Is this 1.2 factor right ? Shouldn't it be higher ? What do you do during the day ?

Reason I ask is, Dr. John Berardi's lifestyle adjustment factors to RMR ( close to BMR ) to account for lifestyle ( excluding exercise ) is......

1.2-1.3 for Very Light (bed rest)
1.5-1.6 for Light (office work/watching TV)
1.6-1.7 for Moderate (some activity during day)
1.9-2.1 for Heavy (labor type work)

How much do you weight btw ?

hes talking about his resting mbr so 1.2 should be about right then adding in his expenditure about he deficit you really need to be careful at 1000cals if your new to training this might workout for a short amt of time w/o starvation mode but this will kick in soon if you really want to go that far below mantenance pushing it would be 800 cals but twice a week you need to eat at mantenance this will be able to trick your body for a while but I still say try the 500, brad pitt wasnt able to look like this through a 1000cal deficit hahah, if you continue that 1000 cal deficit your going to lose all your muscle with the fat and look like that other guy even if your eating a proper diet at 1800 cals, if that mattered I could eat a balanced diet of 1000cals aday and be ok (not gonna happen) slow it down your setting yourself up for failure trust me I know i did it myself

Perhaps it's semantics then, cause he referred to the 1.2 in the context of a " daily activity level ".

Actually, that's why I asked how much he weighed, because you should be able take your weight in pounds and multiply it by 11 to get your ballpark estimate of your RMR ( which is very close to your BMR ).

And once you get your RMR, you simply add a " daily activity level " factor to get your caloric needs before exercise. I just thought a factor of 1.2 for daily activities seemed a bit low for most people - particularly in light of the guideline descriptions cited by Berardi. I would have expected it to be closer to 1.5 - 1.6. - again, which why I asked what he did during the day.

Cause as we both know, usually it's RMR + activity calories + exercise calories that ballparks your overall maintenance calories.

I would also be interested to know how the OP has calculated that he is burning 500 calories per day through excercise. If it is from what a cardio machine is saying, it is highly unlikely to be accurate. This is why I would think using an activity multiplier might be more useful than simply subtracting estimated excercise calories, even with both only being estimates.

I'm 18 years old, 67 inches (5'7") tall, and about a week into this, I weight 170lb.

My day includes going to college in the morning, driving around for any chores I may have for the day, around 2-3 hours a day in front of the computer, hanging out with friends at any of half a dozen of our favorite spots, and schoolwork in the evening. Throw in maybe an hour or two of watching TV and halfassed studying in there and you have my typical day. I work Fri-Sat-Sun combined 20-25 hours. Since I've started cardio, I've made time for an hour of exercise, most of that being running 4-5 miles.

I've used these two sources to calculate my daily maintainance without the cardio:

The formula found in this sticky: http://training.fitness.com/nutritio...1-a-32846.html

And this website:
Estimated Calorie Requirements

The sticky formula gave me 2250 and the second website gave me 2480, so I've averaged it out to 2300.

As for the multipliers listed by Wrangell; Why does the good doctor give a multiplier of as much as 1.3 for "Very light (bed rest)"? A sedentary lifestyle that includes no real activity should be a multiplier of 1.0, since that is what is needed to keep you alive and if you're in bed all day, that's all you're really doing, keeping yourself alive.

Were I to use that formula and your recommendation of 1.6, I would get a maintainance of 2992, almost 3000. There is no way I expend that much while doing "Office Work/watching TV."

As for how I calculate how many calories I'm burning; I've used calculators that show that, for my weight, I should burn 127-134 calories for every mile that I jog/powerwalk. I jog on a local track so I can measure the distance, and that means I don't have a calorie measurer. And its common knowledge that 1mile=100calories so I run 4-5 miles to make sure I expend 500cal.

You're making too many assumptions. a x1.0 multiplier would mean that all you do is exist. ie. breathing and pumping blood, thats it. You'd be amazed how many calories you can burn just by changing the channel. If you're in a coma, you may qualify, otherwise, you're at least a 1.3 (my guess is closer to 1.6, as Wrangell suggests). You've already said you're running 5 miles so, look at those multipliers again, especially the one that says "This is where most of you are at"

I suggest you re-calculate.

Regardless of what 1.0 is, the sticky defines 1.2 as "Very light activity (Working a desk job or on a computer and not performing any type of physical activity during your day.)"

When I started doing this, and figuring out all the numbers, I didn't include my projected energy expenditure; I calculated what I was expending at that point in time, and that didn't include an hour of running. The above definition accurately describes what I was doing - no real physical activity to speak of. At most, on some days where I walked places I might have gone up to a 1.3 but that's still 2400. 2400 is also what I come with when I use the hourly calculator.

This really is semantics. I'm sure I would go up to a 1.6 if I included my running, which would be around 2900-3000 total expenditure.

Now that we have that out of the way, I really need to know if I should take supplements like Whey Protein or a Multivitamin and include more meats for proteins when I work out, or if just lifting weights will be enough during a time of dieting.

i dont agree with your mile calculations according to my bf%, height, weight when I run 5 miles which I do 3 times a week I burn 800cals in roughly 30min. also you have to multiply your bmr by 1.3/1.25. You eat dont you, thats were most of the energy you expend comes from, when your sedentary. you use a lot of ATP just to generate ATP from the glucose itself (metabolism), but anyway for your height and weight. I calculated about 3000calories for your mantenance using my method (including cardio) but the method wrangell uses works too, I know cuz thats what im doin with a 20%cut

You run 5 miles in 30 minutes?

Nice!

Just keeping yourself alive - i.e coma - is closer to your BMR, and conscious rest is closer to your RMR.

And a sedentary lifestyle isn't 1.0 X RMR IMO - I've seen a sedentary lifestyle described as 20% - 40% of RMR .....which is actually much closer to Berardi's factor of 1.3 for " Very Light "...and I've also seen other authors use a catch all 1.6 as a simple rule of thumb average for all lifestyle components.

And as I said before, once you get your separate lifestyle calories estimated, you have to add this to your estimated RMR and then add both of those with your estimated calories expended during exercise to get your maintenance calories. So, in broad brush terms , the primary components of your maintenance calories are RMR calories + lifestyle calories + exercise calories.

As for the " good doctor " .....this is Dr. John Berardi's detailed calc ( i.e Steps #1 - #5 ) of determining your maintenance calories - found in this link....

Bodybuilding.com - John Berardi - Massive Eating - Part I!

Actually, it's your RMR + Office Work/watching TV.

And, who knows, your lifestyle may be closer to 1.5 instead of 1.6, which would put you at 2,800....or about 16 calories per pound of bodyweight...which is not unreasonable.