TLDR: Body Fat % has a huge impact on TDEE, and if you don't use it on the calculators you may be vastly overestimating your baseline for CICO if you are not a muscular person. For my stats, it overestimated by 250 calories/day
The Story: I am currently participating in a weight loss challenge with two friends since mid-January. One is 2 inches shorter than me and 20lbs heavier, one is the same height as me and 30 pounds lighter. We have been sharing our diet logs and I was really frustrated by how I am eating almost 500 calories/day less than either of them, and they are posting 1-2 lb/week losses while I am in the .5-1 lb/week range. I am even not logging my exercise calories and they are! And I have been weighing everything I eat. What gives?!
So I did some experimenting at TDEE.org.
If you type in our current heights, weights and ages, you get something like this for a sedentary starting point:
Me: 1932 cal
"Anna": 2003
"Beth": 1769
However, Beth recently mentioned that she tried out the body fat% measurement on her scale, and she is about 35% fat. I tried it, and I am almost 45% fat. Adjusting on TDEE.org with the body fat percentages yields...
Me: 1673 (259 calories less than TDEE estimated without body fat %)
Beth: 1761 (8 calories less than TDEE estimated without body fat %)
Oh. Ohhhhhh. The body weight strength exercises that Beth has been doing daily are not just paying off in the daily exercise allowance. I have been working out too, but via jogging, which isn't building much muscle mass. Even though she weighs 30 pounds less than me at the same height, she is burning 100 more calories just existing than I am since she has more muscle.
I had heard that muscle mass burns calories but I didn't realize how drastic of a difference muscle gain made on your daily calorie burn. I also didn't realize how generous the height/weight/age based TDEE calculators could be for flabby overweight people. I had noticed my muscle mass dropped during covid (scale didn't move much but pants got tighter), so I am hoping that adding back in some strength workouts will help me out.
I did some research and the best you can expect is around 1% of body fat percentage loss per month. I'm not sure if that's accurate for overweight people (most articles on body fat percentage are aimed at bodybuilders with already low body fat percentages) but at my target weight, it would make a big difference to be 10% less fat:
TDEE, current BF% @ Goal Weight: 1382
TDEE, -10% BF% @ Goal Weight: 1552
Of course, the scale-based body fat measurements are pretty wonky, but it's enough of a swing that I'm wondering about paying for a BMR study at a local clinic now and in 6 months to see if I can better understand how my body changes and help keep me on track for staying at my goal weight.
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/38GTZCF
No comments:
Post a Comment