I've been trying to research a bit to figure out how many calories I tend to burn in a day. I've found a bunch of websites that give general estimates based on your age, weight, height, gender, and activity level. The problem is when it comes to giving activity level, I have no idea what to select because the various online calculators give no indication on what constitutes mildly active, moderately active, etc. and leaves it completely up to the person to interpret that.

Yes, I'm aware of the major one size fits all generality and therefore inaccuracy of these sites. I've been on a steady regimen for the past year of healthy eating and weight training for the past year and have gone from 208 lbs to 162, and from 33% body fat to 18%.

So I'm not necessarily relying on what these sites say for any practical specific use, it's more just to have one more source to use to have a general sense of what I'm tending to burn each day, especially for when I'm ready to just maintain and can up my calories a bit (hopefully within the next couple months).

If my usual day involves a pretty sedentary lifestyle, but going to the gym every day to lift and/or do cardio, plus say an hour of walking the dog and a couple hours of standing, would you guys consider that a mildly active? Moderately active? Very active?

Any sense based on what I've already said what range my calorie output is around? I'm 38, 5 ft 7.

You've lost 46 lbs and dropped nearly half your body fat in a year? You should be telling us! Really congrats on the results--that's great.

When I'm paying attention to weight, I really just get TDEE by counting calories pretty diligently and monitoring my weight, then reverse-engineering the number from those. Body adjusts and all that jazz. I just start with weight x 15 (how's that for one size fits all!) for a month and then use running weekly averages.

Is this the product of you "hitting the wall" recently as far as weight loss slowing down a lot? If so that's totally normal (I feel your pain, btw) and calls for some next steps like kicking it up a notch or cycling cut/maintenance/bulk depending on, like, fitness goals.

The standard referral here for things like that is Lyle. Since I find him too tedious to read I'll let someone else, possibly someone profoundly unhappy, recommend something specific of his that works for your spot.

2395

Good to see a realistic bodyfat percentage, instead of some sub11% nonsense.

Sort of. Frankly, it's felt like I've been plateauing the whole damn time. I started this 14 months ago. When I've lost weight in the past, it came off much faster. Granted, I was much younger but also I'm concentrating more this time on body composition instead of just weight loss.

My main reason for wanting to know my daily caloric output is to help figure out if what I'm currently doing is working well enough to get me to my goal, or if I actually do need to change things up. I currently eat 1570 calories/day. My ultimate goal is 150 lbs and 12% body fat.

I'm doing it all without a personal trainer. I had one the last couple times I lost weight but am going without just to see if I can do it. I am very open to changing things up, but I've checked out a couple of those 6 week free trial programs and have been majorly turned off by them, and I'm similarly turned off by the cultiness of Crossfit.

How long have you been dieting? Mostly continuously for the last year? Might be diet break szn.

Yes I have, although if I'm being honest even though my aim has been 1570 daily cal, in a given week, I probably only stick to that for a few days, and go over by 100-200 calories for a few days, and once a week really slip and have like 2200 calories.

That's why I'm a bit lost on what I need to do. I'm not sure if it's time for a change, or if I just need to be better than a B+ on my diet and calorie intake.

I've done the 8-12 month long diet, and the fatigue and disruption in NEAT is real and likely contributes to plateauing. I'd eat at maintenance for the next 4 to 6 weeks, and then knock off 250 calories from that number and see how things go. I was pretty surprised how high of a caloric number I could cut on when I did this.

Have you been reducing your calories as you've been losing weight? How accurately are you counting calories?

Let's say you're at 1570 * 3 days + 1700 * 3 days + 2200 = 12,010 cal per week. Your TDEE at sedentary is about 13,595 cal per week and since you're not actually sedentary, conservatively round up to 14,010 and give you a 2,000 cal deficit a week. If your calorie counting is accurate you should still be losing at least a couple of pounds a month. Are you doing that?

I've been dieting for about 16 months and am still losing weight, but much more slowly than before. Up until last month I'd been able to keep losing without changing my caloric intake, but it had slowed to only about 1/2 lb per week. Then it started to stagnate and I've have to skip lunch a few times a week and eat smaller lunches on the other days to notice any progress. At this point it feel like every calorie matters and I need to be A/A+ on my diet to keep losing. I'm not sure if you're at that point (probably not at 18% BF), but B+ may not be good enough.

I'm sure what Monte says is accurate. Personally I wouldn't try it because I think it'll be easier for me to keep going the way I've been going than to take a break for a few weeks and have to get back into the habits I've developed over that last 16 months, but YMMV.

This seems to be the consensus from highly knowledgeable people. Take a break, practice maintenance, then resume.

Congrats on your weightloss!

I'd say moderately active.

2400-2500 range maintenance. 95% confidence interval 2200-2700. This is my guess!

As monte is saying I'd expect that number to go up after you stop dieting for a bit. I definitely experienced this too.

I'm "moderately active", 5'11, 31yr, 175lb, 11-12%bf, maintenance around 2900. Only way to really know for sure is watch the scale and count cals precisely.

I agree with this. Pretty much everyone I have ever trained could lose weight by just creating a caloric deficit. I had one client who was not losing weight despite eating very low cals, but she had been dieting for a very long time. I referred her to a dietitian who basically recommended what monte says above. She ate at maintenance for a while and then went back to a small deficit and started losing weight again.

No I haven't been reducing. Been steadily keeping at 1570 (or attempting to) the whole time. Calorie count has been very accurate. I've lost 46 lbs over 14 months, so yes a little over 3 lbs/month. It's fine, very happy with my success so far, I'm just wondering if I had been doing something different if I could already be at my goal by now. To be specific, something within reason, not so extreme that I wouldn't be able to maintain something like it longterm. That's the good thing about what I'm doing now is it feels like it's something I could do forever.

I've also been doing IF, eating noon-8. Although just like with my diet, haven't been perfect on this. Usually pulling it off 4x/week, then 2 days where it's more like 11-9, then one day 11- midnight. So a B+ on that front too.

3 questions for the forum:

1. What's the general consensus here with IF?

2. What macro percentages would you recommend?

3. Where can you recommend I find more info on cycling?

My concern is that my weight tends to majorly fluctuate. Like if I have a day where I eat say 2200 calories (which should still be a deficit) and I don't work out, I'll be a couple pounds heavier the next day.

I'm really worried that if I eat at maintenance for a month, I'm gonna put on like 15 lbs. If I do this, should I keep my regular exercise regimen?

The second sentence is disordered thinking. You'll regain 3-5 pounds due to water/glycogen replenishment since you're no longer on poverty calories, and then you will, in fact, maintain that weight if you eat at maintenance.

Re: IF, it's fine if it increases compliance. There's nothing inherently magical about it beyond yet another mechanism to decrease overall calories consumed.

Re: macro breakdown, as long as you're getting at or around 1.6 to 2.2 g of protein per kg of bodyweight and the minimal amount of fat necessary for proper hormone regulation (which is pretty low -- around 40 g/day for men if memory serves, but I might be slightly off), everything after that is preference.

Re: cycling, if you mean bicycling, no idea. If you mean calorie cycling, Mike Israetel has seemingly been on every H&F related podcast/YouTube show in existence talking about diet and training, and most of his stuff is pretty good. The usual suspects on Twitter/IG (Aragon, Lyle, et al) are good follows for the latest nutrition related info and studies.

So what? I swing up to 5 lbs a day. No big deal. By definition, that can't happen.

Thank you for this info. I'll check that out. Yes I did mean calorie cycling.

Based on your suggested numbers and my calorie intake of 157 cal/day, that would put me around 35/25/40 for protein/fat/carbs. Does that seem about right?

I'm not doing keto at all, but all of the attention given to it (and other carb demonizing diets like Atkins) has me confused as to whether a higher fat diet is all that bad.

Re: IF, so do you not buy into the whole thing with IF of it putting your body in fat burning mode after 16 hours of fasting? My knowledge on the subject is only based on maybe a couple dozen articles, podcast, YouTube vids, etc.

DD, I was just looking for info on calorie cycling and came across this article that seems decent but also has a ton of links to actual studies. Also here's a full-text study from January this year

How did you come to this figure?

Also, sorry for the dumb question, but with calorie cycling, am I still aiming to average an overall calorie deficit?

https://tdeecalculator.net

There are a bunch of TDEE calculators online, but if you put your basic stats in the one above it comes out to 13,553 weekly, which is 1936 daily. That is when I put in height, weight, age, and gender. If you include your 18% bf estimate, it goes up to around 14k weekly. This is if you are sedentary. However from the original post it sounds like you are moderately active, which puts your TDEE around 2500.

Another thing you could do is get a measuring tape. I’d recommend measuring everything so you can see how it changes in 6mo but definitely your waist because even if you gain some weight if your waist didn’t get bigger you didn’t get fatter.

Just remember it takes 3500 cals to gain a pound of fat. Math would never work out to 15lbs of fat.