The FastDay Forum

Your Resting Metabolic Rate* is estimated to be 1101.75. If you have a sedentary lifestyle this means you should be eating around 1323 calories on your feed days and 331-500 calories on your fast days in order to lose weight

(1323 x 5 =)6615 plus (331 x 2 =)663 = 7278 cals per week divided by 7 = 1040 per day

6615 plus (500 x 2 = ) 1000 = 7615 cals per week divided by 7 = 1088

Hopefully my maths is wrong because these figures seem too low to be healthy.

I am averaging 1200 - 1300 calories a day, so that's why I'm not losing weight!
Most days I go for a good fairly fast walk, but some days I don't go outside and am sitting at the computer all day. I do fidget a lot though and keep getting up and walking around the room.

Depends on your height and weight though, but remember it defaults to sedentary, which sounds like you are not. I found the one on here a bit low as well. There is a much better TDEE calculator at "Scooby's Workouts" Google it and will give you all the info you need. Just ignore all the food breakdown stuff.

This TDEE is the one given on the progress tracker here and I have entered my age, weight and height correctly. For the past year or so I have been eating approx 8400 - 9000 calories per week and maintained weight until I recently had to cut out all carbohydrates (apart from low carb veggies)and lost 8-12 lbs and it has stayed off. However, I have been gradually introducing carbs (I love baking) since starting 5:2. I shall have a look at Scooby's Workouts. Thanks

[Moogie]

At some point when time allows I intend to add a setting for your activity level so the TDEE stuff can be based around that. Sounds to me like you are lightly active and your TDEE is therefore higher than the sedentary rate.

Unfortunately I keep getting work thrown at me and am working yet again this evening *grumble* - just stopped by here to quell my annoyance for a few minutes. How rude to suddenly have a Tuesday deadline thrown at me by my sister in law (of all people) on a Thursday evening when I have plans for the bank holiday weekend and work tomorrow all day. Grrr... Sorry, not the place to rant I know.

Thanks Moogie - hopefully by letting off a bit of steam you have burned off quite a few calories too! For years and years doctors have advised me that I need to follow a very low calorie diet of approx 895 cals/day if I wanted to lose weight,but reading other comments and also looking on the internet 1200 cals/day seems to be the minimum acceptable level. Maybe my metabolism is just extremely slow and I do need a low amount of calories if my aim is to lose weight? I am certainly more than happy with all the other health benefits of 5:2, so not complaining! After a lot of experimenting I have come to the conclusion that my body does not like certain foods and is telling me not to eat them!! Try not to work too hard and hope you do have a break this weekend. PS you look years younger in your new photo!

Moogie its such a shame that getting stressed and cross doesn't burn calories! Think how slim we'd be if it did. I suppose if we went out and our stressors a good slapping we'd burn some off but then we'd end up locked up on prison food so we'd put it all back on!

Hope it doesn't impact too much on your weekend.

also looking on the internet 1200 cals/day seems to be the minimum acceptable level

are you sure you're not listening to idiots though ?

The site TDEE calculation is the recognised Mifflin St-Jeor correlation with a 1.2 factor for a sedentary occupation / lifestyle.

When this (or any other) correlation is tested against a real population a typical outcome is that 70% of people fall within +/- 10% of the prediction. So if the tracker TDEE is 1320 it could be 1190 to 1450 and 30% of us will be outside that range.

So ultimately the best measure is what you need to eat to maintain.

If you're a not very tall slight woman your metabolic requirements are less than a tall bodybuilding man so calories and other nutrients can be proportionally lower.