BMR-BMI-my goal...I don't get any of it!!!

Quick run down:

BMI = Body Mass Index; Its a formula that takes your height and weight and turns it to one number. Its pretty much the universal method for telling you if you're normal, overweight, obese, etc. It does have erroneous results if you're extremely muscular though because the excess muscle weight will erroneously show an overweight/obese result.

BMR = Basal metabolic rate. Its the amount of calories you burn if you were to lay in bed all day just to keep everything going in your body. Generally most people working out are between moderately and intensively active so you must account for that extra effort by taking your BMI and multiplying it by 1.2-1.5 since you're 20-50% more active than someone who lays in bed all day.
IE my BMR is 2200. I'd burn that laying in bed all day. Multiply by 1.2 for moderate activity and my daily calories are about 2800.

Now take your BMR and figure out how much weight you want to lose. Say a pound a week. A pound is 3500 calories. Divide that by 7 days for a week (3500/7 = 500) to get a needed deficit of 500 calories per day to lose 1 pound per week. My BMR being 2800 means I take 2800 - 500 = 2300. I should eat 2300 calories a day to lose 1 pound a week.

Now lets throw exercise into the mix. I am eating 2300 calories a day, but I exercise 6 days a week burning 400 calories a day. That lowers my NET calories every day (but my off day) to 1900. I have to option to eat back those calories to a NET 2300 (total 2700) or too let them add to my weight loss. I choose to let them go towards weight loss so thats a 900/day calorie deficit which multiplied by 7 days (for simplicity even though I take a day off) = 5400 calorie deficit per week. That is roughly 1.5 lb loss per week.

A lot of people get discouraged by water weight though which and cause them to appear to lose a lot more or less depending on salt and carb intake prior to weigh in. I weigh in daily but only record my official weight on Sundays. Knowing my fluctuations helps me keep an idea of how much water I am retaining. It only takes 1 liter of water to add 2 lbs of weight to you, so that tells you why water can affect weigh ins so much.

Bump

For the first few months I was losing weight, the scale hardly moved but the inches disappeared quickly. It really helps with motivation if you measure (all I measured was waist and hips).

Part of this phenomenon in my opinion is if you're like me, I was completely sedentary with NO exercise for the past couple of years. My muscles were obviously atrophied (shrunken and degenerated) because of that. The rapid trauma that occurs from exercising of atrophied muscles causes them to retain water (lots of it) for quite a while as they recover and grow (hypertrophy). Eventually you will drop that water weight, but the addition of muscle + water weight can slow the scale (in my theory). Eventually muscles will heal and drop the water weight, but if you strength train this phenomenon can still occur albeit with a lesser effect.


After about two months, I got real serious with my exercise and diet (new years this year) and about 2 weeks in my weight loss picked up a lot and now I am seeing consistent drop each week as long as I don't under eat and I stay hydrated. I eat out about once or twice a week at restaurants (I am 2 months free of fast food) which means a meal with around 3 grams or more of salt and those days I drink water till I am almost sick to flush the salt out.