A recent conversation made me wonder about this topic. Lots of people on here say they never eat back exercise calories or they work out doing X activity Y times per week but have a desk job so they put their activity level into TDEE calculators as "sedentary." These people say they just consider any calories burned during exercise a "bonus" that will help them lose weight more quickly. I've seen numerous posts from people who do an hour or more of exercise 5+ days per week but still call themselves sedentary. On the flip side, there are also tons of posts from people who have lost weight and then regained significant amounts of weight (sometimes all of their weight), who are checking in after a binge, who are having trouble staying under their calorie limit, or who are having a very difficult time getting back on track after an indulgent occasion/weekend/vacation. So I'm wondering: are these patterns connected?
Of course, if what you're doing is working well for you, then ignore me. But it seems to me that the idea that someone with a desk job is sedentary unless he or she does TONS of exercise might inadvertently be causing some people to eat a significantly larger deficit than they mean to, to the point where their deficit is not sustainable or is at least significantly more difficult to stick to than if they were to factor in their exercise somehow. The calculator I used to calculate my TDEE (https://tdeecalculator.net/) says my TDEE is 2,020 calories per day if I'm lightly active but only 1,760 calories per day if I'm sedentary. That's a 250-calorie (15%) difference - certainly nothing to sneeze at. If I wanted to drop half a pound a week and thought I was sedentary, I would be eating 1500 calories per day. But if I thought I was lightly active, I would eat 1750 calories per day. So, basically, I'm just a bit concerned that telling everyone with a desk job they're sedentary unless they go really hard in the gym could be counterproductive by encouraging people to eat significantly less than they really need to and thereby making it much tougher for them to stick to their deficit. Do you all think that's a fair concern?
I guess the TLDR is: if you have a desk job but exercise a couple times a week, are assuming you're sedentary for TDEE calculation purposes, and are finding your deficit very hard to stick to, try bumping up your calories a bit to account for your exercise and see if that helps.
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