Hi Tiffany, the TDEE shows the amount of calories needed to maintain weight, so you need to eat less than this. 1300 calories is very low. My TDEE is around the same so I aim for around 1800 on normal days but I don’t stick rigidly to this because I’m trying not to count calories other than fasting days. I am however being much more aware of what I am eating. Welcome to the forum 🙂

TDEE,

Where do I enter my goal weight to see how many calories I should eat on nonfast day? What site? It’s s confusing because all these sights are so different and don’t really explain it well. On the one this forum has provided, it says my TDEE should be 2058, so subtract 500? I don’t see where to enter your goal weight. Could just be I’m a giant airhead! 😀

I think we’ve agreed that it’s not your goal weight you enter in the TDEE calculator (which, Tidychick, is on the How? tab on this site) but your current weight. The point is you have to regularly re-enter the info as you lose weight as the number of cals you need decreases as you decrease in size. So,if you have your TDEE allowance for 5 days and your 500/600 cals for 2 days, then you are automatically eating less than you need to maintain and therefore will lose weight. So, if my TDEE is 2000 (it is, thereabouts) and I eat 2000 cals x5 days and 500 cals x2days per week that’s a total of 11,000 cals in a week. To maintain my weight I’d need 14000 cals in a week, ergo, i will lose weight, eating 3000 fewer cals than I need to maintain. Does that help?

Thanks for all your replies and help, everyone! I will do some refiguring then, as the weight loss has slowed a bit.

Yes Tiffany, you’ve got it. You can of course speed up weight loss by reducing your calories even more but what’s the point? A steady loss is the safest way to go and this approach should help. I have lost weight since starting. It isn’t easy but it’s a darn sight more pleasurable than traditional approaches to weight loss 🙂

This is confusing, the calculator says my BMR is 1307 (calories I use in a 24 hour day). My TDEE is 1568 (total number of calories burned in a day/number of calories I need to maintain the weight I am at now). So, I do not want to stay at this weight, so that means I need to eat less than 1,568 calories on the five days of eating normally?

Thanks Viisikaksi! Would you also know if there is a way to track replies?

Viisikaksi,

Here is where I get messed up. My BMR is 1328 and TDEE 2058, which seems really high to me. I thought TDEE was to maintain your current weight, and that you should lower it by 500 calories? Sorry to get so hung up on this, but the weight loss seems to be stalling a bit. On fitness pal, it says I should eat 1320 calories per day to lose, but that of course, doesn’t take into account 2 fast days a week. There is a big difference between eating 1320 calories and eating 2058 in a day. If I just sort of guess what I eat in a day, I tend to overeat, because I can’t keep track. Why doesn’t the calculator just tell you straight out how many calories to eat (for your height and weight) in order to lose weight?

I’m probably just making this harder than it needs to be, but I’m kinda just guessing every day.

The difference between your BMR and TDEE (2058-1328)=730 kcal means that you are quite active 😀

Fitnesspal calculation is based on, I assume, on the idea that you have limited calorie intake 7 days a week, i.e.
7 x (2058-1320)= approx 5100 kcal per week, approx. 750 g weight loss per week

5:2 is based on
2 x (2058-500)=approx 3000 kcal per week, approx. 450 g weight loss per week

So these methods are different, and the weight reduction rhythn is different, but most likely you can continue the 5:2 diet longer than fitnesspal diet.

The TDEE calculator just gives you a hint about the feast days, what calorie level you should not exceed. And fast days are easy with 500/600 kcal.

Thanks Viisikaksi!! Ashame there isn’t.