The FastDay Forum

I just inputted my weight-loss 'data' into a few TDEE calculators and at 5'6, 185 pounds and exercising for around an hour and a half a day, four times a week, my TDEE is coming up as 2225!! That seems like an awfully high calorie intake to me - on average I would say that I have been eating around 1300 calories aday on my 'feast' days and in the past five weeks have lost 16 pounds...should I be eating more to lose more?

Can anyone clarify this for me?

Love Pinchy xx

What kind of exercise are you doing? An hour and a half can burn a lot of calories and it's possible you should be eating more. I guess alternatively you could get the TDEE for sedentary calories and use another calculator to work out how much extra you burn when exercising.

For comparison, I'm 5'4, 130 lbs and when I put in "moderate" exercise I get a TDEE of 2000 and that seems to work for me on feast days. My moderate exercise is pretty modest - a couple of 3-4 mile runs, one sprints session and a couple of bodyweight exercise circuits a week. More like 30 mins x 5 times a week.

Hello and welcome:

The best thing to do is figure out what you think your activity level is and then, for the calculator, take the next activity level down as your benchmark. I get 2100 for your info (guessing at your age). You can't go wrong by underestimating your TDEE - if it is correct, fine, but if it is too low, you will lose more weight!

This might help: 5-2-diet-chat-f6/topic6600.html

As for eating more to lose more, that is an urban legend. However, whether you can sustain starving yourself much longer is another issue. Given even the lower TDEE I've calculated, and assuming you are doing 2 fast days of 500, you are down to 7500 calorie intake a week. Over time, 1070 cal. a week should lead to a weight loss of around 2 pounds a week, but is also very hard for most people to sustain. Losing more than you are (some is initial water weight) is an unrealistic goal.