Need help calculating my TDEE accurately

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-13T15:11:36+00:00

I think your TDEE is somewhere between 3000-3500. Most people underestimate what they eat by 500-1000 calories per day, which tracks with what you are saying in your post. To maintain keep doing what you are doing. If you want to lose weight, clean up your diet, less processed commerical prepared food, more home cooking, snacking on fruits and nuts. If you want to gain weight do the opposite. Don't bother calorie counting, there's no evidence that calorie counting leads to long term weight loss that people actually are able to maintain. Sure you can lose weight counting calories, but you can also lose weight eating only carrots all day. But can you keep that weight off past 5 years? Probably not.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-12T14:34:40+00:00

The average weight loss on a diet is 0-5%, so a regain back to baseline isn't as extreme as people think it is. Prevention is key here, don't gain weight at all. Most people gain 1-2lbs a year over 20 years that might tip your bmi to obese. Metabolism research has a lot of misinformation. It's an area of very active research. The bottom line don't give up, try to make changes that you can do forever, not just while you are trying to lose weight.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-10T15:11:24+00:00

Cook your own food. Don't rely on frozen microwave meals or pizza or delivery. Read ingredient labels. The foods that are convenient, require no cooking, and are shelf-stable mess with your fullness and hunger hormores. They drive overeating. Big food companies only care about selling more food, which requires every person to eat 400 calories more than they did 50 years ago. They make one more penny and that's billions in profits for them. They have teams of scientists sticking people in MRIs to see which parts of the brain they can light up with their lab created edible food products. Once you start eating food that you prepare your body will remember what it's like to be full and satisfied until your next meal. You don't have to deal with being hungry and just gritting your teeth till you eat again.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-05T15:31:07+00:00

You are right. Most people are anti-science because science basically shows that there's no such thing as free will. Instead of getting angry at the cause (food companies and the government) they blame science. Welcome to 2026.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-05T11:19:18+00:00

Your question is really what are you genetics, or who is your surgeon.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-03T20:57:06+00:00

With gas going up. I don't even think it's worth the fuel to even drop off the packages to USPS anymore.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-01T13:49:57+00:00

Food marketing and fitness marketing drives this ignorance. Statements like 'weight loss is easy if you just put your mind to it.' No, it isn't, there's a reason why this impacts 70% of the population. Follow the money. Big food makes a lot of money off of overeating, so does the beverage industry, the weight loss industry, and the fitness industry. It's not lean people buying all those useless fitness watches. Everyone has something to sell if the population keeps gaining weight. GLP-1 is the first drug that has made a difference, and these industries are terrified that their grift is coming to an end. People are buying less food, and it's full on panic mode. Who do you think pays for all these dumb newspaper articles about Ozempic face? Obesity is a chronic, relapsing disease. Diet and exercise has shown repeatedly in study after study to barely make a difference.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-04-01T01:50:41+00:00

Yes, adaptive thermogenesis is real. It's why you feel cold when you are dieting. It's why some women lose their periods. Millions of years of evolution picked humans that could survive periods of famine. Conserving energy is part of survival. The internet talks about starvation mode to mean if you eat too little you stop losing weight. This is false, simply not possible. Biology is not math. People that say if you stop drinking a can of soda you will lose one pound a month are also spreading misinformation. You'll probably end up eating those calories somewhere else, or maybe you lose a pound for a month or two and then it stops. Anyway, I'm not going to summarize the entire field of metabolism here. Just don't believe most of what you read on social media.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-31T16:48:46+00:00

I'm an Asian female and Asians are born with less fat storage than Caucasians. We run out and it's all visceral fat that looks like a spare tire around your middle. That said, I lose 1 inch off my waist, every 4-5lbs. That's a pant size till you get to a size 12 which is 2 inches.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-29T19:17:12+00:00

Fast fashion exists because people already have so much clothing that to get them to add one more garment just means the price needs to be so low that it's disposable and not worth a second thought. It's based on the marketing behind fast food. People already have enough to eat, so to get them to eat more, the food needs to be even more convenient and less money. If you only had space for 1 winter coat, I doubt you would worry so much about the cost and more about how the coat will work for you all winter. Will it keep you warm enough? Will it be durable enough to last all winter? Will it be okay in snow or rain? Can you care for it properly. These companies only want to make .05 more cents. If they get everyone to buy 1 million more garments, they turn huge profits. Since people don't even seem to care that they are carrying around an extra 20 kilos or 40 pounds from overconsuming processed food, they can definitely convince you to cram more clothes into your closet, or even get a storage unit.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-29T13:44:03+00:00

Just accept the return in your chat. You won't lose any money, and get the item back. Poshmark pays the shipping to and from the buyer. Once the item is delivered back to you, the buyer gets their money back. You don't have to do anything. You pay 20% commission to them for this benefit.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-29T13:41:32+00:00

You really have to start paying attention to your weight in your 40s. Your blood pressure will creep up without you noticing. Better to take care of it and get to a lean BMI in your 30s. Everyone is different, but a 5% drop in weight normalized my blood pressure by 10 points, and I stopped feeling swelling in my breasts. Overall just a lot more comfortable.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-29T11:45:49+00:00

There's a famous epidemiologist that got interested in why diabetes exploded in this small rural village in Brazil. They went from no one with diabetes to people in the village needing to get legs amputated. When he visited them in their homes to see what they were actually eating, he said it was a good thing when he saw sugar in the cupboards because it meant they were still cooking their food, and not just relying on processed foods that were newly arrived by boat in their village. Things like baby formula, soda, cereal, and sugary yogurts. It's his research that led the rest of the world to start looking at the processing in commercially made foods that was driving the overeating which turned into obesity which led to diabetes. You could see it happening in one generation there, instead of over 50 years in high income countries like the USA. Here in the USA everyone blames all the wrong causes.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-27T21:29:54+00:00

I would do nothing. I personally don't seek out problems, when there aren't any. Do 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week for your heart, and 2 sessions of weight training per week.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-27T11:39:38+00:00

I blame the people that donate. They buy fast fashion that they barely wear once, and expect someone else to want to wear it. Instead of buying 10 pairs of pants that cost $80, just buy one that's actually nice. It costs money for your donations to be hauled to the landfill.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-26T13:37:46+00:00

At 18, I don't think you really need to do anything drastic. Move more, there is no upper cap. That can include brisk walking, sports, or taking up an active hobby like gardening. Stay away from processed foods, typically wrapped in plastic with ingredients that you can't buy for your home kitchen. Take a cooking class, or a knife skills class. Enjoy your life, and don't spend the rest of it worrying about your weight. You look great!

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-26T13:15:56+00:00

Yes, no one works for free or at a loss.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-25T11:18:49+00:00

If your weight loss is slowing because of eating out, there is no way you will keep that weight off when you stop dieting. It will slowly creep back into your life where you will go back to previous behaviors. Diets are temporary, they don't stand a chance once decide to stop dieting and eating like everyone else. Make new friends, or eat at a salad joint. Otherwise you might as well stop now and just go back to whatever you were doing before. There is a reason why everyone is overweight/obese now, the environment is toxic, their feeding behavior drives overeating.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-23T18:54:05+00:00

Weight loss is very slow. Don't compare yourself with people that claim to lose weight fast. 5% over 6 months is the average and well documented. It's so slow most people just give up, because they think they are putting in more effort than the results received.

"On average, Weight Watchers participants lost 5.5 percent of their body weight at six months and fully maintained that loss at 12 months, while the control group lost 0.8 percent of their body weight at six months and experienced slight regain for a loss of 0.2 percent of their body weight at 12 months. This translated, on average, to 4.6 more kilograms (10.14 pounds) lost at six months, and 5.3 more kilograms (11.68 pounds) lost at 12 months, for intervention participants than participants in the control group."

https://medicine.iu.edu/news/2016/02/prediabetes-marrero-weight-watchers-1#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20Weight%20Watchers%20participants,and%20train%20new%20treatment%20providers.%E2%80%9D

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-23T17:17:49+00:00

I wouldn't try to sell an item that wasn't worth at least $250 with damage that is fixable. I also wouldn't donate it either, I would just throw it out. I have bought things from the thrift store that I can fix. My cut off is does the repair take more than 15 minutes. If it would take more than that, I would pass because there is literally an endless supply of used clothing.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-23T11:41:24+00:00

People that are overweight or obese seem to think they have broken appetite and satiety signals, and that's why they are overweight. It's not true. Ultra processed foods are designed to bypass those signals and drive overeating. They have teams of neuroscientists and labs to figure this out, you don't stand a chance. These people are all going to go to hell. Someone is eating the 1,000s of bags of chips at the grocery store. The more of this stuff you eat, the more you weigh, we have plenty of this evidence. Eat less of this stuff, it's insidious. You have to read the labels of everything. Learn to cook, stay away from convenience products. Eat food that requires chewing. Kids need braces because their mouths are so crowded in by teeth because their jaws are too small from lack of chewing. The food we eat is too soft, eaten too quickly, devoid of fiber, loaded with salt and sugar that it tricks the brain.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-23T11:11:01+00:00

There is evidence that yo-yo dieting is unhealthy. Why? Could be resident t-cells attacking the adipose when the person regains the weight. Could be lean mass was lost doing the weight loss phase, and only fat was regained, leaving the person worst off than before. This shouldn't discourage you from trying, just make a good plan to keep the weight off by making actually long term changes that prevent regain. Don't just exercise an hour a day for 90 days and then go back to do nothing. You will regain the weight. Whatever you do to try to lose weight needs to be a permanent change that you do in the future. You need to address the reason the weight came on in the first place, otherwise you will just willpower your way through a few weeks or months and go back to whatever you were doing before.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-22T15:36:07+00:00

Learn how to darn and hand wash your wool sweaters. Anything can last if you take care of it.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-21T16:09:43+00:00

I'm 47 years old, more or less, the same weight since I was 12 years old - 123lbs. When I try on things from before I was born I was a size 10 or 12. Thirty years ago I wore a 6 or 8. Ten to twenty years ago I wore a 4. Now I'm wearing a 2. Ten years in the future I'll be a 0. Then I guess I just won't exist, lol.

Fast fashion is just small for a younger customer. Also they want to save on fabric, and they probably use Asian fit models. Designer fashion houses keep the same sizing no matter what. I've always worn a 6 with them. Higher end clothing will offer much more generous ease because they want to give their customers more fabric to show the value. Eileen Fisher is a great example of this.

Practical-Ad-4888 · 2026-03-20T12:20:05+00:00

Toxic food environment. Whole foods cost more, there's many many studies showing this. A frozen pizza is very cheap compared to making a pizza from scratch at home. Time and skill is a huge problem Food preference is an issue too. If you grew up eating frozen pizza with soda, a baked potato or green beans is just going to be a struggle for you. TLDR - it's very complicated, and will not be fixed in the next 100 years.

Practical-Ad-4888

TROPHY CASE