Calorie Calculating

sdcrazy1018

I've been moderately active (4x a week) and have eaten healthy (most of the time) for about a  year now. I have yet to lose anything more than 10 pounds. When I mentally look at my food, it doesn't seem to be a lot of calories since I do the small meals every couple of hours at work. Each 'meal' is less than 200 calories. When I get home, I treat lunch and dinner like a typical meal. 

However, today I looked up my resting metabolic rate (RMR) and it seemed really high. From what I read, you end up conserving calories instead of burning them if you dip below your RMR. I've done a food journal before and my average daily intake is around 1250.....while my RMR is ~1500. Am I actually sabotaging my weight loss and not realizing it? Or do I not have all the facts straight about RMR?

raynes

You are absolutely sabotaging your weight loss by eating too little.  Espeically with exercise, you are literally starving your body.

Generally for women, you should never dip below 1200 calories NET in a day.  So, if you workout and burn, say, 400 calories, you should eat at least 1600 calories that day.  Your body NEEDS fuel to function.

Many people will hit a plateau if they're eating too little.

Check out My Plate through Livestrong.com and use that to calculate how many calories you should be eating.  From my experience, they have very good calculators.  When picking your activity level, select what you are not accounting for exercise, so, if you have a desk job, pick Lightly Active. 

Then, spend some time using the site to track your calories.  When you exercise, track that too, and aim to hit your goal calories each day.  You should start losing weight again, but it might take a few weeks for your body to catch on.

Also, make sure that you're getting good quality calories.  Not all calories are created equal after all.  100 cals from a junkfood snack pack is WAY different than 100 cals from chicken breast or avocado.

sdcrazy1018

So the key is to keep my calories at my RMR, but below my BMR (basal metabolic rate: how many calories I normally burn total in a day)?

raynes

RMR and BMR are the same thing, just different ways to say them.  RMR is Resting Metabolic Rate (ie, if you just sat there doing nothing all day) and BMR is Basal Metabolic Rate, which is the same thing.  The 2 values might give you slightly different results in calculators, but they're essentially the same.

Math time.

You said your RMR is around 1500.  That how many calories you would burn if you laid in bed all day and didn't move.

I'm going to assume you have a desk job, so you'd be basically sendentary, so I'm going to multipy your RMR by 1.2, giving us 1800.  That's the number of calories you would eat to maintain your weight, assuming you're not working out at all.

A pound of fat contains 3500 calories, so, to lose 1 lb a week, you'd need to reduce your intake by 500 calories a day (3500 / 7 = 500).  So, to lose 1 lb a week you'd need to eat 1300 calories a day, assuming you're not working out at all.

So you're body is burning 1800 calories a day, and you're eating 1300, so you should lose 1 lbs a week.

Now, you add in exercise.  You still want to aim for 1300 NET calories a day.  So, if you burn 300 calories exercising, you'd need to eat 1600 calories that day.

1800 (to maintain) - 500 (to lose a lb) + 300 (burned) = 1600 that day

If you didn't eat more calories that day, you'd be NETTING only 1000 calories.

1800 - 500 - 300 = 1000.  And that's too low.

When you dip below 1200 NET a day, that's when your body starts to kick into conservation mode, or starvation mode.

Does that make sense?

sdcrazy1018

Yea it does. I do P90X and he keeps saying to add 500 calories to your diet a day and I just thought he was crazy! lol. I was like 'Well then what's the point of burning off the calories if I'm just going to eat it right back?'. Maybe I've just read so many articles or whatnot that states to stay below 1500 calories period. It was like it was engraved into my brain that anything around 1500 or above was wayyyy too much. It will have to take some time getting used to. I will just add more veggies, protein and fruits for the extra calories. More healthy snacking. Thanks for responding!