1200 seems low?

Its "not very active"

Also yeah, if you're not too tall and above a certain age MFP gives you very little calories. Those equations take age into account. My maintenance calories according to MFP are 1540 per day. In reality it's around 1750 for me. But yeah, if I wanted to lose a bit of weight, then even the lowest option, lose 0.5lbs per week would put me at 1290 calories per day. I'm not sure if peoples metabolism really slows down so much when they get over 40.

I just played a bit with a TDEE calculator (that's including workouts, but I said I'm not working out), and it gives me:
Daily calories to maintain weight (TDEE): 1583 calories
if I make myself 20 years younger I get:
Daily calories to maintain weight (TDEE):1695 calories

I have to say that I see more extreme numbers on MPF. They might use a different equation for estimating calorie needs.

yirara wrote: »

Also yeah, if you're not too tall and above a certain age MFP gives you very little calories. Those equations take age into account. My maintenance calories according to MFP are 1540 per day. In reality it's around 1750 for me. But yeah, if I wanted to lose a bit of weight, then even the lowest option, lose 0.5lbs per week would put me at 1290 calories per day. I'm not sure if peoples metabolism really slows down so much when they get over 40.

I just played a bit with a TDEE calculator (that's including workouts, but I said I'm not working out), and it gives me:
Daily calories to maintain weight (TDEE): 1583 calories
if I make myself 20 years younger I get:
Daily calories to maintain weight (TDEE):1695 calories

I have to say that I see more extreme numbers on MPF. They might use a different equation for estimating calorie needs.

Bolded #1:

If I use one of the TDEE calculators (such as Sailrabbit) that allows input of body fat %, and use the same numbers other than age in both cases, 24-year-old theoretical me, and 64-year-old actual me, have BMRs a couple of hundred calories apart (about one daily serving of peanut butter less for old me) . . . until I specify that we each have the same body fat % . If I do that, fake young me and actual old me are given the same BMR estimate (BMR = amount burned if lying in bed all day, basically). That ought to provide some hints about aging, when it comes to calorie estimates.

Beyond that, daily life non-exercise activity (NEAT) statistically tends to be lower as we age: Less active jobs, not chasing toddlers around, enjoying the homes/gardens we were energeticallly remodeling/redecorating in our youth, possibly downsizing residences, hiring services we used to do ourselves (or using more automated means like Roombas and riding mowers), eating/drinking richer foods at sit-down restaurants (or others' homes) and seeing plays/movies more as our social lives instead of dancing, relying more on convenience of our vehicles and walking/biking less for transportation . . . etc. On average, across the population - not everyone in all those ways, obviously.

Bottom line: Most of the age difference in calorie burn (only part of which is "metabolism") seem to involve factors over which we have significant control, if the research-based statistical models are to be believed.

Since the activity multipliers are used in the context (activity multiplier X BMR), an age difference in estimated BMR creates a numerically bigger difference in estimated NEAT or TDEE - how much bigger depends on the activity level. (Pretty much all of the calculator estimate BMR, then use an activity multiplier to estimate NEAT or TDEE.)

Bolded #2: Of course they do. MFP uses one of the standard research-based BMR estimating formulas, one used by at least some of the TDEE calculators. (Sailrabbit will let you compare multiples of them, BTW.) But IMU MFP uses somewhat different activity multipliers to derive NEAT than TDEE calculators would use to derive TDEE, even for similarly-named activity settings. (Different TDEE calculators can have more or fewer activity levels than MFP, or than each other, which is another source of variability in estimates.)

I forget what my maintenance calories are on MFP; I think it's about 1500 (5'5". 132lb this morning, 64, sedentary), before exercise. Reality (still before exercise) is around 2000 (during shelter at home) to 2200, based on nearly 5 years of logging experience. It's all estimates, and only experience (with some careful logging) will reveal the real story.