How close is calorie reccommendation for MFP?

revvystroke

Just wondering how big the ballpark is on the calorie recommendation is for this app. I have lost and kept off ~50lbs since I started using it and it has taught me to watch what I eat and how to size portions, but I have found my weight really doesn't fluctuate much even if I am a few hundred calories over each day for a week or two.

ana3067

You won't gain any significant amount of weight being a few hundred cals over for a few weeks.

nxd10

Like she said. 3500 calories is a pound of fat - on average. Over a few weeks of being over, that's just noise on your scale. Assuming you are perfect at logging (no one is, even if they weigh and try really hard) and perfect in your estimate of exercise (which no one is).

Plus everyone's body's a little difference. I used to burn fewer calories than MFP thought. Now I burn more. My body has changed. MFP hasn't. But it's a good starting place.

terbusha

I think the app is great. One thing that's great is to maximize your metabolism when you switch to maintenance mode. This involves slowly adding calories and carbs into your diet over time to get your maintenance calorie level up. I'm doing this and raised my maintenance from 2000 cal/day to over 3000 cal/day. It sure makes maintaining your results much easier to fit into a normal lifestyle.

Allan

5stringjeff

I've found the calorie recommendations to be within about 50 calories per day. Part of that depends on the activity level you enter in, though. Personally, I enter sedentary (I work a desk job) and log whatever exercise I do. That's worked well for me in both losing and maintaining.

georgiaTRIs

They are close and if you follow them you will be fine. I always try to be about 100 less that MFP shows just in case. I use runkeeper to log my exercise on and it transfers over. MFP shows more calories burned that runkeeper and I would rather have the calorie count lower

dopeysmelly

I've found the calorie recommendation to be pretty close.