going CRAZY on how many cals I should eat????

Very interesting post, took me a while to figure it out too!! Here's how I'd explain it - and I did this for me also!! I'm open to corrections obviously!

1lb of fat on your body = 3500 calories (stored energy).

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How much to lose weight?

Being alive = 2000 calories (aka Your basic metabolic rate, or "BMR")
Running up stairs = 1500 calories
Walking to Work = 1000 calories
BALANCE: 4500 calories (energy needed to do the above things)

If you DON'T EAT 4500 calories, your body will FIND the energy from the FAT you have stored.

So lets say on this day you EAT 1000 calories. Your body will find the extra 3500 calories it needs from your FAT.

**** 1lb of fat stored = 3500 calories. **** (fact according to WIKI)

So you will lose a 1lb.

(I've tried to make the math easy so you can get your head round it - healthy weight loss is a lb or so a WEEK!)

========

Always remember than BMR and calories burn figures are different for E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E - so you will need to adjust as you go along to find your own optimum weight loss. For me:

My BMR: 2000 calories (well, 2089 actually)
My calorie goal: 1500 calories a day

This means that my deficit (500 a day) will be taken from my fat stores and I will lose roughly a pound a week. (1lb of fat = 3500 calories).

If you want to get more advanced about it - if you eat far far less - your body will go into defensive mode and hold on to the fat (because it thinks you are starving) and take it from somewhere else... but that's a whole nother story/post.

Hope this helps! I found it difficult to get my head around at first.

Thank you Dan for the info you've been providing. I think I'm finally starting to understand this. The one question I have is this:

Without knowing my BF%, my BMR is 1684. Lightly active daily intake is 1951. Cutting even 15% that you suggested is below BMR. So should I just eat BMR?

I appreciate any feedback! :flowerforyou:

Thank you Dan for the info you've been providing. I think I'm finally starting to understand this. The one question I have is this:

Without knowing my BF%, my BMR is 1684. Lightly active daily intake is 1951. Cutting even 15% that you suggested is below BMR. So should I just eat BMR?

I appreciate any feedback! :flowerforyou:

1900 is what you eat.
Dont fuss with eating back calories unless you feel so famished that you just gotta do it.

Look at it this way.
If you burn 2200 cals a day (1684x1.3 appx) x7=15400 cals burned a week in regular daily activity.
You cut at 1900 cals a day x7=13300 cals consumed per week.
Its okay to over eat a day or 2 a week.
Just be smart and feed when you need!

i'd say eat back your exercise calories and make sure you are actually burning what you think you are burning because MFP usually extremely overestimates calories burned.

Thankfully my fitbit is pretty good at working out how many calories I burn

i have a fitbit, but it doesnt actually count the calories i burn...it a pedometer not a HRM. i'm curious as to how yours does this?

Edit- i think you are counting those calories it says you burned just doing your normal routine...thats not accurate. and its not an accurate way to measure how many calories you burn during a work out. you need something that tracks your heart rate to do this.

I use the record function when I work out (or rather the stop watch)

The plan just above will have you losing about a half pound a week. Are you ok with it taking 2 years of meticulous logging to get to your goal?

There is absolutely no reason you can't eat below your BMR. Research it yourself. Ask your doctor. It's not dangerous. Carrying around 50 extra lbs. is dangerous. Racking up such small deficits you will almost inevitably give up is dangerous.

I have close to 200 peeps who would not agree as they measure the losses weekly.
The effects on leptin and other hormones would inevitably have them stalling within a couple weeks.
Staying closer to TDEE will have them losing weight more often and feeding possible gains if they are that heavy.

And

What benefit to maintaining lean mass does she have while eating below what her vital organs need to survive?
If you answer "None" you are correct!

OP says her BMR is in the 1600s.
If she works out 3 times a week she would have a TDEE of about 2200.
Cut 20% off and lose the fat.
Its simple!

Ok, I swear this whole topic makes me feel like an idiot but let's give it one more shot!

MFP says I need to eat 1680 calories so I have been, but then you minus the exercise calories, like today I did Zumba so I burned about 1000, which means for the day I only netted 680....is this going to make me plateau right away?

The BMR calculator says I need to eat 2100, MFP says 1680. Someone please help me understand. I need the "calories for dummies" version if you don't mind :-)

Diary is public....let me have it!

My method, which the nutritionist I spoke with this morning confirmed was a good plan: Use a TDEE calculator and find your TDEE for your lifestyle at your goal weight. Then eat that amount of calories, eating back any exercise calories unless you chose "active lifestyle" or whatever that would account for those.

Her vital organs and her lean mass are not limited to today's intake. If they were, no doctor or accepted diet plan would ever have you go below your BMR. They all do. I have never seen a diet plan (outside this forum) that had that floor. I think I've read about as many books on it as you have peeps.

It would be hard to maintain LBM at those rates.
OP would diet down then have to spend extra time building back up what she lost in her diet.

Sweetheart I've been eating 600 a day for about 2 months now and I haven't plateaued yet. And I have a lot of exercise thrown in. Some days I eat more due to exercise some days like today I'm not. I will begin increasing my intake soon and have on some days, but I kinda like what I'm losing now.

How tall are you and how much do you weigh?
How much body fat do you have?
When lifting, how heavy can you go before you lose strength?
In the amount of time youve been dieting, how much weight have you lost?

Her vital organs and her lean mass are not limited to today's intake. If they were, no doctor or accepted diet plan would ever have you go below your BMR. They all do. I have never seen a diet plan (outside this forum) that had that floor. I think I've read about as many books on it as you have peeps.

It would be hard to maintain LBM at those rates.
OP would diet down then have to spend extra time building back up what she lost in her diet.

We all have to do that, or at least we all have the option. There is no magic calorie level at which you lose fat only. Yes, lower deficits usually mean less LBM loss. They also mean less total loss, more patience needed, less initial success and more quitters. That's why most diet plans start with an aggressive phase. The benefits outweigh the consequences.

I can understand that.
Its one of the reasons programs like MediFast have weekly meetings at their facilities to make sure everyone is staying healthy.
Unfortunately a lot of women on this site tend to not have any doctors involved and end up hurting themselves in the long run.
It's like going skydiving or shark hunting without doing any research.
Someone will get hurt.

IMO, and i'm no expert, a mild 20% deficit has shown better long term weight loss with less bounce back and more sustainability than crash dieting.
Crash dieting reduces vital hormones involved in weight loss, you know this!

Crash dieting causes loss of LBM.

Crash dieting causes early plateauing.

Crash dieting tends to happen over and over for the same people.
They diet down then regain the fat thus making it harder to lose the second time.
Lyle McDonald covers this in depth in his Stubborn Fat Solution.

I dont know about you but id rather get to my goal once then maintain eating 1600-2500 cals a day than eating 600-1500 like some of the people on here.

I maintain LBM.
I get to eat just about anything I want as long as it fits into my macros.
I lose fat!

LAWDY, LAWDY! I'm jumping on this post, because I don't have it figured out either! 34 years old, and NADA! Eat too much, eat too litte!?!? I've tried it all, and will continue to try, and READ all of these postings. At least the ones that have some substance to it. Not the jerk who simply says, EASY. There is nothing "simple" about this process.

When I began MFP I was lost in a sea of conflicting suggestions but one that made a lot of sense to me was helloitsdan's recommendation of working out my TDEE and eat a 20% deficit.

I have since lost 33 pounds and reached my goal and steadily maintaining on my maintenance allowance (TDEE)

I have never felt better and healthier for many years....We can make all the arguments we like but I do know dan's recommendation worked for me and there is no reaon why it shouldn't work for others

awesome! congrats on your success. this is the plan i'm following now as a lifestyle change, not a crash diet. i feel a million times better and STRONGER. eating does a body good.

Her vital organs and her lean mass are not limited to today's intake. If they were, no doctor or accepted diet plan would ever have you go below your BMR. They all do. I have never seen a diet plan (outside this forum) that had that floor. I think I've read about as many books on it as you have peeps.

It would be hard to maintain LBM at those rates.
OP would diet down then have to spend extra time building back up what she lost in her diet.

We all have to do that, or at least we all have the option. There is no magic calorie level at which you lose fat only. Yes, lower deficits usually mean less LBM loss. They also mean less total loss, more patience needed, less initial success and more quitters. That's why most diet plans start with an aggressive phase. The benefits outweigh the consequences.

I can understand that.
Its one of the reasons programs like MediFast have weekly meetings at their facilities to make sure everyone is staying healthy.
Unfortunately a lot of women on this site tend to not have any doctors involved and end up hurting themselves in the long run.
It's like going skydiving or shark hunting without doing any research.
Someone will get hurt.

IMO, and i'm no expert, a mild 20% deficit has shown better long term weight loss with less bounce back and more sustainability than crash dieting.
Crash dieting reduces vital hormones involved in weight loss, you know this!

Crash dieting causes loss of LBM.

Crash dieting causes early plateauing.

Crash dieting tends to happen over and over for the same people.
They diet down then regain the fat thus making it harder to lose the second time.
Lyle McDonald covers this in depth in his Stubborn Fat Solution.

I dont know about you but id rather get to my goal once then maintain eating 1600-2500 cals a day than eating 600-1500 like some of the people on here.

I maintain LBM.
I get to eat just about anything I want as long as it fits into my macros.
I lose fat!

You throw around a lot of advice that directly contradicts much of my personal research (medical journals and studies) and the advice of highly qualified MDs, including research PHD/MDs I have personally spoken with. Specifically the dangers of eating below BMR. Do you have any reliable articles to backup your theories? I'd love to check them out in the event i am missing something you're not.

bump to read b/c i have same qs

Nobody except morbidly obese ppl should be eating below BMR for any reason.
It's asking for lean mass loss and is very counter productive.

This is interesting... I went to a doctor last year who specialized in weight loss. She weighed me, took blood then immediately handed me a photocopy of a set plan for 800 calories a day and told me I should come back in 2 weeks. I'm 5'1" and I was 170 at the time, so I was obese but not morbidly. I took my "non-personalized even though she charged me $90 for a specific personalized" meal plan home with me and ate 800-850 calories a day, no alcohol and took my Phendimetrazine Tartrate as instructed. When I went back for my 2 week follow up, I fully expected to be told that I could increase my calories (I assumed I was on a jump-start) and I could stop taking speed twice a day, because I had lost 11lbs. No dice, she told me I did "oooo-kayyyy..." and I should continue as I had been. When I asked her how long, she said I would probably need to eat like this for the rest of my life, gave me another bottle of pills and had her assistant give me a B12 shot that felt and bruised like Miguel Cotto let loose on my arm. That was my last visit. I guess I was right to be skeptical of her method.

Holy crap! I'm glad you quit that quack! :flowerforyou:
Then again, maybe you could have sold that speed on the streets. It's a higher profit for pharma-pure speed than for the bath-tub-gin-meth crap. Just sayin' :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

But seriously..........

Here's the deal though, IMO, even if it is "safe" to eat below BMR, why the hell WOULD you WANT to do that? If it isn't necessary to starve yourself to lose weight, then don't. I am steadily losing and just eating smaller portions and making small changes to smarter choices to give my body more nutrients. I had birthday cake last night. Still losing. Why be miserable? :bigsmile: