Im having a hard time finding my calories and macros for maintaining

Sammi_Nicole16

Im having a hard time finding my calories and macros for maintaining... Im a 5 foot tall female and I weigh 91 pounds. Yes, it's a pretty low weight but I've always been on the small side so according to my doctor it is ok. I've visited many websites and I'm getting very mixed results. If anyone could help that would be great! Thanks

TavistockToad

Put your stats into MFP to maintain... if you are still losing, add 100 cals a week till you're maintaining.

bwogilvie

If you've been using MFP for a while, you don't need to use a calculator; use your actual statistics.

1. Add up all the food calories you logged for the last 30 complete days.
2. Multiply your total weight lost (in pounds) over those 30 days by 3500.
3. Add #1 and #2 together, and divide by 30. The result is the daily calories you need to maintain your current weight.
4. Add up all the exercise calories you logged for the last 30 complete days, and divide by 30 to get your average daily exercise calories.
5. Subtract #4 from #3 to get your daily maintenance calories without exercise.

In my case, I ate 65713 calories over 30 days, and I lost 0.677 pounds = 2370 calories. So my maintenance calories = ( 65713 + 2370 ) / 30 = 2269 calories/day.

My exercise calories averaged 467 per day, so my maintenance without exercise is 2269 - 467 = 1802 calories/day. It's useful to know that because I tend to exercise less in the winter.

I ran the last 90 days of data and got nearly the same result (1800), so I'm fairly confident in it. The beauty of this calculation is that it doesn't matter whether my estimates are accurate, as long as they are consistent with one another.

Technically speaking, this will give you your maintenance for your average weight during the period, but as you are near maintenance, you won't have lost much over the last 30 days.

ahoy_m8

Agree with Tavistock, but I would recommend going 2 or more weeks before upping another 100 kcal. Average your weight and caloric intake for the week or use a trailing average. You will gradually see what weight correlates to what intake for you. This approach depends on your exercise being pretty consistent week-to-week, however. And it requires patience.

I calculate my TDEE over the past 28 days based on intake and weight change, too, and it gives extremely inconsistent results for me (skewed by small weight fluctuation).

Good luck!