Questions regarding meeting my daily goalds

dmorsephotography

Hello,

My name is Danielle and I just started using My Fitness Pal. I am looking to lose some weight before my upcoming wedding in May. I have a few different questions regarding what I am suppose to eat and how the app provides information regarding that food item.

1. When I enter a food on the phone app and a message pops up telling me information about that food ( Such as this food is high in fiber ) is a green message good and a red message bad? I only ask because I get a red message when I enter coconut oil saying that it is high in saturated fat. This seems bad but I have read that coconut can help with weight loss. I only use 1 tsp in my coffee in the morning.

2. I am finding it hard to meet all my food goals each day. I know eating the correct amount of calories is key but are their some goals it is ok to go over without affecting my weight loss. Such as vitamins and protein. I never go over anything a significant amount but I just want to make sure I am following the program in an effective way.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks :]

queenliz99

Hitting your daily calories is the key. The next best goal is to hit the protein and fat macros. I get those red, yellow and green warnings but I disregard them.

mbcieslak87

Hi Danielle,

Welcome to MFP; we're glad you're here!

1. With those red and green messages, I wouldn't put too much stake in them, but rather consider them warnings. A food high in saturated fat is not a BAD food, in moderation. If you like coconut oil in your coffee and it fits in your caloric goals and you're not going way over in your fat every day, then feel free to continue. That being said, and some may argue, but I would not advise you to continue using coconut oil if you only use it because you read it helps with weight loss. What helps with weight loss is is consuming less calories than you expend. Period.
2. In terms of weight loss, as long as you have calculated your goals correctly and are diligent in your tracking, you should have no problems losing weight as long as you stay within your caloric goals. Everyone fluctuates from day to day providing they eat a balanced diet. Some days you will go over on protein and others on fat, and others on Vitamin C. While I do think it is important to keep track of your macros over the long term, daily fluctuations are not going to hinder your efforts.

Further, if you are new here, I would suggest going to the forum called sexypants and read the first post... it is semi-long but has some amazing information/tips and is well worth the read. I can't take credit for it, but it was posted by someone in far better shape than I will ever be, so I take their suggestions wholeheartedly.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

Here's to wishing you all the best in your health journey!

angelinhell

In scientific terms, as long as you're creating the correct calorie deficit, you will still lose weight whether you eat 1200 calories of chocolate a day or 1200 calories of cucumber... but obviously it's not the healthy way to do things! It's just giving you an idea of how much of each thing you should be eating and as long as your diet is balanced in general it's all good xx

dmorsephotography

Thanks for the feedback!

ana3067

Coconut oil doesn't help with weight loss. Eating fewer calories than your body needs to maintain its weight helps with weight loss.

you can turn that feature off in the settings, for the notifications thing. I forget where but it will be easy to spot if you play around in the settings on your app.

Macros = calories. Micronutrients =/= calories. If you want to track macros then go ahead and do so, and you'd probably want to calculate your calories from the macros themselves if you go this route because of rounding errors. Otherwise just look at the total calorie number.

GraceAubeur

dmorsephotography wrote: »

Hello,

My name is Danielle and I just started using My Fitness Pal. I am looking to lose some weight before my upcoming wedding in May. I have a few different questions regarding what I am suppose to eat and how the app provides information regarding that food item.

1. When I enter a food on the phone app and a message pops up telling me information about that food ( Such as this food is high in fiber ) is a green message good and a red message bad? I only ask because I get a red message when I enter coconut oil saying that it is high in saturated fat. This seems bad but I have read that coconut can help with weight loss. I only use 1 tsp in my coffee in the morning.

2. I am finding it hard to meet all my food goals each day. I know eating the correct amount of calories is key but are their some goals it is ok to go over without affecting my weight loss. Such as vitamins and protein. I never go over anything a significant amount but I just want to make sure I am following the program in an effective way.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks :]

Hi Danielle,

I believe those messages are based on your goals
If you set up your goal automatically, there are big chances that the goals in g for saturated fat is 0g, so basically every time your enter something with sat. fat. a red message will appear.
If you don't want to set up your customized goal, I would just ignore it.

You also need fat to lose weight and to be health in general.
Preferably this fat should be from two main sources:
- sat fat. (ie. from meat, eggs, dairy product and coconuts oil)
- poly unsat fat, mostly omega 3 (i.e. from fatty fish) and 6 (i.e. from nuts)
Transfat are to be avoided

More info here:heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Cholesterol/PreventionTreatmentofHighCholesterol/Know-Your-Fats_UCM_305628_Article.jsp

I hope it helps!