| Introducing Myself Along With Some Questions About RMR & Creating A Calorie Deficit |
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Frank A Ccelli
New Member
| Joined: | 6 Feb 2008 |
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| Posts: | 13 |
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Posted: 6 Feb 2008 10:31 am |
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My name is Frank, I am 41 years old & I have struggled with my weight most of my adult life. I had open-heart surgery at the age of five & although at the moment my heart is healthy, along with blood pressure and cholesterol, I know with my current weight my luck is going to run out. My quality of life is going down also. I love amusement park rides but it is getting harder to find rides I fit into. I love baseball, Red Sox Baseball, but hardly go to the games because I can't fit into most of the seats. I used to be involved with community theater but shy away from it because of my size. As I get older everything seems like a chore with my weight. I am here to learn, to grow in a positive way, to change my life for the better to find out why I may not have been successful in my previous attempts at weight loss & to give myself a chance to lose my weight/body fat and change my lifestyle before considering obesity surgery by the end of the year. Just for the record I don't think of obesity surgery as an easy out. I have a friend who has gone that route & although he has had tremendous success I witnessed his struggles first hand along his journey.
I currently weigh 365lbs dropping 10 pounds so far this year, more on that in a moment. I have tried Weight Watchers along with many other diets all with short term success. I know I have a poor "All or Nothing" attitude, if I have a cookie or two in the morning my eating habits will be poor the rest of the day instead of correcting the situation by eating healthier the rest of the day.
I am a fan of The Biggest Loser TV Show. I find it inspiring so I got some books based on that show & I'm learning to put some of the ideas to use. One idea is eating every 3-4 hours, which at first seemed outrageous to me. I used to go about 6 hours between meals sometimes more but eating every 3-4 hours as the book suggest has helped me eat smaller meals & is how I have lost the 10lbs I have this year.
Sorry if my intro seems long but I wanted to give everyone a good foundation of where I am & where I am coming from. I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this.
A friend of mine, who is in great shape, turned me onto this site and although I am still going through the "Tutorial" section I have never found a site to be so educational about every aspect of weight & weight loss along with great tools to help you change your life for the better. That being said I have some questions I hope someone here can help me with.
I have always known about BMI but not BMR/RMR or about your body going into starvation mode, which I am just learning about here. According to the BMR/RMR Calculators my RMR is around 2,990 calories if I am mostly sedentary & around 3,863 if I exercise 3-5 days a week. Based on those numbers if I for example cut back 500 calories & burn about 400 through exercise for a total calories deficit of 900 a day is that safe or will my body go into starvation mode & work against me? Which RMR number should I be subtracting the 900 calorie deficit from, the 2,990 or the 3,863 ? I am really trying to get a full understanding of this topic so anyone who can help please do.
Again I thank you for reading this & helping me help myself for a better longer life.
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 Last edited on 6 Feb 2008 10:48 am by Frank A Ccelli
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Nir
Senior Administrator
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Posted: 6 Feb 2008 01:54 pm |
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Welcome to the site.
Subtract the 500 calories from your 'sedentary' number (2990) to arrive at 2990-500=2490 and aim to eat that.
If you wanted to be more 'radical' it should in fact be safe for you to eat as little as 1868 calories [that's 75% of your unadjusted RMR] so feel free to give that a go as an experiment but if you stall then know that the 2500-calorie mark is definitely going to work (more slowly).
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Frank A Ccelli
New Member
| Joined: | 6 Feb 2008 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 13 |
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Posted: 6 Feb 2008 04:07 pm |
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Just a quick question Nir. How come I subtract the 500 calories from the 2990 RMR & not the 3863 RMR if I am going to be exercise 3-5 days a week. Please let me know & thanks for your help
Frank A Ccelli
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Nir
Senior Administrator
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Posted: 6 Feb 2008 05:06 pm |
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Not a problem. Here we go. You originally said:
cut back 500 calories & burn about 400 through exercise for a total calories deficit of 900 a day
so if you were starting from a number that already includes exercise (3863) then you'd need to subtract 900, not 500. You'll end up eating 3863-900=2963.
However that is more than we got above! Why is that? Well, the 1.55 activity factor that goes with 'Moderately Active' actually assumes you will be burning an additional (3863-2990 = 873) calories, 7 days a week - or if you prefer, 873x7/5=1222 calories 5 times a week with 2 days rest. Hold on though, that is not what you commited to, your initial commitment was to burning 400 calories per day. So the moral of the story is: the 'headline' for the activity factor 'Moderately Active' is a bit misleading - because it isn't just about how many days per week you will exercise but also implies exercising for a longer period or a higher intensity. To play it safe, start with the sedentary number (2990), add the exercise amount (400) and then subtract the deficit you want (900) to get 2990+400-900 = 2990-500 = 2490.
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