Am i calculating this right?

Your estimated BMR is what you burn at total rest and in a fasted state - that is nowhere near your calorie needs for the day and you don't take calories away from that to work out a deficit.

Deficit is taken from your TDEE (which includes BMR, daily activity, exercise and even the thermic effect of eating).

kallen771991 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

Your estimated BMR is what you burn at total rest and in a fasted state - that is nowhere near your calorie needs for the day and you don't take calories away from that to work out a deficit.

Deficit is taken from your TDEE (which includes BMR, daily activity, exercise and even the thermic effect of eating).

I know. I take my bmr out of the daily totals so i don't include it.

Only exclude your bmr if you're dead and, since you're presumably typing or dictating said posts...

kallen771991 wrote: »

glassyo wrote: »

kallen771991 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

Your estimated BMR is what you burn at total rest and in a fasted state - that is nowhere near your calorie needs for the day and you don't take calories away from that to work out a deficit.

Deficit is taken from your TDEE (which includes BMR, daily activity, exercise and even the thermic effect of eating).

I know. I take my bmr out of the daily totals so i don't include it.

Only exclude your bmr if you're dead and, since you're presumably typing or dictating said posts...

I didn't think people included bmr when figuring in their deficit?

Well, it's like @Lietchi said. Your deficit is equal to total calories burned minus what you eat.

Total calories are made up of your bmr (coma calories...no extra movement), daily activity (getting out of bed, showering, cooking, taking care of your kids, working, walking to and from your car, etc) and exercising (walking, running, eliptical....not many count strength training tho )

Soooooooo let's say your fitbit says you burned 2000 calories in one day. You worked at a desk, you showered, you took a walk, you made dinner, you slept some, etc.

And according to your logging on mfp, you ate 1500 calories.

Your deficit is 500 calories.

2000-500=1500.

Perfect world numbers, of course.:)

Figuring out your deficit is JUST THAT EASY.

Plus all the other stuff she said.

kallen771991 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

kallen771991 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

Your estimated BMR is what you burn at total rest and in a fasted state - that is nowhere near your calorie needs for the day and you don't take calories away from that to work out a deficit.

Deficit is taken from your TDEE (which includes BMR, daily activity, exercise and even the thermic effect of eating).

I know. I take my bmr out of the daily totals so i don't include it.

That makes no sense at all when you are trying to estimate your total needs and then take a deficit off that total.

e.g.
My TDEE on a day with no exercise is about 2500.
If I wanted to lose 1lb/week I would take off 500 cals - eating 2000.

If I took off my BMR of 1500 and then another 500 cals I would only be eating 500 cals and losing at 4lbs a week!!

Ohhh i gotcha. I'm using fitbit to calculate what my bmr is based on what it says i burn doing nothing. My doctor said 1500 cal was a good goal too. I have pcos, its a different story for me.

Why not believe your Fitbit's all day calorie burn estimate, take a deficit off that for weight loss, and test-drive the result for a month (full menstrual cycle, comparing weight at the same relative point in different cycles, if you're premenopausal)? Synching your Fitbit to MFP should achieve this.

If you lose as expected (or close) doing that, that's one of the simplest possible personalized approaches. If the loss rate isn't as expected, you can adjust your intake as needed to accomplish your goal (10% adjustment to what Fitbit says, 20%, or whatever).

I understand that you have PCOS, and that that can make a person's calorie needs different from average. (I don't have PCOS, but am severely hypothyroid/treated, so somewhat analogous situation). Still, the doctor-provided calorie goals and diet plans - unless based on a super-detailed individual analysis, like a registered dietitian might do - are likely to be "one size fits most" solutions, and we're all individuals.

Like some others who've posted in this thread before, I'm wondering whether there's a terminology issue here. Your BMR (per your Fitbit) is the amount it thinks you'd burn doing nothing at all, just lying in bed all day. Furthermore, that isn't something your Fitbit is measuring. It's still just an estimate, based on the data you put in your Fitbit profile. It can be wrong. And you're not lying in bed all day every day, anyway, yes?

We can best find out our personal, individualized calorie needs by believing sound estimates to start, test-driving them for that 4-6 weeks, then adjusting based on personal results. Your Fitbit's estimate is just a little more personalized estimate, so arguably a better starting point for the experiment.

I'm a big believer in keeping things simple as the first experiment, then making them more complicated only if they need to be more complicated to meet goals. That applies to those of us with some "metabolic issue", just as it does to someone who expects to be more average, based on health factors.

kallen771991 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

kallen771991 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

kallen771991 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

Your estimated BMR is what you burn at total rest and in a fasted state - that is nowhere near your calorie needs for the day and you don't take calories away from that to work out a deficit.

Deficit is taken from your TDEE (which includes BMR, daily activity, exercise and even the thermic effect of eating).

I know. I take my bmr out of the daily totals so i don't include it.

That makes no sense at all when you are trying to estimate your total needs and then take a deficit off that total.

e.g.
My TDEE on a day with no exercise is about 2500.
If I wanted to lose 1lb/week I would take off 500 cals - eating 2000.

If I took off my BMR of 1500 and then another 500 cals I would only be eating 500 cals and losing at 4lbs a week!!

Ohhh i gotcha. I'm using fitbit to calculate what my bmr is based on what it says i burn doing nothing. My doctor said 1500 cal was a good goal too. I have pcos, its a different story for me.

Why not believe your Fitbit's all day calorie burn estimate, take a deficit off that for weight loss, and test-drive the result for a month (full menstrual cycle, comparing weight at the same relative point in different cycles, if you're premenopausal)? Synching your Fitbit to MFP should achieve this.

If you lose as expected (or close) doing that, that's one of the simplest possible personalized approaches. If the loss rate isn't as expected, you can adjust your intake as needed to accomplish your goal (10% adjustment to what Fitbit says, 20%, or whatever).

I understand that you have PCOS, and that that can make a person's calorie needs different from average. (I don't have PCOS, but am severely hypothyroid/treated, so somewhat analogous situation). Still, the doctor-provided calorie goals and diet plans - unless based on a super-detailed individual analysis, like a registered dietitian might do - are likely to be "one size fits most" solutions, and we're all individuals.

Like some others who've posted in this thread before, I'm wondering whether there's a terminology issue here. Your BMR (per your Fitbit) is the amount it thinks you'd burn doing nothing at all, just lying in bed all day. Furthermore, that isn't something your Fitbit is measuring. It's still just an estimate, based on the data you put in your Fitbit profile. It can be wrong. And you're not lying in bed all day every day, anyway, yes?

We can best find out our personal, individualized calorie needs by believing sound estimates to start, test-driving them for that 4-6 weeks, then adjusting based on personal results. Your Fitbit's estimate is just a little more personalized estimate, so arguably a better starting point for the experiment.

I'm a big believer in keeping things simple as the first experiment, then making them more complicated only if they need to be more complicated to meet goals. That applies to those of us with some "metabolic issue", just as it does to someone who expects to be more average, based on health factors.

fit bit says i burn 19.6 cal per 15 min i'm stationary. thats what i went off of, so i take my burned total and take that minus 1881 which is what the days projected stationary calorie burn. I'm not trying to make things overcomplicated, i just want to know what i burned for the day, its gratifying, because i'm not under eating, i'm exercising after every meal, i'm taking good care of myself and its like a mini reward.

I'm on seasonique right now so i'm not tracking my cycle, i got two kiddlins, i don't need another right now with everything going on lol.

where i am right now my gp is my only provider, anyone else is booked solid and believe me i tried. so in terms of a more personalized plan, i'm just kind of doing a trial and error run now. Found out what carbs cause me to bloat, i'm trying to aim for 10k steps a day one way or another. that and doing my weights every weekday, its giving me results. i just didn't know if i had the right idea on how to manually calculate my deficit, because my fitness pall drastically cuts my amounts down. \

Take yesterday for example, using the formula i mentioned in op, i got 1340 cal deficit for the day right? my fitness pal says i only burned 655cal. The reason i take out what fitbit says my resting burn is for the day is because mfp takes your goal, minus what you eat, add that to what you burn and get your total. which its not forward with the math when it comes down to it, so it shows steps for fitbit and one day i can get one readout for 7k and the next day get 7k steps and be way way under what it said previous. That drives me up a dang wall. I've kept my status as lightly active this whole time to be consistant, when i change it to active it decreases drastically. The estimation is so wonky it seemed to be a more logical idea to just do it myself. i'm working so hard, the app saying that i only burned 400 calories for everything i do in a day is bs. i can't trust that

If you literally ate 1341 calories fewer than you burned overall, that would be a very, very high deficit - high risk, high stress, unless you're under close medical supervision (like frequent blood tests), and starting from a point of being severely obese. (I'm not understanding clearly how you're calculating this, because you're doing something . . . unusual? . . . so maybe that's not what the 1341 is. Using standard terminology, consistently repeating a 1341 calorie deficit would be expected to result in a weight loss rate of well over 2.5 pounds a week, which is very aggressive.)

Fast weight loss is not a win, generally. Fast weight loss increases health risk, among other potential problems.

As far as the Fitbit to MFP adjustment, I'm concerned that you may be misunderstanding what it is: It's not directly related to steps. It's about the comparison of how many calories MFP expects you to burn based on all of your settings, including activity level; to the number of calories your Fitbit thinks you burned, including steps but also every other thing you did that day that involved movement, on top of your estimated BMR. Even fidgeting is movement above BMR, not to mention household chores, job, exercise, etc.

So, yes, on a day with the same number of steps, you may get a lower or higher calorie adjustment in MFP, depending on what else you did that day. It may be confusing, but that's how it's supposed to work.

Also, sure, if you reset your MFP activity level, the adjustment will be different. If you reset from lightly active to active on MFP, MFP expects you to burn more calories, so the adjustment of course decreases, because MFP compares its expectation to what your tracker actually estimated based on BMR plus all types of movement that it saw. If you tell MFP to expect you to burn more calories, it only makes sense that the adjustment vs. Fitbit would be smaller, y'know?

As far as a personalized plan: If you don't have monthly cycles, just go with a starting estimate/approach and log for 4-6 weeks, then compare the change in your bodyweight to the change you expected. You don't need your doctor to personalize for you, it's an experiment you can do yourself. I'd strongly suggest, especially with a health condition in the picture, that you not be trying to lose more than 0.5-1% of your bodyweight per week, on average over 4-6 weeks, and I'd be biased toward the lower end of that.

You're using Fitbit wrongly.
Take the total number of calories it says you burned in a day - not the active/exercise calories but the total daily burn, don't subtract anything! - and then minus the calories you consumed. That's your deficit.