BMR, Maintenance Calories and their importance!!!!!

Wait, i'm still confused. Does this mean that your BMR is what your body burns while just laying in bed all day breathing?

yep.

So, how do we calculate how many calories we actually burn while moving around and doing stuff (in addition to our BMR value)?

Good question! I think those body media things do that? MFP guestimates based on what you tell it your activity level is, but thats obviously a really rough estimate.

awesome post! thanks so much!

I've used a bmr calculator that uses body fat % and lean body mass to find my BMR, but now I'm slightly confused. I've had trainers at the gym tell me I should be eating 1200-1300 calories to lose weight (I'm 5"2 and 136 lbs) but according to this BMR calculator (http://www.cordianet.com/calculator.htm) my BMR (under light exercise) is 1356, and my tdee is around the 1864.

I'm slightly confused as to what I should be doing to figure out how much to eat to lose weight? I had been undereating for quite some time, not realising that I needed to be eating back my exercise calories-so I was really taking in 800-900 calories instead of the 1200/1300 I thought i'd been aiming for.

I'm paying for it now trying to boost my metabolism again eating between 1300 and 1400 net calories. When my metabolism has stabilised, do I cut 500 calories from my tdee, or do I drop it by 20%?

the 20% is a suggested number used by dieticians to create a calorie deficit. its usually recommended either 10-20%, or alternatively cutting your calories by 500 a day.

This is awesome information..thanks a bunch!!!

BUMP!

The difference between what MFP says I should eat (including exercise, usually around 1700) and that website which is saying 2,200. Guess I will try to go up to that if i plateau? Or should i try now? I thought I understood all of this after how much i have read but perhaps not.

Thanks for the information. When I started MFP, it set my calorie goal at 1200, which was ridiculous. I was very irritable and it was difficult to eat that few calories of anything. I upped it myself to 1500 (just guessing) but after some good information I got yesterday, I am actually going to try to up it to 1650 and see what happens.