Professional BMR and am I on the right track?

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I'm 46, 5' 4", 136 lbs with a 120-125 lb weight goal by August 2012. I have been using the online calculators to determine my BMR and have been eating around 1200 calories a day and working out 5 days a week and losing small amounts of weight per week (8 lbs total in 3 months). I've been utterly confused at all the information out there about whether or not I should eat my exercise calories, starvation mode, etc. I finally made an appointment first thing this morning at a local hospital to have a professional BMR done and was pleasantly surprised at the results. My results were 1710. According to what I've learned, I need to cut my daily calories by 500 for a weekly loss of 3500 calories (1 lb loss per week). I've decided to continue to eat 1200 calories per day and "save" all my exercise calories for a Saturday treat day, not to exceed 1200 + exercise calories earned per week rather than eat my exercise calories back each day. I had been having an "all out" cheat day on Saturdays and eating my exercise calories back each day resulting in a 1/2 lb (sometimes smaller) weight lose each week. According to the math this should work and since I'm eating good healthy foods throughout the week I'm not hungry at 1200 calories. Do I have this right or is there something I'm missing? Does one have to eat their exercise calories back the day they are earned or will stockpiling them for a weekly treat day still result in the weight loss I'm hoping for? I'm also thinking this will keep me motivated to work out because I will know that I get a treat each time I log extra calories burned.

Hmm, that BMR reading you got from the hospital seems pretty high if you ask me. Generally BMR for the average person is going to be 10 cals/lb plus or minus 15%. Which would put you between 1150 and 1550. Do you know how they tested it?

Regardless though, did you read my Nutrition 101 article? If so, I'm surprised you were confused as it goes into great detail about total energy expenditure, BMR, starvation mode, and everything else. You can find that here:

www.body-improvements.com/resources/eat

But you shouldn't necessarily sweat the day to day deficit. It's the average deficit that matters more than anything else. So if you have a lot of big deficit days and one splurge day where you're even in a surplus, yet the daily average over 7 days is still a reasonable deficit (say 25-35%)... then that's what really matters.

Of course some constants from day to day are a good idea... meaning it'd be wise to include adequate protein, essential fats, and fibrous veggies/fruits each day.

Does this help?

Do what works best for you. As you travel through the process you may need to adjust your calories periodically. Good job on going the professional calc route. May I suggest you get a full body comp scan at your local medical facility. Ours does it with the DEX scan machne (that measures bone density normally). It was reasonable and the report was great, It gives you your body fat percent etc.

There is definitely a standard deviation associated with indirect calorimetry testing, so the lady didn't know what she's talking about. From what I've read, there isn't a universally accepted standard deviation, but I know I've seen papers where it was +/- 200 calories.

But it doesn't really matter. Trying to determine exactly what your body is expending on any given moment is silly to me. Sure, it can uncover if someone has a medical condition that's impairing their metabolism, but outside of those instances, think of it like this... it's not static. So what if you figured out what your energy expenditure is today? It won't be the same tomorrow and certainly not next week since energy expenditure varies with activity, age, body composition, weight, diet composition, etc.

Which is why it's the process you adhere to in response to your diet that matters most. If your goal is to lose fat, obviously you need a deficit. Deficit from what? Your total daily energy expenditure... otherwise known as maintenance. This is obviously an estimation, since, as noted, it's a dynamic metric. For active folks 14-16 cals per pound tends to be about right. For people who aren't as active or who how lost considerable weight in the past... maybe something like 12-14 cals/lb.

From there, subtract 25-35% as a general rule and that's your target.

If you're using MFP to track your deficit, things are slightly different. They estimate your BMR, which should be close to 10 cals/lb. From there, they subtract the calories needed to hypothetically lose a given amount of fat. So if you tell MFP that you want to lose 1 lb per week, since there are 3500 calories in 1 lb of fat, you would need a daily shortage of 500 calories per day (500 x 7 = 3500).

So in MFP-land, the deficit is established for you before exercise is even factored into the equation. Which means if you were bedridden and doing nothing at all, if you ate the amount MFP tells you to eat (500 less than your predicted BMR), you'll lose weight.

For this very reason, if you're using MFP, it's important to eat back exercise calories. If you didn't, you're only piling onto the deficit that's already established, and could run the risk of eating too little... which we could debate about.

And for the record... the whole 500 calorie deficit per day to total a 1 lb fat loss per week is pretty bogus if you ask me. From the aforementioned article I linked to:

It’s traditionally suggested that you subtract 500 calories from your maintenance level per day. This 500 cal/day would net a 3,500 calorie deficit by the end of 1 week. Since there are 3,500 calories in 1 pound of fat, it’s a simple way to lose 1 pound of fat per week. Or so it seems.

Many people quickly learn that this simple formula doesn’t typically pan out in the real world. There are a number of reasons why it doesn’t – most notably is the fact that as we lose weight, our metabolic rate drops. Most of this is due to the loss of tissue… which means less mass to support and move around. Some of this has to do with what’s referred to as adaptive thermogenesis (or zomg! the starvation mode), which is basically your body shifting into conservation mode in response to the energy shortfall.

The formula also fails quite often due to the fact that even if metabolic rate was static, very few people come close to accurately creating a 500 cal/day deficit. As noted above, it’s common to have people underestimating their calorie consumption and overestimating their calorie expenditure. Not to mention the fact that the 3,500 calorie/week deficit assumes we’re losing fat tissue and nothing else, which is rarely the case.

Put simply… the rate of weight loss is not always linear.

Of course when the formula doesn’t pan out… when people don’t lose their targeted 1 lb of weight per week… they blame it on calories not working rather than the obvious. Manage your expectations according to reality! If you expect to lose weight each and every week and to reach your goal weight looking exactly like the model on the cover of your favorite magazine, you’re likely to wind up disappointed and frustrated.

But going back to the process.... once you set a deficit that's based on a supposed maintenance, you track. Simple as that. You don't worry about day to day fluctuations. You focus on the long term... weeks... if not an entire month. And when, after that amount of time, you realize things aren't going as planned, you accept that you're working with a ton of loose estimations and you adjust accordingly.... either bumping calories up since the rate of loss is too fast or bumping calories down because the rate is too low.

Make sense?

Yes, i think............to be honest, I feel like my head is going to explode. I just don't remember it being this hard to lose 10 lbs in my 20's but its a whole different story in my mid 40's. I think I need to come back and read this information tomorrow morning when my brain is fresh. I do see now though why so many people throw in the towel in weight loss but I have no desire to do so, I am dedicated and fully motivated. Thanks

Well where are you confused?

Better yet, let me put it in even easier terms.

Your body needs X number of calories in order to maintain itself. If it has less than X, still needing that same amount of energy as before, it's going to pull them from its stores... predominantly fat.

Make an educated guess at what X is based on whatever equation you like best. I like 14-16 calories per pound for active people.

Now eat less than that.

If it doesn't work within a month or whatever, eat even less the following month. Maybe shave 10% off of what you were consuming.

How's that?

After a workout your body has about a 30 minute window to get good protein to its muscles. A lot of people take a protein shake to get it there the fastest. Whole foods take time to digest so that means the protein might not make it to your muscles in 30 minutes. Protein shakes are great because they are already broken down and get to your muscles the fastest. Think of a spounge that has been sitting out in the sun all day. When u throw some water on it the spounge soaks it up. This is what happens when you give your muscles protein after a workout, your muscles soak up the protein!

After a workout your body has about a 30 minute window to get good protein to its muscles. A lot of people take a protein shake to get it there the fastest. Whole foods take time to digest so that means the protein might not make it to your muscles in 30 minutes. Protein shakes are great because they are already broken down and get to your muscles the fastest. Think of a spounge that has been sitting out in the sun all day. When u throw some water on it the spounge soaks it up. This is what happens when you give your muscles protein after a workout, your muscles soak up the protein!

It doesn't quite work like this.

Unless you stayed overnight hooked up to machines, they measured your RMR, Resting Metabolic Rate. If they said BMR, you got a tech that knows how to run the machines, but doesn't understand what they are talking about.

Did they mention that starvation mode may be a myth (may), but at least mention you can lower your metabolism by eating less than your body needs for basic functioning?

Really, the only thing that can help to do is confirm your BMR and TDEE (maintenance calories) are in the right place, they should be on either side of the RMR.

From http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html
I show the following stats

BMR - 1326
Goal calories - 1200 (should be here)
RMR - 1700
TDEE - 1989

The only problem here is eating below your healthy BMR figure.
Now, there are some calculators that will take your RMR and calculate the BMR. And perhaps that is what the tech was supposed to do, but just gave you the straight RMR figure, because that is rather high for a shorter lady.

That site above can be made more accurate if you know your body fat%, just change height to BF and get a more accurate estimate.

So for healthy weight loss of about 1lb week, you should be eating 1500 cal goal, and after getting accurate estimates of your exercise, eating that back too.
Because think about it, if your exercise uses up calories that your body can't even use for basic functions of life, then it will still slow down.
Or already has actually.

Starvation mode is real. The evidence clearly supports adaptive thermogenesis. It's just misapplied in everyday banter you see on forums like this.

What's more is the fact that starvation mode... or better phrased adaptive thermogenesis... is going to happen when anyone loses weight. Or more precisely... when they lose fat. Lose it fast or slow... it doesn't matter. It happens. It's definitely more pronounced in some than others. But the point is, there's no point in fretting over it because there's not much you can do about it.

You can work to preserve muscle, but even that's not as influential as many people make it out to be. You can offset the adaptation with exercise, which is one of the primary reasons why exercise is very important to long term maintenance of losses.

I don't think i run the risk of starvation mode in my situation due to a cheat day of earned exercise calories - and i agree, i think it's way over used on this site. People's weight doesn't go down week to week and they jump on the old "starvation mode" bandwagon, sometime you just have to keep chugging along and the weight finally moves.

That is not correct either.

You can lose weight eating below your BMR, as commented muscle mass will be used, your metabolism just slows down in general, and even with exercise the body will be weak in other areas.

It is exactly that point of not losing weight any more that you should NOT keep chugging along. Because at that point your system as already lowered your real BMR to below your energy intake, chugging along won't improve anything.

What I'd bet usually happens is "chugging along" means the person thinks they have to eat less or exercise even more to kick start it. And indeed, for a bit, you will be below your new lower BMR, until your body adjusts down again.

But that downward spiral can only be followed for so long before you have caused real problems.

The actual solution at the point of the stall is to re-evaluate what you have been doing to your body. Slowly get your calories back up to a healthy level above what a healthy BMR would be, and accept the fact you did it wrong and will gain a bit of weight until your body knows it is receiving what it needs.
And then start again safely this time.

Shoot, I remember reading years ago in Triathlon magazines the stories of those starting out. They'd be eating 2500 calories and thought that was enough. But sadly they were doing 3000 worth of calorie burn the whole day. And they wondered why they stalled, or on a bing day gained such weight, or had to break their workouts into so many small workouts because they couldn't handle the big ones anymore.
And these were knowledgeable folks for the most part, you'd think. and they got into that mode.
How many days of net 0 calories are worse can you have pounding your body and not having problems. Ugh.

What's more is the fact that starvation mode... or better phrased adaptive thermogenesis... is going to happen when anyone loses weight. Or more precisely... when they lose fat. Lose it fast or slow... it doesn't matter. It happens. It's definitely more pronounced in some than others. But the point is, there's no point in fretting over it because there's not much you can do about it.

You can work to preserve muscle, but even that's not as influential as many people make it out to be. You can offset the adaptation with exercise, which is one of the primary reasons why exercise is very important to long term maintenance of losses.

See I would put more emphasis on maintain lean muscle mass than what you have. I have seen and worked with people on here that have been on VLCD and lost up to 50% of their lean muscle mass and now have a hard time losing weight since they cut their BMR by 30% (roughly 300 calories). Where as, a person like myself has been cutting body fat fairly easy by eating 2800-3000 calories a day. This would mean a person would have to workout another 30+ minutes to maintain at certain levels or decrease fuel consumption. I agree living a active life is important but not always easy when children and work is involved.

If you read around the forum, I'm all about maintaining muscle mass. But as far as metabolic rate goes... there's A LOT more at play than the amount of muscle tissue. You can't attribute the drops in BMR that you're referencing solely to the loss in muscle. We know the energetic cost of maintaining muscle, and it's not very high on a relative scale. Which is what I'm referring to above when I said most people overhype the role muscle plays in metabolic rate.

I mean the research puts the energy cost of 1 lb of muscle at 6 or so calories. Oh... and 2 cals per pound of fat..... yet you don't see people running around trying to preserve their fat stores so their metabolisms stay elevated, haah.

In addition, most of the research is pointing out the reductions in total energy expenditure in response to hypocaloric eating and fat loss stem primarily from drops in non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And even beyond that, there are going to be drops in BMR that happen irrespective of tissue loss. Meaning you could have complete muscle retention and still see adaptive thermogenesis due to variables such as Leptin, thyroid, etc.

But again... definitely not trying to argue that preserving muscle isn't important. I'm the last person you'll find doing that around here. But my wording had purpose in my previous post.

Makes complete sense and I see we are on the same page.