Eating the right amount Calorie Deficit and TDEE

Your TDEE is how many calories you burn throughout the day (= maintenance calories) so you need to subtract from that to lose weight (create a calorie deficit)

Your calorie goal given on MFP:
- does not take into account your intentional exercise: your activity level is meant to reflect your day to day activity (job, chores, hobbies,...) not including intentional activity. You're meant to log exercise separately, which will give you more calories to consume. Which is not the same as a TDEE method where everything is included up front.
- takes into account your chosen weight loss rate and activity level. It calculates an estimation of how many calories you burn per day (not including exercise) and subtracts 500kcal per day for a weight loss rate of 1lb per week; 1000 calories are subtracted for 2lbs weight loss per week, etc.. But MFP will never go lower than 1200 calories for women to ensure adequate nutrition.

Your 1200 calorie goal on MFP tells me you have chosen a weight loss rate that is too agressive for the size you are. What weight loss rate did you select?

I would suggest choosing a slower weight loss rate. I prefer to suffer as little as possible, so I chose a weight loss rate of 0.5lbs from the start. But even if you're more impatient than me, losing weight too fast isn't good either: you'll risk losing muscle mass and it'll make your calorie goal harder to stick with.
I'd suggest choosing 1.5lbs per week (or even 1lb per week), but that might still be only 1200 for you. 1200 calories (on days you don't exercise, since you get extra calories for exercise) is low and is hard to follow for a lot of people. I know I'd be starving eating that little

If you're going to use the TDEE method - you need to set your calorie goal manually in MFP. I think that's the easiest.

Use your TDEE, with your activity level set as sedentary --- set your calorie limit as less than that but more than your BMR....then log your workout (your bike riding, or even the walk you do).

If you log your workouts...MFP will add those calories back --- you can work on how much of those you should actually eat back, you just want to make sure that between the manual deficit you've set + your calories burned through exercise you're not eating too little.

For example...when I was actively losing weight I ate back 50-100% of those calories depending on if I felt hungry or not. But I always ate back some of them bc I'd already set my calorie goal as lower than my TDEE and I didn't want to net too little cals.

kegan5 wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

Your TDEE is how many calories you burn throughout the day (= maintenance calories) so you need to subtract from that to lose weight (create a calorie deficit)

Your calorie goal given on MFP:
- does not take into account your intentional exercise: your activity level is meant to reflect your day to day activity (job, chores, hobbies,...) not including intentional activity. You're meant to log exercise separately, which will give you more calories to consume. Which is not the same as a TDEE method where everything is included up front.
- takes into account your chosen weight loss rate and activity level. It calculates an estimation of how many calories you burn per day (not including exercise) and subtracts 500kcal per day for a weight loss rate of 1lb per week; 1000 calories are subtracted for 2lbs weight loss per week, etc.. But MFP will never go lower than 1200 calories for women to ensure adequate nutrition.

Your 1200 calorie goal on MFP tells me you have chosen a weight loss rate that is too agressive for the size you are. What weight loss rate did you select?

2lb per week

Speaking as someone who started at around your current weight (I was 183 pounds, and only a bit taller at 5'5"), that's a pretty aggressive weight loss rate. It can come with elevated health risks, and possibly sustainability issues.

Many of us here, especially the long-term successful subset I believe, think 0.5-1% (max) of current weight is about the highest sensible, sustainable loss rate. Any meaningful amount of weight loss is a long term project (weeks, months, even years for some); sustainability and health-risk management are important.

If you picked the MFP activity level as per instructions (based on daily life activity before intentional exercise), you'd be logging that 400 calories of Peleton on top of the 1200, you'd be eating 1600 on Peleton days, which is pretty darned close to what the TDEE calculator is saying.

Whether you use a TDEE calculator and set MFP goal manually (so have the same calorie goal every day regardless of exercise), or let MFP estimate (so log and eat back exercise, probably the day of the exercise but you can carry it over if you prefer), you want to stick with a consistent regimen for 4-6 weeks, then compare average weekly loss rate to a sensible target rate, then adjust intake if needed. (Premenopausal women should go for at least one full menstrual cycle, compare bodyweight at the same relative point in at least 2 different cycles, because monthly water weight fluctuations can be very misleading, for some, over shorter timespans.)

Even then, the first couple of weeks can be misleading for anyone (water weight weirdness), and should be discarded & more trial weeks added, for best results.

Any of these calculators (even fitness trackers) are just giving you an estimate. It'll be pretty darned close for the average person, but the only way you know how average you are in this context is by running that personal experiment.

Best wishes!

kegan5 wrote: »

Thank you for the advice, I put on an extra 12lbs being stuck indoors and so I guess I wanted to speedup losing that to get back to my 'normal big' and then work on slowing down the remainder to my actual goal weight. Prior to lock down, my heavy weight was 165 so this is just frustrating .

I'll go in and switch up my settings here, sounds like that's the best way to go.

cwolfman13 wrote: »

To that end, are you sure you put everything into the TDEE calculator correctly? I find it hard to believe that with a BMR of 1450 you would only have a TDEE of 1740 with your day to day hum drum plus regular exercise. How many steps do you usually get in a day? I walk my dog daily and have a desk job and get around 10K steps just from that and walking around during the day to talk to collogues, etc., which puts me above light active even without my deliberate workouts.

I used a couple of calculators online as they seem to shift a little...
I used tdee calc .net

I have age 38. Female, 180lb, 5'2 Sedentary which gives 1450 for BMR, 1740 for sedentary and 1993 for light maintenance.

It says to cut calories to 1240 a 500 calorie deficit but this always confuses me because its lower than the BMR... so they seem to always say never ever eat less than BMR 1450... also eat less to lose weight

I will go ahead and adjust my plan in MFP but any clarity on my TDEE confusion above I'd love to understand that.

If you're using TDEE, you need to include all of your activity...if you're exercising 5 days per week, you aren't sedentary...you would at least use the light active maintenance number. A 500 calorie cut from that would be just shy of 1,500 calories per day to lose about 1 Lb per week.

If you're using MFP's method, you would log exercise after the fact and get additional calories...let's say that's 400 calories from exercise...so you would be at 1200+400= 1,600 calories gross, which is relatively close to the total you would eat using the TDEE method.

These calculators use your BMR to help determine what your TDEE or NEAT would be. They do not make the distinction of eating or not eating below BMR...they simply take a 500 calorie cut from your TDEE or NEAT. In general, I see little need to eat below BMR...if you ate BMR calories you would obviously lose weight as even the most sedentary person is still going to burn more calories than BMR