Determining BMR, or, Holy crap, do I really burn this many calories?

speed graphic · Thu, January 5th, 2006, 04:26 PM

I used to be in very good shape when I was on my high school's football team simply by lifting a lot with the team and eating semi-healthy stuff. I'm new to the whole "managed fitness" thing, so since I'm back out of shape, I'd appreciate a few pointers.

First, I'm 6'0" and 228lbs, right at that point where if I don't do something fast it's going to get ugly (well, more than it already is). I used a few BMR calculators and came up with 2195 kcals. Obviously, with even a fair amount of moving around and running errands I'm pushing 3,000. Now, I thought that the suggested diet for people was 2,000 calories, as suggested on the back of every food box? It just really surprised me that I burned so many calories just by existing... or am I doing this wrong?

From what I've read on these forums, a 1000 calorie deficit will kill about 2 pounds of fat a week. Is this an acceptable deficit? Most importantly: If I'm actively lifting for 30-45 minutes a day along with "errand running" type activity, will a 2000 calorie diet help me lose 2 pounds of fat a week while still allowing me to build up a bit of muscle?

sc7389 · Thu, January 5th, 2006, 05:26 PM

Welcome to the forums.
Now, ignore the suggested 2000 calorie diet. It's there as an estimate for people who go about their day to day life without being physically active. With that said, the BMR calculator is only an estimate and you will have to apply it in life to see how good of an estimate it is. Eat 2500 calories daily (for example) of clean foods and see where it takes you. Do that for a few weeks. If you're losing weight, great, just make sure you're not losing weight too fast because you will be sacraficing too much muscle. If you're maintaining your current weight, lower your daily caloric intake a few hundred calories and monitor your progress.

Before you begin, you should know what to eat and how much. Reading forum posts should give you an idea.

johnyboy · Thu, January 5th, 2006, 05:32 PM

Good advice. People have different metabolisms naturally, and when you put in activity it changes again. I have a maintenance metabolism of about 3500 calories without doing more than 30 minutes walking a day and lifting twice a week. There's a lot of people on here who if they ate that would get fat real quick.

Like he said check the stickies.