MFP warning about eating under BMR

This was part of a response to an e-mail a friend sent to MFP asking about her 1200 calorie goal they gave her. She sent it to me and I just :noway: .

"Thanks for taking the time to contact us. If you are aiming to lose weight, then yes, you should eat under your BMR calculations. The BMR calculates just what you need if you did nothing at all. When you set up your profile, we ask you for your age, height, weight, gender, normal daily activity level and how much weight you would like to lose/gain per week. We then use all this information and calculate it against the scientific calculation to give you your daily recommended goals."

Yeah, I'm perfectly fine with that explanation. It is accurate based on conventional thinking and just about every nutrition article that I've read.

She only has 7 lbs left to lose, though, which she stated in her e-mail to them. That's ok? Everything I've read says the opposite.

I agree. I thought this site was correct as i've been eating 1200, where can I go to find out my real Cals??

http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/ is a good one.

MFP uses good calculations (Mifflin St Jeor, if I'm not mistaken), it just takes out the activity factor and gives you back "exercise calories"... which can be misunderstood, misused, abused, etc.

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ps might as well add that I ended up getting to goal eating above my BMR (~calculated TDEE). And for those of you thinking you need to eat below your BMR to loose weight you have been grossly misinformed.

I absolutely agree...I found out the hard way...that is why I did my own research on BMR, TDEE and started a "Eat More to Weigh Less" group...it isn't healthy to eat below BMR....

I was just responding to your concern as to what to do with inconsistent workouts.

Oh, yeah. That's fine. Please don't mistake my tone as being combative. I'm just trying to figure out all the parameters of the debate. I'm just trying to gain an understanding of this theory and the differences between it and my present plan (which is basically MFP).

Then isn't that pretty much the same as MFP has it now?

In therory, yes - however, many people find the activity levels with MFP to be very light. For example, MFP would have me eating at 350 calories a day less (using a lightly active setting) than my actual non-workout day burn is based on my BMF. I have a desk job and am pretty sedentary outside of workouts and outside of work - so lightly active seems like it should be a reasonable estimate (and most folks use sedentary setting which is even less)

Ok, so tell me if I'm right...

You went to a different site and determined your BMR based on a lightly active lifestyle with no exercise. That website then calculated a 20% decrease and recommended that as your suggested intake.

On MFP, you again selected lightly active lifestyle and a goal of whatever weight per week. MFP then recommended an intake that was 350 calories less than the other website. Is this correct?

If so, then there are two variables that I see in play. One is the formula used to calculate BMR. I know that there are differences among them, but I don't think they would be that far off. Of course that's just a guess.

The other variable is how fast you want to lose the weight. In the first situation, this is determined for you. you will lose weight at whatever level BMR-20% gives you. In the second situation (MFP), you are given the opportunity to determine the speed at which you will lose. This could very well lead to a suggested intake of less than BMR-20%. Makes sense to me. I guess the question is "How fast do you want to lose?".

I use my BMF to show me my actual average burn on a non-workout day. I take the 500 calories off that, just as MFP does, to give me my calorie goal. There is no -20% v 500 calories to create the difference. I am not calculating my BMR - I am calculating my TDEE, taking 500 calories off that and comparing it to MFP with a deficit of 500 calories.


ETA: both excluding exercise for this purpose.

What is BMF? doesn't TDEE by definitiontake into account exercise?

What is BMF? doesn't TDEE by definitiontake into account exercise?

I think it's a Body Media Fit device, like a Body Bugg. It has an internal BMR calculator and an accelerometer (and some skin sensors) that it uses to estimate your calorie expenditure based on your inputs and your movement/activity level.

I had never seen TDEE before coming here two weeks ago. You would think it'd mean total being it's called total. I think it's the name given to the output from estimator calculators that will take your BMR and multiply it by a factor based on your stated activity level to estimate your total daily expenditure. Why people don't just input their actual activity level but instead input 'sedentary' and then manually add on their "exercise" calories, I don't know. It seems nuttily complex, and I'm a numbers lover. I guess because most of us are sedentary unless we happen to pop into the gym 3x/week, but we don't always make it so we don't 'count' it until we do?

Ok, I clicked around here and see that this site breaks out 'exercise' from total expenditure. I still don't know why. When I look for the credentials of who set up this site and its diet plan, all I find is a guy and his brother who wanted a better food tracking site so they set this one up. I do think it's an awesome tracker.

I was VERY specific on saying I did not include it so I could equate it to the way MFP worked as that was what the poster asked me to do. An obviously you do not know the way MFP works - the activity level on MFP does not include exercise, it includes non exercise activity (e.g your type of job) - which is WHY my explanation was pre exercise so it was apples to apples.

ETA: it probably breaks out exercise calories for a number of reasons including 1) to encourage people to exercise 2) so people do not have to change their goal every single day their workouts vary. Not sure why it is confusing.