Sorry if this has been answered, but I'm a little bit confused on my BMR.

We had a diabetes awareness thing here at work where they had a cool machine that took your weight and then it printed out a sheet that told you stuff like your body fat percentage, how much of it is skeletal mass, water weight and what your BMR is. I was given a BMR or 1,600. That sounds alright to me.

Most, as in 3 out of 4, websites will tell me for maintenance I need to eat roughly 2,500. I know you need 500 calories less per day to lose about a lb per week, which you can get by lowering food intake or exercise, or both.

I really prefer to lower by 500 along with exercise because my exercise is hardly vigorous. I maybe burn 100-300 extra a day doing 20-30 minutes of yoga and about 30 minutes of walking, which I think puts me in a range where I wouldn't be losing more than 2lbs per week if I eat about 2,000 calories. I also know that as I lose I will need to eat less and burn more, but that's for another day.

Am I doing it correctly? Some websites will tell me to lose 2 lbs per week with no exercise I need to eat 1400. Is that just the website doing it's job? I feel eating below BMR would be dangerous, as in my understanding that is what your body burns doing absolutely nothing except breathing and staying alive, not including daily activities, work, walking around, taking stairs, standing...ect.

Sorry this is long. I know my body and I know on 1,500 I am very hungry, especially with exercise. At 2,000 I am not hungry and I feel great and I generally see a loss on the scale at this amount.

Is this a good place to start? Also, how often do all of you recalculate your caloric needs? Every 10lbs?

Your calculations sound right. I am 225lbs 5.8 and my BMR is 1700ish and my TDEE is around 2700ish so I cut 30% and eat 1900-2000/day. If you are seeing a lose then its working. I have been lifting weights more and cardio less. I started eating 1200 cal/day but researched and found eating more to weight less. I am much happier eating more and losing weight.

Eating below BMR is not dangerous. When the body doesn't meet its energy requirements through the foods taken in, it dips into its fat stores. Which is the point, right?

Many weight loss plans recommend eating as few as 1,200 cals, which is well below BMR for most people. The reason it's not advisable to go much lower than that is that your metabolism will slow down more significantly, which means you'll lose weight at a slower pace than expected from the calorie deficit. More to the point, it's hard to feel vibrant and energetic on a very-low-calorie diet. But there's no reason to view the BMR figure as some kind of caloric cutoff.

F.

Thanks for posting this I too am uncertain of this. Could I hitch a ride here?
About me: ----- I am 42, 5'7, 210 pounds and struggling to get the weight to come off lately. My bmr calculation was 2717 daily and to minus it down to 1800 with 5-6 active days would I get a decent weght drop? I want to lose 4-6 per month. Does this sound feasable? Thanks if anyone can help me with this?

You probably meant your TDEE was 2717. I think if you are active 5-6 days a week with a 900 calorie deficit you will probably lose 4-6lbs a month. If you really are that active and do not lose the weight try increasing your calories a bit. THat is a hard thing to do but try it. There is a great support groups on myfitnesspal.com for eating above BMR. Eat more 2 weight less and in place of a road map.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here. Let me just chime in:

I've never found BMR or TDEE to be useful tools in determining what I should be eating or what I actually burn. My TDEE at this weight is usually calculated at 2770, but in reality, I burn an average of 2450 calories per day, with 3-4 days a week of exercise (this can be calculated by looking at the number of pounds of fat you lose in a month). And no, I'm not the exception- I know many women who lose far less weight per month than their TDEE tells them to expect. If you actually want to use a calories-in/calories-out method, online calculators aren't really sufficient.

I recommend listening to your body instead of those calculators. Most of us know that unless we're 150lbs overweight, we need to eat less than 2,000calories a day to lose weight. We also know that we start to feel deprived and sick at a certain point (that's around 1,200c/day for me). So you really only have a little range for trial and error- and that's exactly what works.

Get into a rhythm of eating healthy (but not necessarily restricted) food for a few days, then start to try different food intakes to see where your body can sit comfortably. Eating healthy foods (and making sure you're getting lots of fiber, lean protein, and water), see how you feel at 1800 calories. If that's a-ok, try 1700 a few days later. And so on. You'll hit a level where your body starts to react and want more food- and if you're eating healthy food you know that it's real and not emotional hunger (a good test of hunger- would I eat a carrot right now? If the answer is yes, then eat a carrot! You're hungry!). It may take more than a few days at each level to determine how your body is going to react to it, and you'll probably need to readjust as your body and life go through changes.