BMR assumes you’re in a coma, pretty much. If you’re sedentary then that’s the number you want to be looking at. I wasn’t trying to be offensive, many apologies if it came over that way, was just trying gently to correct your assertion that “1200 is typically the recommended calories…” because it simply isn’t the case.
I was more ensuring that anyone who hasn’t done any research and came across this thread wouldn’t go away think 1200 calories normal to lose weight because it, for the vast majority of cases, is not.
You truncated where you quoted me. I said “1200kcal is typically the recommended calories for a woman trying to loose weight” Maybe that was a little sweeping!
The site you recommended offers BMR and asks activity level in that calculation - from sedentary up to athlete so not just comatose!
If you scroll down a little there is a tab for “cutting” - suggests my personal calorie intake should be 1261kcal for cutting weight.
I’m gonna party tonight with those extra 61 calories!!
Well yes we were taking about the need to lose weight of course.
That site is to calculate calories required, if your BMR is at 1700ish then surely your sedentary number will (typically) be about 200 above that (give or take).
So running at a 500 caloric deficit should be putting you around 1400 I’d guesstimate. Unless you’re using a higher caloric deficit - which can be very difficult to sustain but to each their own.
I ran at a 1k deficit myself for a while but not something I’d recommend!
Ahh I see the confusion - My fault - I was quoting the number it spat out as BMR , not the BMR + an exercise variable. My personal BMR is 1136 as you said, if I was comatose.
I had a year of sitting on the sofa doing no exercise on doctor’s orders following ill health - went up 3 dress sizes! So I can confirm that doing nothing you need less calories! Now just about back to my normal weight thanks to Huel and being allowed to run again.
Ok so sedentary to cut is 1363 ? Which puts your maintenance calories at approx 1863 I assume? Or are those maintenance calories rather than calories to cut?
Just trying to get my head around this, FWIW my maintenance is around 2300 ish, I don’t need to lose much weight as such but I do need to do recomposition to lower my body fat % and increase my muscle % which I am finding really annoyingly tough.
I did use Huel to lose weight initially - about 3 and a half stone, make it so easy to work out your calorie intake and, well I’m kinda lazy so it’s a product made in heaven for me lol.
FWIW, TDEE calculations for women are significantly lower than men of the same height and weight due to difference in muscle:fat ratio. Women generally have higher body fat % and fat is less metabolically active than muscle. Couple that with women on average being shorter and it’s not that unusual for an average maintenance for women to be closer to 1300-1500.
1200 Kcal is a pretty average requirement for women wanting a 500 kcal defecit. It’s what mine is (based on what my calculations and fitbit say I’m using), I range between burning 1700 and 1800 a day. Most of us are indeed shorter and burn less, especially when there’s less pressure to “get ripped”.
I should point out that I am a pretty average height female with an above average BMR. I don’t know any women who need anywhere near 2000 a day, but admittedly I don’t hang out with many sporting women.
I think 2000 was just picked because it’s an easy number to compare with and most women are anywhere between about 1600 and 2200. Either way, jumping to the assumption that 1200 is absolute minimum and too low for a woman to lose weight safely isn’t right.
And because generally recommendations are based on averages for men, not women. That’s been the case historically for most medical, nutritional and exercise topics. Most research and product tests are based on what works for male physiology rather than female.
Gym equipment is a case in point. Women generally are shorter with narrower shoulders and shorter arms. Good job I prefer free weights as I can’t use machines like the shoulder press as the grips are set too wide and not adjustable. I’m bang on average height for a woman at 166cm. Same with the leg press, I can only just safely re-latch the plates at full extension.
There is a really interesting book on this topic: Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.
That’s really interesting and… manages to be incredibly crap at the same time! It’s like the fact that a lot of the initial PPE in hospitals was virtually useless because it was designed with men in mind.
Not brilliant when so many females are in our healthcare service (including one of my sisters!)
