How would you recommend to determine how many calories a specific person needs, and how to easily calculate them? I am aware of the countless number of ways for this, but I am not sure how to differentiate between the working ones and those that usually don't.
I tried various BMR/TDEE calculators and they all told me to consume around 2200 cals a day to maintain my current weight. (IMO it honestly doesn't matter which calculator you use - they are all approximate anyway).
To lose weight, I created a mild calorific deficit of 200 cals/day, so basically I eat ~2000 cals a day. I use the myfitnesspal app to track calories. I eat anything I want (yes, including the occasional donut/beer) but I keep the daily total to ~2000.
I logged my weight every day, first thing in the morning. (Note that it is important to log your weight daily as it can fluctuate 1-1.5 lbs each day, so you want to be looking at weekly trend lines, vs say measuring once a week).
At 2000/day my weight trend stayed steady for 2 weeks. So I bumped it down to 1800/day. Now my trend is pointed down, and I'm losing ~1 lb a week.
So that's basically all it takes. Precision and discipline wrt daily calories, with some trial and error to figure out what your individual daily calorific need is. I think a lot of folks make it a lot more complex than it actually is with keto, paleo, insulin levels, etc etc.
The mifflin st jeor equation was found by experimentation to produce the most consistently accurate BMR [1]. You can find it on wikipedia [2]. As for tracking calories, I use my own software for this, which is what I'll be releasing soon, but right now myfitnesspal.com is the de facto standard.
It's going to seem like a plug since I work there, but at Fito we created a macronutrient tracker (iOS only unfortunately) that includes a calculator for various goals that has seen pretty excellent results. IMO it's the best free resource available right now.
