Assigned BMR

thegoya
thegoya Posts: 100 Member
edited December 2024 in Food and Nutrition
Whether you're 4'10" or 5' (like me) It appears, for health and metabolic reasons, that MFP assigns no less than 1,200 daily calories as a baseline.

If infact the true BMR is lower than 1,200 calories but should never go below that, how would this effect weight loss progress for someone on the low end of the height chart (4'10")?

I understand that activity level is addressed when determining daily calories, but so many topics in the community discuss a 1,200 calorie baseline and I'm curious if this would make it more difficult for us shorter females.
Do we need to compensate with more exercise or just expect to lose slower?



.

Replies

  • thegoya
    thegoya Posts: 100 Member
    Let me rephrase this:

    If someone is sedentary during the day (desk job at home) and their profile reflects this lifestyle and all additional exercise is logged manually, should exercise calories be eaten? as opposed to someone whose profile reflects their daily activity when calculating their TDEE?.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    MFP makes a mess of this, in my opinion.

    Let's say it calculates you should eat 1000 calories for your goal - it will then set that to a minimum of 1200. If you then do 200 of exercise it will add that on to the 1200, not to the 1000, giving you a goal of 1400.

    This takes 200 out of your target deficit, which could practically eliminate it and stop weight loss. So if you ate the 1400 you could be disappointed.

    What target weight loss did you use, and what does http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/my_goals give you for "Calories burned from normal activity".
  • thegoya
    thegoya Posts: 100 Member
    A very kind MFP 'friend' is helping me to figure out my true BMR and TDEE. My concern is because I work at home and exercise differently every week, I keep myself at 'sedentary' so that every 'work out' I log in, is the actual calorie expenditure for that day.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    your approach makes sense, just beware of that maths trap I pointed out where you may need to take a 100 or more out of the exercise calories you "eat back" in order to meet your original goal.

    In other words don't eat all your exercise calories.
  • thegoya
    thegoya Posts: 100 Member
    Thanks...I'll keep that in mind.
This discussion has been closed.

Categories