EAT your BMR or NET your BMR? EAT 1200 or NET 1200?

I would be most grateful if someone could clear this up for me once and for all.

To lose weight, do you need to EAT your BMR calories (at minimum)? 

OR

To lose weight, do you need to NET your BMR calories (at minimum)? 

Same question for that 1200 figure--EAT it, or NET it?  

 

They can both be used correctly.

I personally think 1200 + exercise is easier.  It is the method I use. 

I'm not sure what you mean by net your BMR, but your BMR is the minimum your body needs to function, so you need to eat that many calories.  The deficit between what you eat and what you burn should be between 500 to 1000 calories per day.

Never use the word "Net" again, and I'll be happy.

I assume by "net" you mean food minus exercise.

Exercise vs living - its all calories out.

You need to EAT your BMR calories at minimum

You deficit comes from the difference between how much you eat and how much you burn (from breathing, walking, exercise, etc)

Forget all about the 1200 number, whenever you see the number 1200 written mentally replace it with BMR.  In order to loose weight you need to eat between 500 and 1000 calories less than you burn in a day, but not any less than your BMR.

 For example if your BMR is 1500 and you burn 1750 in a day, the largest calorie deficit you should allow yourself it 250, because any deficit greater than that would put you below your BMR.  

Original Post by floggingsully:

Forget all about the 1200 number, whenever you see the number 1200 written mentally replace it with BMR. In order to loose weight you need to eat between 500 and 1000 calories less than you burn in a day, but not any less than your BMR.

For example if your BMR is 1500 and you burn 1750 in a day, the largest calorie deficit you should allow yourself it 250, because any deficit greater than that would put you below your BMR.

Okay, "deficit," "net," whatever--don't know why amethystgirl is getting all bent out of shape over a mathematical term--gee whiz! 

Floggingsully, thanks for a clear explanation at last!

Now, according to this, with my BMR of 1307, and needing 1633 to maintain my current weight, that gives me only a 326 allowable deficit, correct?  Which will decrease as I (hopefully) lose weight, correct?  So my net calorie intake (sorry, AG!) at any time needs to be my BMR, otherwise I get into the dreaded starvation mode?  Or in other words, I need to put 1307 in the "calorie bank" every day (at my current weight) that I don't expend through exercise?

 

Augh!  BMR (basal metabolic rate) has levels of activity built in, which I don't understand ("active"? "very active"?).  So I use RMR (resting metabolic rate), which is pure sedentary caloric needs.  My RMR is 1610 cal/day (calculated using a correlation by Livingston (which uses age, sex and weight), but it is also pretty close to 10x body weight).  This is what I calculate against as a weight maintenance balance point.  It's a very rare day when I undereat 1610 calories. I usually overshoot this by at least 200 calories, and I'm prone to undercount calories as well, so to maintain weight I have to exercise.

In the terms you use, if I NET 1610 cal/day, my weight maintains.  If I net less (combination of eating & exercise), I lose weight.

Its like I said ALL you have to do is EAT YOUR BMR. I think you may be making this harder than it has to be.

Original Post by apophenia:

Original Post by floggingsully:

Forget all about the 1200 number, whenever you see the number 1200 written mentally replace it with BMR. In order to loose weight you need to eat between 500 and 1000 calories less than you burn in a day, but not any less than your BMR.

For example if your BMR is 1500 and you burn 1750 in a day, the largest calorie deficit you should allow yourself it 250, because any deficit greater than that would put you below your BMR.

Okay, "deficit," "net," whatever--don't know why amethystgirl is getting all bent out of shape over a mathematical term--gee whiz! 

Floggingsully, thanks for a clear explanation at last!

Now, according to this, with my BMR of 1307, and needing 1633 to maintain my current weight, that gives me only a 326 allowable deficit, correct?  Which will decrease as I (hopefully) lose weight, correct?  So my net calorie intake (sorry, AG!) at any time needs to be my BMR, otherwise I get into the dreaded starvation mode?  Or in other words, I need to put 1307 in the "calorie bank" every day (at my current weight) that I don't expend through exercise?

 

If your BMR is 1307 (the result of the formula without using any of the activity multipliers) then you should not eat less than 1307 calories per day, period.  You now need to figure out how many calories you burn in a day (an easy way of doing this is to multiply your BMR by 1.2 (the "sedentary" activity multiplier) and then add the number of calories you burn through exercise.  That will give you the total number of calories you burn in a day, if you want to lose weight you should then subtract between 500 and 1000 calories from the number you burn and eat that many AS LONG AS YOU DON'T EAT FEWER THAN YOUR BMR.

 

For example, if your BMR is 1307 and you burn 300 calories at the gym then multiply your BMR by 1.2 and add 300 (1307 * 1.2 + 300 = 1868).  So you have figured out that you burn 1868 calories per day, you can subtract 500 from that to get 1368 which is ok to eat since it is over your BMR, if you want a bigger deficit you'll have to burn more calories through exercise.

Original Post by kristinedaqueen:

Its like I said ALL you have to do is EAT YOUR BMR. I think you may be making this harder than it has to be.

If you eat your BMR you may still have too high of a deficit which would be counter productive.  For example if someone has a BMR of 1500 and burns 3000 calories thoughout the day, they need to eat at least 2000 calories so their deficit doen't get over 1000.

Wow, this is confusing. I'm on the normal CC, so maybe the plus has something different.

How do you figure out your BMR, I don't see anything that actually says that??

On my account page at the bottom it has Activity, which includes normal calorie expenditure. Is that my BMR? If so, does that mean I need to eat all of those calories everyday and the only deficit I can have is extra caloires I burn by exercise........

I'm confused?

maybe I can get one final answer

I'm a woman of 53 years.  I am 5'3". I weigh 132 and want to lose 10 lbs.   I have a medium build.  I am sedentary except for days when I work out, which is about 5x a week.  I add my calories burned on days I do work out.

When I am figuring out my bmr do I use the #'s for my weight NOW or what I want to weigh?

 

What would my bmr be when i want to lose 10 lbs.? 

That's a great question and completely spelled out what I'm thinking, now somebody just needs to answer you, than we'll both know.

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by kristinedaqueen:

Its like I said ALL you have to do is EAT YOUR BMR. I think you may be making this harder than it has to be.

If you eat your BMR you may still have too high of a deficit which would be counter productive. For example if someone has a BMR of 1500 and burns 3000 calories thoughout the day, they need to eat at least 2000 calories so their deficit doen't get over 1000.

 I totally agree. She made a post similar to this one earlier today and I said the same as you. Eat your BMR, BUT if your deficit is a little high(you exercise a lot) then you need to eat a little more. 

I just think some people look into this too much and then confuse themselves.  

Original Post by oneis2many:

maybe I can get one final answer

I'm a woman of 53 years.  I am 5'3". I weigh 132 and want to lose 10 lbs.   I have a medium build.  I am sedentary except for days when I work out, which is about 5x a week.  I add my calories burned on days I do work out.

When I am figuring out my bmr do I use the #'s for my weight NOW or what I want to weigh?

 

What would my bmr be when i want to lose 10 lbs.? 

BMR is calculated using the following:

Men BMR = 66 + (6.3 x Body Weight in lbs) + (12.9 x Height in inches) - (6.8 x age)
Women BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kilos) + ( 1.8 x height in cm) - (4.7 x age)

Use your current weight, current height, current age, as any of these increase/decrease re-calculate your BMR.

This is a great website that does it for you so you dont have to do all the math. It simply gives your BMR so you can then multiply it by your activity level.

www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

Original Post by kristinedaqueen:

Its like I said ALL you have to do is EAT YOUR BMR. I think you may be making this harder than it has to be.

Possibly... but since I work out, that has to factor in somehow--and you didn't address that at all.  Just saying "eat your BMR" doesn't take that into account.

And as others are explaining (THANK YOU!) it sounds like it's more along the lines of "net your BMR," anyway. 

Hang on a sec... that BMR calculator's got to be wrong for larger people. It says that my BMR is 1800 calories? The burn meter here says that I burn 2180 calories in a day on sedentary, so I eat 13-1400, more if I exercise... if I ate 1800 calories I'd never lose weight at all! Now I'm REALLY confused...

The BMR is a rough estimate, but should give you a ballpark figure.  And i don't believe that it is wrong for bigger people (my BMR is over 2000).  If you burn 2180 being sedentary and have a BMR of 1800 then (assuming you don't eat less than your BMR) you'd have a deficit of 380 (which isn't bad), but if you increased your activity and raised the amount of calories that you burn you could increase your deficit and speed up weightloss.

kajikit, did you do the second part. After you do the BMR part, than click below on daily caloric needs. If you're sedentary it says to multipy your BMR by 1.2 and that will be the amount of calories needed to maintain your body weight. I multiplied 1800 by 1.2 and got 2160, so it seems that CC is right on track for you. That's if you hadn't multiplied it already.

So it seems that according to that site your daily caloric needs is the same amount that CC gives you. CC just fails to tell you your BMR and that you shouldn't eat under that amount. It always just has the 1200 number that everyone always gets hung up on.

Thank you everyone! I find that information very usefull!

Original Post by apophenia:

Original Post by kristinedaqueen:

Its like I said ALL you have to do is EAT YOUR BMR. I think you may be making this harder than it has to be.

Possibly... but since I work out, that has to factor in somehow--and you didn't address that at all. Just saying "eat your BMR" doesn't take that into account.

And as others are explaining (THANK YOU!) it sounds like it's more along the lines of "net your BMR," anyway.

 Sorry about that, I guess I should have been more detailed about what  I meant. Anyway I'm glad you got your questions answered. Good luck!