Trusting actual results > what every calculator says

96c_r
96c_r Posts: 11 Member
It's perhaps a bit of a waste of time to even make this post, since I've read around enough to already have a pretty good idea of what people will say. But I suppose I might be more inclined to take it on board if I know the advice/reassurance is in direct response to my own personal situation...

I've been maintaining my weight - which is 'underweight' (5'5, 100lbs) - for 6 months now, on around 1900 calories. I log/track every day, so that number has been calculated by taking a statistical average of my intakes for every single day of the past 6 months. I also weigh myself a few times a week to monitor the trend, and have maintained my weight within a 3lb range throughout this period. I wasn't intending to maintain: I've been eating this amount because every TDEE calculator going says I should expect gain 0.5-1lb a week on 1900-2000 calories, according to my stats (female, age 21, relatively inactive apart from strength training 2-3 days a week, and a fair amount of day-to-day walking around a city and university campus). Even the most generous of calculators predict that I maintain on 1700-1800, and that's if I put myself down as 'moderately active', which isn't my first instinct as I'd say my activity levels are more like 'light'.

I do want to gain, and this was always my intention, but I've held back from increasing my calories further because I still think that I 'should' be gaining on what I'm eating now, even though I'm aware that this quite obviously hasn't been happening. It's irrational, but I worry that if I go up to, say, 2200 calories, my body will suddenly decide that its maintenance intake is actually the 1500 that the calculators give me after all, meaning I'd be in a surplus of 700 calories a day and gain way too fast, and almost all would be fat with little muscle.

I know these calculators don't work perfectly for everyone and I ought to be able to simply conclude that they don't work for me because, for whatever reason, my maintenance calories appear to be significantly higher than they claim. Perhaps I'm so reluctant to do this because a lot of people try to say they're the exception to some rule of weight gain/loss, when in fact they aren't (e.g. people who are eating a lot but blame weight gain on "I just have a slow metabolism"). Could it really be that I actually do "just have a fast metabolism", or at the very least some kind of anomaly that causes my body to seemingly defy all calculations?

Replies

  • middlehaitch
    middlehaitch Posts: 8,486 Member
    edited March 2018
    All calculators are estimates. Work from your real life results.
    To get within the healthy weight range start adding 100+ cals per day a week.

    There are people on here that need fewer calories than calculators estemate, and those who need more.

    Cheers, h.

    @AnnPT77 could you please chime in with your experience.
  • joshuatenpenny
    joshuatenpenny Posts: 1 Member
    I'm another "I just have a fast metabolism" person. I have always been thin, despite being notorious among my friends for my big appetite. Part of it is just tending to be a little more active, even if I'm not "exercising" - just kind of fidgety, a fast walker, etc. Another part was that I tend to generate a lot of heat - cold hardy and people routinely say "Aren't you cold?! Why aren't you wearing a coat?" and "Your hands are so warm!" etc. Everyone I've ever shared a bed with wants to warm up their icy cold feet on me. So I burn up a lot of fuel doing nothing.

    But neither of us are defying the laws of thermodynamics here. People vary in how efficiently they extract and absorb nutrients from food. People vary in how much energy they burn just going about their daily business.

    I saw a documentary on a British study where they took a bunch of folks who'd always been thin without dieting, and had them eat 1000 calories above their normal level and forbid them doing any intentional exercise. They had to film themselves eating, as well as keeping detailed food logs, and got various . Eight weeks of this, and one guy gained less than a pound. Others gained more, but all well below what the standard calorie formulas would predict.

    I found this article really helpful: Precision Nutrition: All About Energy Balance

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,213 Member
    I wouldn't characterize it as a "fast/slow metabolism", a term that's really hard to pin down, but people definitely vary in their calorie requirements, even people who are superficially "the same" (age, weight, activity level, etc.) Your own results, not the so-called calculators, give you the real answer.

    The "calculators" just give you an estimate, based on simplified formulas derived from statistical analysis of large group research studies. Estimates, not answers. Real-world personal experience gives you answers.

    If I'd been eating what the calculators say is my maintenance, for the 2+ years I've been at a healthy weight since losing 50+ pounds, I'd be in a hospital bed, if not an early grave. Most calculators say something in the 1500s (net). Results say more like 2000-2100, to maintain 120. I'm 5'5", age 62, sedentary outside of intentional exercise, and I eat all those exercise calories back. (Truth in advertising: I'm currently around 130, but from àveraging materially more than the 2100 for quite a while. I held 120 for a year in the low 2000s. I lose slowly now if I stick to 1850.)

    I know other women here my size/age who can't even eat the 1500, or they'll gain. Why? I don't know.

    Most people of similar characteristics have similar calorie needs (they cluster around the mean, statistically). A few people differ more widely. A very few differ by quite a bit. Maybe it's something in RMR, though people tend to be similar there. Muscularity makes a small difference. Composition of eating may make a small difference (via TEF). Fidgetiness, or lack of it, can account for up to a few hundred calories, according to some research. Who knows why?

    I can understand your worries, but if you truly want to gain a bit, you will have to eat more.

    Since you're maintaining (not losing) at 1900, do you think you could go to 2000, and try that for 4-6 weeks? That may not be enough to nudge you to slow gain, but it should certainly be too little to cause scary gain.

    If you're still holding steady (or even gaining hyper-slowly), you could then add another 100 calories, and repeat the experiment. Eventually, you should get the slow gain you want to see.

    If you don't use one already, a weight-trend app coild be a help in sorting signal from noise as you look at long term weight changes (examples are Happy Scale for iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight, etc.)

    Yes, people get called out for thinking they're special . . . sometimes inappropriately or insensitively. But most often that happens to people saying they're eating fewer calories than expected. It's pretty easy to underestimate eating, and overestimate exercise. That's the most common direction of natural bias. (Though I don't think absolutely everyone accused of underestimating eating and overestimating exercise is actually doing so . . . most, probably - but not all).

    It's much harder to overestimate eating and underestimate exercise (though I do think you may be underestimating your daily life activity level). Regardless . . . if you think, based on 6 months of careful logging experience, that your calorie requirements are higher than what "calculators" estimate, you're almost certainly right.

    So act on that knowledge. That's your path to a healthier weight!

    Best wishes! :)
  • MarkusDarwath
    MarkusDarwath Posts: 393 Member
    What's your average body temperature? That can play a role in the 'fast metabolism' thing. In my youth, I was one of the skinny guys who couldn't gain weight seemingly for trying. My normal temperature was 99.1F, half a degree higher than average. I'm not sure I could even begin to figure out the energy expenditure per mass to maintain a given temp, but I don't doubt it could be enough to create a mis-match between individual results and the standard calculators.
  • 96c_r
    96c_r Posts: 11 Member
    The calculations are all averages and general numbers. If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work. Simple as that.

    Chances are, you're more active than you think....walking around a city and university can actually add up to a LOT of activity compared, say, to someone like me who takes a train to work and sits at a computer all day and is lucky if I walk a grand total of 2 miles (and that's only if I pick a lunch spot that's twice as far away as I normally do).

    I work out pretty intensely a couple hours a day now, and my body is adapting, but before that (and after getting the dreaded desk job) I managed to get downright fat. In college and grad school and even after when I still had more active jobs, weight was NEVER the issue it became when I got the 9-5er. Oh, and I ate a lot more than you are, and maintained ~128 at 5'7".

    Thanks for your response. Perhaps it is true that my daily reliance on walking as a method of getting from A to B is adding up to more than I think, even if it doesn't really feel like I'm being particularly 'active'
  • 96c_r
    96c_r Posts: 11 Member
    I'm another "I just have a fast metabolism" person. I have always been thin, despite being notorious among my friends for my big appetite. Part of it is just tending to be a little more active, even if I'm not "exercising" - just kind of fidgety, a fast walker, etc. Another part was that I tend to generate a lot of heat - cold hardy and people routinely say "Aren't you cold?! Why aren't you wearing a coat?" and "Your hands are so warm!" etc. Everyone I've ever shared a bed with wants to warm up their icy cold feet on me. So I burn up a lot of fuel doing nothing.

    But neither of us are defying the laws of thermodynamics here. People vary in how efficiently they extract and absorb nutrients from food. People vary in how much energy they burn just going about their daily business.

    I saw a documentary on a British study where they took a bunch of folks who'd always been thin without dieting, and had them eat 1000 calories above their normal level and forbid them doing any intentional exercise. They had to film themselves eating, as well as keeping detailed food logs, and got various . Eight weeks of this, and one guy gained less than a pound. Others gained more, but all well below what the standard calorie formulas would predict.

    I found this article really helpful: Precision Nutrition: All About Energy Balance

    Thanks for your response, that study sounds interesting and I'll be sure to have a look through the article you linked. I'm not sure about the heat thing, I'm certainly always warmer now overall than before I started strength training, though. The bolded definitely sounds like it could be me, I'm the sort of person who paces the room when making a phone call, and gets irritated when people walk too slowly.
  • 96c_r
    96c_r Posts: 11 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    I wouldn't characterize it as a "fast/slow metabolism", a term that's really hard to pin down, but people definitely vary in their calorie requirements, even people who are superficially "the same" (age, weight, activity level, etc.) Your own results, not the so-called calculators, give you the real answer.

    The "calculators" just give you an estimate, based on simplified formulas derived from statistical analysis of large group research studies. Estimates, not answers. Real-world personal experience gives you answers.

    If I'd been eating what the calculators say is my maintenance, for the 2+ years I've been at a healthy weight since losing 50+ pounds, I'd be in a hospital bed, if not an early grave. Most calculators say something in the 1500s (net). Results say more like 2000-2100, to maintain 120. I'm 5'5", age 62, sedentary outside of intentional exercise, and I eat all those exercise calories back. (Truth in advertising: I'm currently around 130, but from àveraging materially more than the 2100 for quite a while. I held 120 for a year in the low 2000s. I lose slowly now if I stick to 1850.)

    I know other women here my size/age who can't even eat the 1500, or they'll gain. Why? I don't know.

    Most people of similar characteristics have similar calorie needs (they cluster around the mean, statistically). A few people differ more widely. A very few differ by quite a bit. Maybe it's something in RMR, though people tend to be similar there. Muscularity makes a small difference. Composition of eating may make a small difference (via TEF). Fidgetiness, or lack of it, can account for up to a few hundred calories, according to some research. Who knows why?

    I can understand your worries, but if you truly want to gain a bit, you will have to eat more.

    Since you're maintaining (not losing) at 1900, do you think you could go to 2000, and try that for 4-6 weeks? That may not be enough to nudge you to slow gain, but it should certainly be too little to cause scary gain.

    If you're still holding steady (or even gaining hyper-slowly), you could then add another 100 calories, and repeat the experiment. Eventually, you should get the slow gain you want to see.

    If you don't use one already, a weight-trend app coild be a help in sorting signal from noise as you look at long term weight changes (examples are Happy Scale for iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight, etc.)

    Yes, people get called out for thinking they're special . . . sometimes inappropriately or insensitively. But most often that happens to people saying they're eating fewer calories than expected. It's pretty easy to underestimate eating, and overestimate exercise. That's the most common direction of natural bias. (Though I don't think absolutely everyone accused of underestimating eating and overestimating exercise is actually doing so . . . most, probably - but not all).

    It's much harder to overestimate eating and underestimate exercise (though I do think you may be underestimating your daily life activity level). Regardless . . . if you think, based on 6 months of careful logging experience, that your calorie requirements are higher than what "calculators" estimate, you're almost certainly right.

    So act on that knowledge. That's your path to a healthier weight!

    Best wishes! :)

    Thank you for this response, it's very helpful. The advice to increase by 100 calories initially and see what happens after a few weeks sounds good. It's interesting to hear your experience of maintaining on quite a lot of calories, considering your age (I hope you don't mind me saying...but the majority of people and calculators would certainly assume that a 62 y/o female would gain on 2000 calories)

    I had wondered about things like muscularity and the actual types of food I'm eating, but thought the differences would be too insignificant to be worth noting. I probably do have more muscle than the 'average' person of my height/weight because of my strength training habits, though, and because my goal is to gain muscle, I eat quite a lot of protein (80-120g a day) and fruits/vegetables, which some sources say require more energy to digest than fats and lower-fibre carbs.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,242 Member
    edited March 2018
    You are not sitting unmoving in a chair, sofa, or bed while walking around for no more than 35 minutes / 3500 steps in a day. Therefore you're not sedentary.

    Also, as I am sure you're aware, you're at BMI 16.7. Have you received any professional advice as to how you should proceed? I have the distinct impression that most commonly given advice would have you rapidly ramping up to 2500+ Calories (possibly as high as 3000) while restricting deliberate activity until you are weight restored at a BMI of ~20

    In any case. At this particular stage you literally cannot go wrong by increasing your calories as much as you can possibly tolerate...

    Your trending weight app will give you plenty of warning as you approach your target weight, allowing you to adjust as you get close to your goal.

    If you are currently experiencing health issues because of your low weight/low fat reserves, increasing slowly @ a 100 Cal at a time and waiting a few weeks to evaluate each increase is literally prolonging the time you are spending at an unhealthy weight.
  • robertw486
    robertw486 Posts: 2,399 Member
    96c_r wrote: »
    It's perhaps a bit of a waste of time to even make this post, since I've read around enough to already have a pretty good idea of what people will say. But I suppose I might be more inclined to take it on board if I know the advice/reassurance is in direct response to my own personal situation...

    I've been maintaining my weight - which is 'underweight' (5'5, 100lbs) - for 6 months now, on around 1900 calories. I log/track every day, so that number has been calculated by taking a statistical average of my intakes for every single day of the past 6 months. I also weigh myself a few times a week to monitor the trend, and have maintained my weight within a 3lb range throughout this period. I wasn't intending to maintain: I've been eating this amount because every TDEE calculator going says I should expect gain 0.5-1lb a week on 1900-2000 calories, according to my stats (female, age 21, relatively inactive apart from strength training 2-3 days a week, and a fair amount of day-to-day walking around a city and university campus). Even the most generous of calculators predict that I maintain on 1700-1800, and that's if I put myself down as 'moderately active', which isn't my first instinct as I'd say my activity levels are more like 'light'.

    I do want to gain, and this was always my intention, but I've held back from increasing my calories further because I still think that I 'should' be gaining on what I'm eating now, even though I'm aware that this quite obviously hasn't been happening. It's irrational, but I worry that if I go up to, say, 2200 calories, my body will suddenly decide that its maintenance intake is actually the 1500 that the calculators give me after all, meaning I'd be in a surplus of 700 calories a day and gain way too fast, and almost all would be fat with little muscle.

    I know these calculators don't work perfectly for everyone and I ought to be able to simply conclude that they don't work for me because, for whatever reason, my maintenance calories appear to be significantly higher than they claim. Perhaps I'm so reluctant to do this because a lot of people try to say they're the exception to some rule of weight gain/loss, when in fact they aren't (e.g. people who are eating a lot but blame weight gain on "I just have a slow metabolism"). Could it really be that I actually do "just have a fast metabolism", or at the very least some kind of anomaly that causes my body to seemingly defy all calculations?

    Your thread title, thoughts, and the input from others following are spot on. Calculators don't know the specifics and real data always trumps estimates. If your logging is accurate and your weight has stayed within such a small range for that period of time, nothing is going to suddenly lower your TDEE. Up your calories as much as you are comfortable with to hit your weight gain goal, and continue to use the feedback from your scale.
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    Work from your real life results, if you are maintaining and want to gain you need to eat more than 1900.
  • CircleJerkk
    CircleJerkk Posts: 38 Member
    It may not feel active to you because it's your everyday norm... but i've seen my obese supervisor congratulate himself for walking a whole 10,000 steps and he's exhausted from it. I walk that no problem and feel very inactive for "barely moving".
  • 96c_r
    96c_r Posts: 11 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    You are not sitting unmoving in a chair, sofa, or bed while walking around for no more than 35 minutes / 3500 steps in a day. Therefore you're not sedentary.

    Also, as I am sure you're aware, you're at BMI 16.7. Have you received any professional advice as to how you should proceed? I have the distinct impression that most commonly given advice would have you rapidly ramping up to 2500+ Calories (possibly as high as 3000) while restricting deliberate activity until you are weight restored at a BMI of ~20

    In any case. At this particular stage you literally cannot go wrong by increasing your calories as much as you can possibly tolerate...

    Your trending weight app will give you plenty of warning as you approach your target weight, allowing you to adjust as you get close to your goal.

    If you are currently experiencing health issues because of your low weight/low fat reserves, increasing slowly @ a 100 Cal at a time and waiting a few weeks to evaluate each increase is literally prolonging the time you are spending at an unhealthy weight.

    Thanks. I have not received any professional advice, but I am also not experiencing any negative physical consequences of being at this weight. I have had blood tests and other general check-ups recently enough and nothing is concerning there, but I can understand why you'd suspect possible health problems or the involvement of healthcare professionals on the basis of my BMI, as I know it's pretty low. I think my overall diet, while evidently not quite good enough at actually promoting weight gain, has still been adequate and balanced enough for me to be healthy, despite my weight in and of itself being classified as 'unhealthy'.
  • rybo
    rybo Posts: 5,424 Member
    All calculators are estimates. Nothing trumps real life data.
    Eat more and don't worry
  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    I'm not in maintenance yet, but have had a similar experience to @AnnPT77 - I've been tracking for almost two years, losing for over a year, and consistently on a few hundred more calories than the calculators estimate. It's certainly lucky when one is trying to lose weight, but otherwise I just see it as another way that people and bodies vary. And as others have noted, there are other factors as play aside from "metabolism" - I'm a pretty cautious and conservative person and have long suspected that some of my own discrepancy comes from tracking errors, although I'm also one of those twitchy, fast-walking types, which can make a decent difference too. Long story short, you should absolutely trust your own numbers.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Calculators are just giving you an estimate based on population statistics and various algorithms. Logically, how could a calculator tell you exactly what your calorie requirements are?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,213 Member
    96c_r wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    I wouldn't characterize it as a "fast/slow metabolism", a term that's really hard to pin down, but people definitely vary in their calorie requirements, even people who are superficially "the same" (age, weight, activity level, etc.) Your own results, not the so-called calculators, give you the real answer.

    The "calculators" just give you an estimate, based on simplified formulas derived from statistical analysis of large group research studies. Estimates, not answers. Real-world personal experience gives you answers.

    If I'd been eating what the calculators say is my maintenance, for the 2+ years I've been at a healthy weight since losing 50+ pounds, I'd be in a hospital bed, if not an early grave. Most calculators say something in the 1500s (net). Results say more like 2000-2100, to maintain 120. I'm 5'5", age 62, sedentary outside of intentional exercise, and I eat all those exercise calories back. (Truth in advertising: I'm currently around 130, but from àveraging materially more than the 2100 for quite a while. I held 120 for a year in the low 2000s. I lose slowly now if I stick to 1850.)

    I know other women here my size/age who can't even eat the 1500, or they'll gain. Why? I don't know.

    Most people of similar characteristics have similar calorie needs (they cluster around the mean, statistically). A few people differ more widely. A very few differ by quite a bit. Maybe it's something in RMR, though people tend to be similar there. Muscularity makes a small difference. Composition of eating may make a small difference (via TEF). Fidgetiness, or lack of it, can account for up to a few hundred calories, according to some research. Who knows why?

    I can understand your worries, but if you truly want to gain a bit, you will have to eat more.

    Since you're maintaining (not losing) at 1900, do you think you could go to 2000, and try that for 4-6 weeks? That may not be enough to nudge you to slow gain, but it should certainly be too little to cause scary gain.

    If you're still holding steady (or even gaining hyper-slowly), you could then add another 100 calories, and repeat the experiment. Eventually, you should get the slow gain you want to see.

    If you don't use one already, a weight-trend app coild be a help in sorting signal from noise as you look at long term weight changes (examples are Happy Scale for iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight, etc.)

    Yes, people get called out for thinking they're special . . . sometimes inappropriately or insensitively. But most often that happens to people saying they're eating fewer calories than expected. It's pretty easy to underestimate eating, and overestimate exercise. That's the most common direction of natural bias. (Though I don't think absolutely everyone accused of underestimating eating and overestimating exercise is actually doing so . . . most, probably - but not all).

    It's much harder to overestimate eating and underestimate exercise (though I do think you may be underestimating your daily life activity level). Regardless . . . if you think, based on 6 months of careful logging experience, that your calorie requirements are higher than what "calculators" estimate, you're almost certainly right.

    So act on that knowledge. That's your path to a healthier weight!

    Best wishes! :)

    Thank you for this response, it's very helpful. The advice to increase by 100 calories initially and see what happens after a few weeks sounds good. It's interesting to hear your experience of maintaining on quite a lot of calories, considering your age (I hope you don't mind me saying...but the majority of people and calculators would certainly assume that a 62 y/o female would gain on 2000 calories)

    I had wondered about things like muscularity and the actual types of food I'm eating, but thought the differences would be too insignificant to be worth noting. I probably do have more muscle than the 'average' person of my height/weight because of my strength training habits, though, and because my goal is to gain muscle, I eat quite a lot of protein (80-120g a day) and fruits/vegetables, which some sources say require more energy to digest than fats and lower-fibre carbs.

    50 calories here, a hundred there, a tiny percent more someplace else - it adds up.

    You've already self-identified being motion-oriented vs. placid in daily life ("fidgety" sounds a little pejorative, doesn't it? ;) ), walking enough to be quite meaningful, eating the foods with a slightly higher TEF, being more muscular than average (plus you're probably building still more muscle by training at maintenance, a process that in itself burns another tiny number of extra calories).

    There don't necessarily need to be clear, observable reasons for the higher than normal calorie requirements that have become manifestly obvious in someone's weight management results . . . but you have a bunch of those clear, observable reasons, and they're all on the "likely to burn more" side.

    Lucky you: Go celebrate! Have a piece of cake. Or a nice fruit plate with coconut and nuts. ;)

    P.S. I don't mind being called "old", at 62. As a stage III cancer survivor (for 17 years now) and cancer widow, I know viscerally that the actual alternative to "old" is not "young". A healthy, active, strong, healthy-weight age 62 is an excellent place to be. Every healthy birthday is a victory. In fact, I routinely call myself a "li'l ol' lady", on a single-handed mission to reclaim the term to mean a lively, scampering, curious, active, engaged, sharp-witted kind of creature. ;)

    P.P.S. If you do decide to go the "add 100 calories" route - which is not required! - there's a small but real chance that it could subtly spike your daily life energy level, further energize your lifting, and take you eventually to an even higher maintenance at increased body weight that what you'd currently estimate. Anecdotally, the slow build of intake seems to do that for some. I mention it not because it's guaranteed, but so that you're aware of the possibility. If you don't initially gain observably as you increase, I wanted you to have the possibility in mind so you don't imagine you're in some bizarre state of never-gain doom. Keep adding; eventually you'll find a happy slow-gain eating level. Best wishes!
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    P.S. I don't mind being called "old", at 62. As a stage III cancer survivor (for 17 years now) and cancer widow, I know viscerally that the actual alternative to "old" is not "young". A healthy, active, strong, healthy-weight age 62 is an excellent place to be. Every healthy birthday is a victory. In fact, I routinely call myself a "li'l ol' lady", on a single-handed mission to reclaim the term to mean a lively, scampering, curious, active, engaged, sharp-witted kind of creature. ;)


    Thanks, that's motivational and sobering at the same time.