New member intro and some questions

godiva73

Hi. I am new here. I've been using MFP for the last 5 days and am confused still. I am looking forward to sticking with my weight loss journey and making major changes in eating habits and exercising daily. I am having problems consuming all of the calories MFP wants me to eat. Does this happen to anyone else?

Elise4270

Assumimg the calories you are consuming are at or above your BMR, you might manually adjust your calorie goal. I don't always eat back my exercise calories, you might want to start there. Sometimes they are overestimated. Might also check out IIFYM.com to figure out more about your calorie requirement.

A food scale would also be a good idea in case you are eating more than you realize. Good luck.

JimFsfitnesspal

Some days I need to consume more to get closer to a healthy caloric intake. It is so easy to hit less than 1000 net calories. The key is to add protein or fat cals to make it up. NO carbs (unless fruits and veggies).

Good points Elise. I think knowing your BMR numbers are a good tool as well. Myfitnesspal actually has one, but I used one I found on google. This helped me find out that I was putting my body into starvation mode and I stopped losing weight.

Additionally, you may want to re-evaluate your activity level when you set your goals. I had to go back and change mine to sedentary.

Either way, I care less about my calories than my carbs and sugars. Limit carbs to around 100 and sugars to as low as you can and you will lose weight by the fistfuls. Im down 24 pounds of fat and 43 to 35 inch waist in the last year. I added 5 pounds of muscle.

godiva73

Elise and Jim. Thanks for replying. I have a food scale and do weigh my food. I am also going to check out that website Elise mentioned. It's a learning process. Congrats to you Jim. Love the "lose weight by the fistfuls" expression!