BMR Calculators - which one to believe?

I’m getting everything from from 2200 to 4000 calories for my BMR. I’m marking sedentary for each one????

I’m 5’11"
38
275 LB

I work out 5 days a week. By my figures I burn a good 700 calories per work-out. I’m pretty sedentary besides the work-outs. If I eat at my target BMR and let my work-outs burn the deficit in calories I would loose 2 pounds a week.

The problem is the numbers are all over the place. I don’t want to under-eat, but at the same time I don’t want to over eat either.

What kind of workout are you doing that you are burning that many calories?
What does this website suggest for a calorie goal?

Why are you marking sedentary??? If you work out five days a week, hard enough to burn 700 calories, that is NOT sedentary. That’s pretty damn active.

Sedentary means you sit at a desk all day, then at a couch all night.

Here’s a link to a page explaining one of the most commonly used formulas for calculating BMR, the Harris-Benedict equation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris-Benedict_eq…

By this formula, your base BMR is 2356. I am going to assume the 700 calorie figure is slightly exaggerated and put you at Moderate activity. Therefore you need 3651 calories just to maintain your weight.

If you want to lose 2 lbs a week, eat 2651 calories a week.

Remember to recalculate from time to time, since as your weight decreases so will the number of calories required to maintain it.

The 700 calories is not exaggerated. At 275 pounds I burn more calories then someone at 175.

I typically do 10-15 warm up on bike or treadmill – 75-100 calories. Lift weights, circuit or fast pace, ~200 calories. End with a 1/2 h our on treadmill at a good incline burning 400-500 calories. Unless the calorie counters on the machines are wrong, I"m right around 700 calories.

I mark sedentrary because I want to know what the minimum I need to eat. If I eat for the rest of my day then my work-outs will be my deficit.

Day’s I just do Cardio I burn around 600 calories.

I still haven’t found a good source that says how they determine the modifier against your sedentary BMR for your activity level. Considering that they are taking your exercise into account, then they are making the assumption they know how many calories are burned in “moderate” activity levels (or whatever activity level you are apparently doing). I really don’t believe that someone who was sedentary or “lightly” active for most of their life suddenly gets a massive metabolism lift because they started working out regularly. Maybe their metabolism would go up over time, slowly?

If I take into consideration how much I work out, and use the appropriate modifier (1.725), I supposedly have a maintenance caloric requirement of 3162. If I ate that many calories per day I would undoubtedly gain weight.

I personally sit at a desk all day. I get some form of exercise every day for an hour or so. I am confident in the BMR number H-B gives me, but I am NOT confident in the “activity” modifier it supposedly assigns to me. Why? Because my activity every day is probably a lot different than another person’s activity every day. If someone is working at a construction job they undoubtedly have a higher level of “activity” than me, even if they never work out.

You simply have to play with your intake and outtake to figure this stuff out with any degree of reasonable success. When I started out, I worked it out using the H-B formula with a “light” activity modifier.

I’ll use my second month of data by way of example (the first month I think is usually a little off, because you can drop a lot of weight right at the beginning just shedding excess waste in your system).

In the second month, my average sedentary BMR (all based on the assumption that I had a relatively accurate body fat measurement, of course) was 1938. My maintenance intake requirements for “light” activity were 2679.

In that second month, I burned, through exercise, an average of 4028 calories per week, exercising between 4 and 7 days each of those weeks. My average caloric intake over that period was 1971 per day.

Doing a little more math, I come up with a daily caloric deficit against my “light” activity-based maintenance caloric needs of 708 calories per day. Bolt on 575 more calories per day from exercise, and I get a daily deficit of 1283. Between March 1st and March 31st, that is a total caloric deficit of 39773. Divide that by 3500 calories, and it comes out to 11.4 pounds. In actuality I lost 9.9 pounds that month (over 4.5 weeks, for an average of 2.2 pounds per week). 9.9 pounds, times 3500 calories per pound, is 34650. So somewhere in there I burned 5123 fewer calories than I anticipated. In any case, eating near my sedentary BMR and exercising for 4000+ calories per week netted me a roughly 2 pound per week weight loss. If I had used a “moderate” activity modifier to determine my maintenance calories, there is no doubt that I would still weigh 221 pounds IMHO.

Your sedentary BMR isn’t fudged as long as you know your body fat percentage. So I would start there. I would eat that amount of calories for a week and see what happens. Then I would make adjustments on a week to week basis until you achieve a pound or so of weight loss from diet alone per week, and make up the rest in exercise.

I would say him buring 700 calories is very possible for his weight. I currently weigh 270, and most cardio equipment at the gym seem to give me very similar calories burned as what he is saying. Normally about 500 calories for about 30 mins on a treadmill, and 10-15 on a bike would also be about 75-125ish, depending on intensity obviously.

And actually after examining my calories and goals etc since I joined this site, I cannot believe I have mine set as low as they are. I need to be eating more as ive had my calories set to between 1900-2100 per day (which I manually entered, not what this site told me.)

I know exactly what you mean,

My BMR + sedentary is either 2000, or 2300 depending on the calculator. I selected “sedentary” on both for the same reason you did.

Hell, if I select “exercise 3 times a wee”k for both calculators, the results are skill skewed by 300 calories.

Remember that you’re moving around a fair amount of body weight when you consider your BMR.

The biggest thing to consider is how you feel. If you feel like you’re starving and you’re not able to perform as well then you need to eat more. If you feel like you’re stuffing yourself then you need to eat less.

Pick a number, shoot for it, and see how it goes. If it’s an increase then make that increase in lean protein and “good” carbs. If you start feeling like a thanksgiving turkey then back off.

I started actually using my heart rate monitor while I work out and wow I do burn pretty high calories when doing intense workouts. I did not mean to be critical of your 700 calorie burn! That is great.
Looks like you have gotten lots of good advice!

I chose “sedentary” as well. I wear a pedometer and count steps and calculate that as a walking workout. I walk at least 5 miles per shift when I am at work. I don’t trust the BMR calculations at all. I laid in bed most of yesterday fighting a fever… judging by how much I sweat would that be sedentary?

the math and science will fail….listen to your body.
Dave

I like this Wikipedia explanation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate) and prefer the Katch-McArdle formula since it takes into account how much bodyfat you have. You still have to pick a good activity number though.

Quote: I don’t want to under-eat, but at the same time I don’t want to over eat either.

I had this exact same problem, I couldn’t find a scientific solution, the numbers of i got from the calculators just seemed way to high, I’ve just settled on doing what dlavie advises above, which is listen to your body. I eat enough to do my 1hour cardio four to five times a week, At the moment i need around 1500 cals, i came to this figure by trial and error.

I would suggest reading this note in the knowledge base if you have not already.

http://support.dailyburn.com/faqs/nutrition/wha…

Advanced goals (on or off) can have a difference on your goals calculated. I recently had a heart attack (42 is waaaay to young for that) and since decided I was lacking knowledge on health, fitness and diet. As a result, I have been doing a ton of research. I set all of my goals myself and calculate my daily calorie goals myself using a spreadsheet I built. It makes it very simple to update all of my goals when my weight changes and it allows me to compensate for changes I need to make specific to heart health. I mention this only to point out that I use math very similar to DB and I use advanced goals. Therefore, I always calculate based on Sedentary (I have a desk job) and I let DB increase my calories on days I excercise. I use the you burn it, you get to eat it reward system. I personally think it is much easier on my body and my brain. I feel more satisfied having a few extra calories after a workout, and I don’t spend hours and hours adjusting my daily calorie goal based on gym time.

One thing I did not see mentioned in this thread is the thermic effect of food. The Harris-Benedict equation, which seems to be the popular one here, does not take the thermic effect of food into account. However, the activity index does take this effect into account.

I think this is a great example of how everyone is different and there is no one magic number for everyone. I would suggest finding a calculator that takes into account all your stats (including body fat ) and the thermic effect of food. I would say start at moderately active (based on your comments) to get what you need to maintain your weight. Then cut that figure by about 25. See how your body reacts for 2-3 weeks. If you don’t see results, then try adjusting your calories or activity.
There are also devices that you can buy and wear (like BodyBugg) that will give you your precise data.
Pamela

www.ThrivePersonalFitness.com