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BMR & Calorie requirements to lose weight

rick055

Active member
I am 185 pounds at 5'9", approximately 17% bf. Based on being "moderately active", my calculated my BMR is approximately 2750 kcals/day.

I am assuming that this is the amount of calories needed for me to maintain my current weight and, if I wanted to lose 1 pound per week, I would have to average a 500 kcal/day deficit, or 3,500 kcals/week deficit (and eat approx 40/40/20).

Now here's where I get a bit lost. I do approximately 3 hours of step aerobics per week, 90 minutes of spinning, and 4 days hitting the weights. All of those activities burn calories, which I can estimate based on METS/hour and my body weight.

For example, 1 hour of step aerobics with a 10 - 12" step is 10 mets or about 800 kcals for the hour at my bodyweight.

Are those 800 kcals already taken into account in the 2,750 kcal I calculated since I calculated it based on being moderately active? Or would I add those to my daily caloric expenditure?

There were four categories when calculating BMR: sedentary, lightly active, moderately active and extremely active. In order to figure out my daily kcal requirement (and thusly the correct deficit) I need to know if my activities were already taken into account or not and, if they are, based on the above if I am moderately or very active.

My goal is to lose about 13 more pounds of fat, or 10% bf.

Hope that made sense, thanks.
 
Those 2750 calories should be your maintenance calories (equal to BMR + activity). Yes those calories would theoretically be accounted for in the 'moderately active category'. BMR is what is necessary to maintain your body if you did zero activity.

BMR/maintenance calculators are only an estimate. They are useful for getting a starting point for the calorie content of your diet. Plan out your diet, including necessary portion sizes (weight or volume), to get your 2250 calorie starting point. You might actually be eating more/less than calculated calories and/or burning more/less than BMR estimate. Use the scale and the mirror to gauge progress in a couple weeks. Adjust calories up or down as needed.

FYI you have to measure your food if you do this. Get a decent digital food scale and a set of measuring cups/spoons. A chicken breast is not a chicken breast, one might be 100g the other might be 200g...

Also you don't have to do 40/40/20. Macro ratio is not as important as getting your overall calories in check. You can adjust to your preference.

HTH
 
Nitrox said:
BMR/maintenance calculators are only an estimate. They are useful for getting a starting point for the calorie content of your diet. Plan out your diet, including necessary portion sizes (weight or volume), to get your 2250 calorie starting point. You might actually be eating more/less than calculated calories and/or burning more/less than BMR estimate. Use the scale and the mirror to gauge progress in a couple weeks. Adjust calories up or down as needed.
Click to expand...
I must serioulsy emphasize what Nitrox mentioned here about being an estimate.

Best, tried and true way is to measure out your food consistently for several weeks to assess your maintenance. For me the issue is not so much accuracy but consistently and repeatability. So you could be off a few grams here or there as along as you are consistent.

For instance a table spoon of EVOO using your table spoon in your utensile drawer is NOT a metered TBSP. When using a protein powder scoop, use it heaping or wiped smooth or what have you consistently...etc etc etc.

Personally, perfect accuracy is not as critical as consistency and repeatability. For dieting or gaining LBM adjust accrodingly, consistently and repeatably.

JMHO
 
Good stuff guys, thanks.

I'm going to start out at 2250 and see what happens.

I had been using WW, but now have found a journal that also measures pro/carbs/fat, etc... and it has been insightful so far.

I was getting less protein than I thought I was.
 
Fitday and thedailyplate are good sites, as well as calorie-counter.com . Try and stick it at 2250 for a week and see how the scale changes. Just try not to jump to conclusions too fast, because there's always weight fluctuations. I like to judge myself in the mirror/how I feel, but it's a bit easier for me since I'm in the single digits bf%.
 
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