The Math of TDEE and Creating Deficits

Yeah. So you fast, slow, if we're talking about fat loss, we're talking mainly about larger or smaller deficits, because that's going to be the main catalyst for losing weight. And that's the thing people don't want to hear. You know, I started going to gyms in the 80s, like when I was just a kid. And it's been the same thing in the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s that people don't want to diet. They would just rather exercise the weight off. And you have two viewpoints here. And I can argue both of them. And I'm going to tell you that they're both right. But it just depends on how you look at the situation. So if my TDEE is 3,200 calories a day, and that 3,200 calories is inclusive of my weight training. So like, we'll break down TDEE, right? You have your basic basal metabolic rate. So for me, it's about 1,900. Then you have about 20% added on for thermic effect and NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, right? Just kind of subconscious stuff that you do all day. And then if you look at that, that's only gonna be like, for God, my size around 2,200. if I don't exercise and my TDE is 2200 I'm gonna have to die if I if I pull say 500 calories out I'm gonna have to diet on 1700 so and you can lose weight like that the only problem is like you said you're gonna lose muscle that's not a good way to lose muscle how do we how do we save muscle you give muscle a reason to be around which means you need to train a few days a week at least minimal two to three days a week, if not four to five. But that's also going to alter my TDEE. Because if you're training for, say, three or four hours a week, that's going to add another 15, 20% to your TDEE. So let's say I'm going to train five days a week consistently for, say, an hour, each of those sessions with weights. Now my TDEE is 3,200. I have to shift that deficit. I'm no longer in a 500 calorie deficit if I'm still eating 1700. I'm now in a 1500 calorie deficit. So now it that going from like a small deficit to a massive deficit But I doing the right things with the weights but I just not feeding for it So that one side of it where it like all right I have tried to feed for my TDE without exercise Then I'm trying to use exercise to make a bigger deficit. But the problem is, the more I do things, the more I have to drag those calories back up. Now, you can look at it from a different perspective, too. And you can say, well, I'm going to eat at my TDE of 3,200, and I'm going to use the workouts to create my deficit. But see, that's not right either because that 3,200 is inclusive of also the training. So if you're going to train your TDE's 3,200, that's your baseline. Now we have to pull calories from that. Now, in the first scenario where it's like, I'm going to eat a certain amount of calories, I'm going to train, we could possibly say you are using exercise to create the deficit because you've set your nutrition and then you've trained on top of that. Now, the other way is opposite. I'm going to use exercise or I'm going to use nutrition to be my deficit. So I've kind of set my nutrition and pulled back in a deficit and I'm going to add the training. So in both of those situations, it's the same thing. Right. So if I were to eat, let's say the TDE is thirty two hundred and I go, I'm going to train for thirty two hundred a week and then I'm going to pull five hundred calories out. You can look at that and go, well, you're getting that deficit through your nutrition. Okay. But I could also say, well, I'm going to eat 2,700 calories, but I'm going to do enough work for it to be 3,200. So in that situation, it looks the opposite. I'm actually using exercise to create the deficit. But if you think about it and you look at the math, they're both right. Right. Does that make sense?