know if the calories I burn daily just by existing (not including exercise) count when determining my calorie count for the day.
  • pebble4321
    pebble4321 Posts: 1,132 Member
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    I think it depends how you are tracking your calories. I've never bothered to do that in the past, but now I have an Apple watch and it subtracts cals burnt in just living from your exercise cals.

    I think this puts it a bit low for exercise calories but general added cals seem a bit high to me, so it all balances out. And I'm losing weight slowly and steadily, as planned, so this is working fine for me at the moment.

    Really, I think you need to pick one method and try it out for a month or so. If you are eating all your exercise cals, logging accurately and not losing weight then you could try subtracting. I'm not a fan of cutting calories more than I need to, so I'd do it this way.
  • itsbasschick
    itsbasschick Posts: 1,584 Member
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    at no time has a BMR or TDEE figured with a calculator or device applied to me. my supposed BMR right now is higher than the amount of calories i eat to lose a half pound a week with 4 to 5 weekly exercise sessions.
  • Azdak
    Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
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    One of the things I like about my Polar V800 is that it lists BMR, Activity, and Workout calories separately. The workout calories come from any time you use the HRM strap. When listing those, it backs out the BMR calories so it doesn't count them twice.
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
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    I always subtract 2 kcal/min from all of my exercise estimates.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,889 Member
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    CamdenHerlihy wrote: »
    emmaprocopiou wrote: »
    I think you are confusing BMR with TDEE
    The Fitbit burn for the day is your estimated TDEE. BMR is the basic amount of cals needed to survive if you were not to move at all.

    Yes, I'm sorry about that. Basically I want to know if the calories I burn daily just by existing (not including exercise) count when determining my calorie count for the day.

    Yes. They count when estimating calories burned, and when estimating calories available to eat.

    And typically BMR calories are the largest chunk (yes, some people add exercise calories that are larger than their BMR, but it isn't common).

    Sometimes, you'll see people subtract their estimated BMR from (say) the Fitbit TDEE, to find their (NEAT + exercise), if they log exercise manually or something like that. (NEAT = Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenisis = the calories you burn on top of your BMR by getting the mail, washing the dishes, doing your paid job, etc., but not including intentional exercise).

    If you eat less than your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), you will lose weight.

    Note: MFP and other calculators of BMR, TDEE, NEAT, exercise burn, etc. are giving you estimates. Your precise actual number is likely to be close, but could be different from those estimates - either higher or lower.

    If you log eating & activity meticulously for a while (2-3 months, not days!), you'll see whether you're losing weight faster, slower, or at about the same rate as predicted. That will help you estimate your own personal TDEE or BMR+NEAT, and fine-tune your goals.

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