BMR/TDEE Calculators?

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dave_in_ni
dave_in_ni Posts: 533 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Can someone explain this to me. I know these calculators are a rough idea but they don't even seem close. My BMR is roughly 1800, TDEE 2800, this ties in with my fitbit which says I burn roughly 3000 calories per day. Now I've been tracking for years, I know I maintain my weight around 2000 calories, if I go above 2200 I will start gaining, around 1800 I will start losing weight.

Something is badly off with these estimates or else it me? Any ideas?

Replies

  • tonyfastz06
    tonyfastz06 Posts: 35 Member
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    The idea in my opinion is that everyone has to start with the available tools but in the end it is always experience and fine tuning your own macros that works best. Also, impossible to know what your cals breaks down as (P/F/C), when you're eating them and what your actual activity level is. Also, most people over estimate their activity when using the TDEE. Take it down one category especially if you live a sedentary lifestyle outside of the gym or your chosen activity.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    Your Fitbit thinks you burn 3,000 calories per day when your scale says you maintain at 2,000? Yikes!

    Obviously your data as validated by the scale is correct.
  • dave_in_ni
    dave_in_ni Posts: 533 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,988 Member
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    And all the calculators say I should eat 1500 to maintain, yet I have been eating 2000-2300 for years and maintaining. I use a digital food scale, log my food and I eat 13 out of 14 meals per week prepared by me.

    Calculators (including your fitbit) use data obtained by using averages. There are always outliers.
  • dave_in_ni
    dave_in_ni Posts: 533 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing

    I believe that you think you know what you're doing. Your post history is full of similar posts. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if you think it's 2000 but it's really 3000 or even 30,000. Your body doesn't really care about the actual number. It just needs a certain amount of fuel and it sounds like you are providing it that amount if you are maintaining.

    I believe I do know what I am doing, Get food, Scan pack, check nutritional info for the match, put on the scale, log food. Where did I go wrong?
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing

    I believe that you think you know what you're doing. Your post history is full of similar posts. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if you think it's 2000 but it's really 3000 or even 30,000. Your body doesn't really care about the actual number. It just needs a certain amount of fuel and it sounds like you are providing it that amount if you are maintaining.

    I believe I do know what I am doing, Get food, Scan pack, check nutritional info for the match, put on the scale, log food. Where did I go wrong?

    I'm not with you 24/7 so I can't answer that for certain. I can only throw out ideas--not logging cooking oils, not logging drinks, not logging food eaten while drinking, going overboard on weekends and not logging it, mistaking normal weight fluctuations for weight gain and unnecessarily cutting calories to counter them...the list can go on and on. But, again, if you know how much it takes you maintain, it doesn't matter what the actual calorie count is.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
    edited January 2019
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    Just as a point of reference OP, I am a lightly active female with a higher BF than optimal, 5'4 and 125 lbs and I maintain at @ 1800 cals. If you have tracked yourself as maintaining at only 2000 calories, either you are an outlier of some kind or your logging is off. If it's your logging, it's not really a big deal - for many people, knowing the actual number is immaterial once they have found the equilibrium that will keep them at a healthy weight.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,277 Member
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    cmriverside wrote: »
    And all the calculators say I should eat 1500 to maintain, yet I have been eating 2000-2300 for years and maintaining. I use a digital food scale, log my food and I eat 13 out of 14 meals per week prepared by me.

    Calculators (including your fitbit) use data obtained by using averages. There are always outliers.

    This.

    MFP and my Garmin Vivoactive 3 both estimate several hundred calories low, for me, too. Meh, who cares. They're close for most people, it would seem from reading the forums.

    A year of weight loss experience (logged meticulously) and nearing 3 years of maintenance (logged a little more approximately, but mostly logged) are more convincing to me than a statistical estimate based on a bunch of other li'l ol' ladies who aren't me.

    I'm 63, BMI 22-point-something, with about the same calorie picture as cmriverside.
  • dave_in_ni
    dave_in_ni Posts: 533 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing

    I believe that you think you know what you're doing. Your post history is full of similar posts. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if you think it's 2000 but it's really 3000 or even 30,000. Your body doesn't really care about the actual number. It just needs a certain amount of fuel and it sounds like you are providing it that amount if you are maintaining.

    I believe I do know what I am doing, Get food, Scan pack, check nutritional info for the match, put on the scale, log food. Where did I go wrong?

    I'm not with you 24/7 so I can't answer that for certain. I can only throw out ideas--not logging cooking oils, not logging drinks, not logging food eaten while drinking, going overboard on weekends and not logging it, mistaking normal weight fluctuations for weight gain and unnecessarily cutting calories to counter them...the list can go on and on. But, again, if you know how much it takes you maintain, it doesn't matter what the actual calorie count is.

    Well I can only go by my numbers. But as you say sort of irrelevant, would be a different story if I wasn't maintaining or gaining when I didn't want to be. I probably do burn quite a few calories considering I clock up 12000 steps per day and work out 5 days per week but I don't burn 3331 calories as my Fitbit is reporting now.
  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,442 Member
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    So, eat 2200 calories. Problem solved.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
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    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing

    I believe that you think you know what you're doing. Your post history is full of similar posts. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if you think it's 2000 but it's really 3000 or even 30,000. Your body doesn't really care about the actual number. It just needs a certain amount of fuel and it sounds like you are providing it that amount if you are maintaining.

    I believe I do know what I am doing, Get food, Scan pack, check nutritional info for the match, put on the scale, log food. Where did I go wrong?

    There's the inherent 20% margin of error in labeling, which is why if you want specific details you need to weigh everything. When in maintenance I simply add a .2 to my entry to compensate for this if I'm worried.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    Options
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing

    I believe that you think you know what you're doing. Your post history is full of similar posts. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if you think it's 2000 but it's really 3000 or even 30,000. Your body doesn't really care about the actual number. It just needs a certain amount of fuel and it sounds like you are providing it that amount if you are maintaining.

    I believe I do know what I am doing, Get food, Scan pack, check nutritional info for the match, put on the scale, log food. Where did I go wrong?

    There's the inherent 20% margin of error in labeling, which is why if you want specific details you need to weigh everything. When in maintenance I simply add a .2 to my entry to compensate for this if I'm worried.

    This is an interesting point. In another group that I am in, a person who has logged for a long time said that he had been maintaining at a specific calorie level. He then kept the same calorie level but switched a lot of his food over from what I can only think to describe as processed/packaged foods to unprocessed/packaged foods (think switching from cereal to fruit, for example) and found that he started losing weight. His thought was that the nutrition info he got from labels likely had a certain degree of error while the nutrition info for the "whole foods" was less (my guess is he was using info from a database like the USDA.) So his X calories of processed foods was really X+something. (I hope I described that in a way that makes sense.)
  • neldabg
    neldabg Posts: 1,452 Member
    Options
    jemhh wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing

    I believe that you think you know what you're doing. Your post history is full of similar posts. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if you think it's 2000 but it's really 3000 or even 30,000. Your body doesn't really care about the actual number. It just needs a certain amount of fuel and it sounds like you are providing it that amount if you are maintaining.

    I believe I do know what I am doing, Get food, Scan pack, check nutritional info for the match, put on the scale, log food. Where did I go wrong?

    There's the inherent 20% margin of error in labeling, which is why if you want specific details you need to weigh everything. When in maintenance I simply add a .2 to my entry to compensate for this if I'm worried.

    This is an interesting point. In another group that I am in, a person who has logged for a long time said that he had been maintaining at a specific calorie level. He then kept the same calorie level but switched a lot of his food over from what I can only think to describe as processed/packaged foods to unprocessed/packaged foods (think switching from cereal to fruit, for example) and found that he started losing weight. His thought was that the nutrition info he got from labels likely had a certain degree of error while the nutrition info for the "whole foods" was less (my guess is he was using info from a database like the USDA.) So his X calories of processed foods was really X+something. (I hope I described that in a way that makes sense.)

    Did he weigh his processed/packaged foods?
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    Options
    neldabg wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    dave_in_ni wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Your calorie counting is off. You're eating comparing gross calories to net calories or you're using bad nutrition info/not weighing foods/etc or there's a combo of both going on. I've seen your stats and don't for a minute believe that you truly maintain at an average of 2000 calories every day. I don't necessarily think you burn 3000 either.

    Fair enough. I've been doing this 3+ years now, I think I know what I'm doing

    I believe that you think you know what you're doing. Your post history is full of similar posts. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if you think it's 2000 but it's really 3000 or even 30,000. Your body doesn't really care about the actual number. It just needs a certain amount of fuel and it sounds like you are providing it that amount if you are maintaining.

    I believe I do know what I am doing, Get food, Scan pack, check nutritional info for the match, put on the scale, log food. Where did I go wrong?

    There's the inherent 20% margin of error in labeling, which is why if you want specific details you need to weigh everything. When in maintenance I simply add a .2 to my entry to compensate for this if I'm worried.

    This is an interesting point. In another group that I am in, a person who has logged for a long time said that he had been maintaining at a specific calorie level. He then kept the same calorie level but switched a lot of his food over from what I can only think to describe as processed/packaged foods to unprocessed/packaged foods (think switching from cereal to fruit, for example) and found that he started losing weight. His thought was that the nutrition info he got from labels likely had a certain degree of error while the nutrition info for the "whole foods" was less (my guess is he was using info from a database like the USDA.) So his X calories of processed foods was really X+something. (I hope I described that in a way that makes sense.)

    Did he weigh his processed/packaged foods?

    Yes. He's someone I fully believe logs very well.

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