I've been working this year to lose weight - to get healthier. My goal for this year is to get to "one-derland;" that is, to have my weight drop below 200 pounds and then my weight will start with a 1. And a big part of this journey has been learning what my body ACTUALLY needs in terms of calories.
It's pretty common knowledge that weight loss science says 3,500 calories is a pound. If you eat an extra 3,500 calories, then you'll gain a pound. And conversely if you eat 3,500 less than you need, then you'll lose a pound.
I knew this I guess. I learned this years ago, but I never really applied this information in a useful way.
It was sort of shocking to think about the fact that, being 100 pounds overweight, then I had to have eaten a shocking 350,000 calories MORE than what my body needed!! THAT'S A HUGE NUMBER. Facing that was quite a wake-up call.
I didn't really think that I was overeating that much. I didn't just eat all day long. I mean, how much do I actually need then? The serving sizes of the food seemed to indicate that I'm eating "normally" in terms of American standards. But then, why was I so obese if that was truly the case?
What did my body need then? What does it need? What's appropriate portion sizes? So I set out to find out how this was calculated, and it opened my eyes to a critical piece of weight loss!
I started using MFP (My Fitness Pal), but I'm VERY sedentary even outside of the COVID situation (desk job), so MFP tended to overestimate my caloric needs. I found this out, because when I put in my details, and then I put in my goal of losing 1 pound a week, the number that MFP came back with seemed off - as in, it came back and seemed quite high. I didn't know enough to argue, so I decided to do some digging on where that number comes from, and now I'm gonna "learn" you some of what I found so that you can do your own verification if you so choose.
Basically, you need to find your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). This is the total number of calories that your body burns each day. It's made up of calories just for bodily functioning and additional physical activity. But to estimate this, you need to know your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) first.
In simple terms, your BMR is the number of calories that your body needs to function - all by itself, doing absolutely nothing. The number is based on your age, gender and current weight. There are various equations and calculators on-line, but the number that come back are usually pretty close to each other.
I found my BMR for my current weight. Right now, I'm in the 230's, so I ran the calculations for my next 10 pound goal - 230. My BMR came back as about 1,900.
From there, you can add a standard cushion of calories based on your lifestyle in order to get your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). The calculator that I used showed different tiers of total daily calorie needs for that BMR based on "lifestyle." I chose sedentary. It was the "lowest" tier that was offered. It added calories on to my BMR to account for that, thus giving me my daily calorie needs. My TDEE was calculated at 2,200.
I was a little wary, because 300 calories of activity seemed like a lot for my current lifestyle. This is QUITE a large standard cushion to pad each day. And I think that this is where MFP overestimated my needs. Because this daily cushion is so ambitious, I therefore don't account for my activity day to day, because I've already accounted for it as part of my standard TDEE calculation.
With my new knowledge of my current TDEE of 2,200 calories and where that value comes from, I was then ready to move on to the application of the "3,500 per pound" information.
In order to lose 1 pound per week (a safe and standard rate of weight loss for most people), there needs to be a caloric deficit of 3,500 calories during the course of that week. If you take 3,500 and divide by 7, then you get 500 calories. You need a daily deficit of 500 calories to lose 1 pound per week.
Applying that information to my new TDEE gets us this critical equation:
TDEE - 500 = Daily Caloric Intake Limit
So then using my numbers you get --> 2,200 - 500 = 1,700
So I needed to be eating about 1,700 calories per day.
If I did this, then I would lose about 1 pound a week. If I faithfully and accurately tracked all incoming calories, and I was NOT losing that amount, then it would tell me that I had STILL overestimated my TDEE and it would need to be adjusted.
I was so excited! I now understood what my body's needs ACTUALLY were! I had a better picture of where the numbers came from. I was unstoppable!
But wait, there's more!
An essential piece of this whole deal is the fact that your daily caloric needs (TDEE) is based on your BMR which in turn is based on an equation that uses your age, gender AND WEIGHT.
However, your weight keeps changing as you lose / gain, so as your weight changes, so does your BMR, and in turn so does your TDEE.
So I think that at least each 10 pound mark, you should be recalculating your BMR / TDEE.
Right now, I'm between 230 and 240, so I calculated my TDEE for 230 pounds. Once I hit 230, then I'll recalculate for 220 pounds.
This regular checking in with your TDEE is essential to help to prevent the dreaded PLATEAU.
Note: I am not a doctor or a scientist. This may not be 100% accurate information, but everything was written with good intention only. I wrote this post based on my current understanding of the information that I have found so far regarding calculating caloric needs as a VERY SIMPLIFIED overview of a complex scientific process in order to help my fellow humans better understand how to figure out what their body needs, but each human is different and their needs vary.
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