Howard the Duck
Striker
That article was one of the most clear and informative things I've read on all this (which is admittedly little), you're right it doesn't seem nearly as scary once I'd read that. My BMR was 1,750ish but my TDEE was well in excess of the 2,500 standard recommended. Looking at my standard diet I'm rarely anywhere near troubling that Monday to Friday (nearer 1,000 usually) - it's my weekend excesses that will need curbing for me to drop any pounds.It's not too much and I've been doing it since January.
Look at it this way: Basic metabolic rate = e.g. 1700 cals per day. That's what you need to perform normal tasks if I understand it. From the article that @oROSSo posted:
Think of BMR as the amount of calories you would need to consume daily to maintain your body if you were comatose.
Most people other than bed-ridden statues will burn calories by doing 'stuff', for me the TDEE is about 2100 cals as I go to the gym, walk to work, run a bit, even sitting at a desk or eating or standing still will consume something.
So the 500 cals is subtracted from the average of what you would normally be doing through your lifestyle so 2100 - 500 = 1600 which is roughly BMR anyway.
I might have got this completely wrong but I ate 1600 cals for about 4 weeks and lost about 1.5 lb a week so I upped it to 1700 cals and the weight loss has slowed a bit.
It's not an exact science as normal people will usually vary their activities and what they do in a day. I've found it quite easy to plan 4 meals today with a total of 1700 cals.
My lass on the other hand does very little in terms of exercise (yoga which would appear to be pretty useless ) and is very little so her BMR and TDEE are tiny (she'd need to consume less than 1,000 calories a day to achieve the 1lb weight loss per week), she loves her grub though so I can only assume she's going to be a hippo in a few years!
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