Please explain BMR and calorie intake wrt exercise

[Porridgewithdates]

Hi.
I've just started trying to lose weight, as I'm a bit overweight on bmi charts, just piling itnon since starting hrt 2 years ago.

Age 49
5'1.5" tall
Weight 63kg
Preferred weight 54kg, but happy to aim for somewhere 57 ish by May as a start.

Bmr around 1250.

Using My Fitness Pal to keep a check on calories.

Question: the app set my calories intake at around 1250 a day.

Do I eat 1250 a day even though exercise in theory takes me lower?

Or should I include the 200-400 a day calories lost due to exercise and eat 1450 - 1650 a day?

My tdee was about 1600 when I tried a calculation, but I don't understand how that fits in either.

Googling hasn't hdlped, due to brain fog.

Just started this week and the latter is coming naturally (and the app does it automatically when I enter the exercise).

(Exercise = gym at least 3 times a week for 30 mins, around 200 calories; gentle Yoga with Adriene 3-4 times a week; walking minimum 11000 steps a day, 18000-22000 once or twice a week. )

I try not to eat back exercise calories, just because the apps often overestimate how many calories have been burnt during exercise. You have to do a lot of exercise to burn much in the way of calories.

What I would say is that water is really really important when you increase exercise, your body uses it to heal muscles, so you need to stay hydrated to prevent retention.

I’m about your height and was about your weight when I last did a calorie controlled diet, also menopausal but a bit older than you at mid-60s.

I stuck to around 1250 calories a day; maybe was slightly more generous with myself on exercise days but not much. Got down to 57kg (at best) in about 3 ½ months. I’ve settled at 59-60kg; lower than that is doable but just too boring to live by for the rest of my life. HRT has fixed almost everything but my metabolism has definitely slowed down.

Everything usually over estimates how many calories you burn through exercise and is the main reason why exercise can be negative for weight loss. It is brilliant for your health but people tend to eat more when they exercise so can have the opposite effect.

TDEE is how many calories you probably burn day to day and taking 3-500 off is a good start. If your TDEE is 1600 taking 300 off is best as less is harder to stick to.
On low calorie diets which are necessary for shorter people the best thing to do is volume eating.

I'm the opposite. I ate my exercise calories and it still worked, and made it easier to maintain long term. BUT...

I did not count steps because they're unreliable and can all be different lengths (even if your tracker isn't actually counting you scrubbing the dishes).

I ignored any 'round the house steps' and only counted actual walks, which I measured in miles with Strava. I gave myself 70 cals per mile, which was the absolute lowest estimate on the eight sites I looked at (based on my weight). I then took off 5 cals per mile for extra safety! Be very wary. Some websites told me I'd burn 120 cals per mile. Fifty extra! I walked around 8 miles a day then, so an error that large would have eaten my whole deficit and I'd have lost nothing.

Basically, if you decide to eat your calories, take the meanest estimate you can find, then take some more off it to be safe. And don't really on a tracker. They're rubbish at calories.

Ultimately the calculators are only an estimate. Pick an achievable calorie target, stick to it as consistently as possible for 2 or 3 weeks and then adjust from there.

You will get people throwing all different levels of calories at you that worked for them but it depends on your body composition, activity levels, how accurately you track etc etc so it may take some trial and error to find your own right starting point.

Ah OK, so TDEE is the estimated amount if calories I burn daily altogether (including exercise and BMR), so trying to estimate that then eating 300 - 500 fewer calories a day is the way to go?

I think the fitness app automatically deducting calories burned by exercise confused me.

BMR needs to increase with exercise. The one you've got initially is if you're pretty much in a coma, just breathing and not moving at all!
So any exercise you do means you need more.

So basically, if my bmr plus approx calorie loss by exercise is, e.g., 1650, I take 300-500 off the 1650 , I.e. 1150- 1350, and try to limit what I eat to that?

Easiest way to do it is to go to a TDEE calculator and play around with the 'activity' option.

tdeecalculator.net/

I'm 5ft 8
Female
41
170lbs

BMR - 1485 so if I slept for 24 hrs, then just by existing and living I would use around this many calories.

If I have a sedentary lifestyle, office job, just car to door to car, maybe a slow wander round a supermarket, up and down the stairs a couple of times a day, then my TDEE would be 1782, to lose 1-2lb a week I'd want a deficit of around 500 so my allowance would be around 1282 a day.

Light exercise, 1-2 days a week, 30 mins activity at a time, then my daily allowance would be 2041-500 = 1541

Moderate exercise, 3-5 days a week exercise, daily allowance would be 2301 - 500 =1,801 2801

And so on.

Sorry typo in that last bit, should be:

Moderate exercise, 3-5 days a week exercise, daily allowance would be 2301 - 500 =1,801

Thank you all for your help. I get the idea now and I think it will be trial and error for a while, taking both numbers into account seeing what diet makes a difference.

Well not necessarily

My TDEE comes out at 1547, and Im fairly sedentary

I can add on an hours walk, my fitness watch says thats just under 200 cals.
But I cant do that every day and its not very much calories for an hours exercise

So I set it as sedentary and ignore any exercise calories. If Im trying to lose weight, 1lb per week would be just over a thousand calories which is very low. Its more if I can put in the exercise but then that makes me so hungry I eat more than I lose during the exercise, its counter productive.