BMR help...Im confused!

1400 cals would give you a deficit of nearly 500 a day, so a theoretical weight loss of almost a pound a week. But your BMR is the number of calories you'd burn in a coma, ANY activity burns more calories, so your weight loss should easily be in the region of a pound a week (a healthy, steady weight loss). You should consider eating back exercise calories for "serious" exercise so that your body has enough fuel. In theory, your numbers look ok to me.

1400 cals would give you a deficit of nearly 500 a day, so a theoretical weight loss of almost a pound a week. But your BMR is the number of calories you'd burn in a coma, ANY activity burns more calories, so your weight loss should easily be in the region of a pound a week (a healthy, steady weight loss). You should consider eating back exercise calories for "serious" exercise so that your body has enough fuel. In theory, your numbers look ok to me.

BMR is the number you would burn in a coma, but you are not in a coma. You should not net below your BMR.

If you work a inactive job (desk job like me) multiply your BMR by 1.2 to calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (2,250)

If you NET 1890 a day, you will lose about .75lbs a week. It is not the fastest, but most of the weight lost will be fat and your body will keep muscle.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/512956-tdee-what-is-it-and-why-you-should-not-eat-below-your-bmr?error_user_id=8153708&error_username=mcrowe1016&hl=tdee

Here is a good thread for you to look at

You definitely need to eat more, especially if you want to lose fat and have enough energy throughout your day. Your BMR will lower as you lose weight, so have it redone every 5-10 pounds to ensure you are eating enough but not too much.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/538381-in-place-of-a-road-map

Check out this post and also the website it suggests which is http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/

You need to at LEAST net your BMR, as the calories needed here are to keep all of your internal organs functioning as they should. The calories given on the website will be the amount you would eat at maintenance for your goal weight. You can cut these by a further 200-300 calories AS LONG AS YOU NET YOUR BMR.

There are a lot of studies that talk about what happens to your metabolism if you consistently eat below your BMR if you google it you will find lots of information.

*If you want to use MFP's calculations then maybe you need to change your activity level, I had mine set as sedentary initially but this gave me a 1200 calorie allowance which is below my BMR of 1400 and not at all healthy, so I have upped my activity level to active so that losing a 1/2 pound a week is similar to the numbers suggested by fat 2 fit. *

Also: bear in mind that if you change the settings to active etc then you do not need to eat back all of your exercise calories, you can still log them so that you can keep track and also if you have a hard workout and burn more then you may need to eat a little more to ensure that you still net above your BMR.

Example:

My BMR is 1400
I eat 1795 calories a day for a 0.4lb a week weight loss
I then exercise hard at the gym and burn say 500 calories during a long treadmill session.

My NET is now 1295 which is below my BMR of 1400, so I need to eat back at least 105 calories, so I have maybe a banana or some ryvitas with philadelphia.

I hope this helps!

My only complaint with MFP is it tells alost everyone to eat 1200 calories and that is simply not enough. If you know your BMR, have calculated it using a site or formula, eat your BMR and don't worry about exercise calories. My BMR is somewhere between 1423 and 1590 (something like that) for me to lose .5-1 pound a week, I only have 15 pounds to my goal, and I exercise 4-5 times a week (everyday now doing the 30 day shred). I try and stay within my calorie range daily and I don't eat back my exercise calories because they are already factored into my BMR, it was done using the Harris-Benedict formula.

I got the 1,400 cals a day FROM mfp! Thats what they set me at. If eating that little isn't healthy then why is that what it says I should be eating? Grrr! lol I hate being so confused!

Because MFP isn't set up to keep your net above your BMR. It's set up to calculate your maintenance calories and then subtract a number from that based on how many pounds a week you tell it you want to lose.

I'm guessing that MFP thinks, from what you entered, that it would take 2400 calories a day to maintain your weight at your present age and activity level. If you gave it the goal of losing 2 lbs/week, then it's going to tell you to eat 1400 calories a day. And to eat back your exercise calories. And because nobody wants to see a red number at the end of the day, you will eat less than what it recommends. It will not give you a goal below 1200.... but it will also not alert you if you are netting below your BMR, because it's not programmed to do it that way.

I much prefer the fat2fitradio.com way of calculating things. Because those numbers include your exercise, you just eat those calories, don't eat back your exercise calories, and keep your activity reasonably consistent. (I recommend caution with their body fat percent calculators; I tried 'em out and got numbers that were 19% different.) I'm finding that, by following those recommendations, my NET calorie intake is above my BMR (now), and enough above my BMR at goal weight that I really WILL just naturally slow down and slide right into maintenance when I get to where I'm going. So much easier than freaking out about having to increase calories when you get to goal!