How much weight loss for MFP to reduce my daily calories?

jaga13

Does anyone know the formula MFP uses to determine when and how much to decrease maintenance calories for each lb lost? When I recently recorded a 3 lb weight loss, MFP reduced my maintenance by 20 calories (so therefore my goal for .5 lb loss each week is also reduced by 20 calories).
Then I recorded another 4 lb loss, but MFP did not reduce my calorie goal. I just want to anticipate when this might happen and by how much so I'm prepared to eat a little less.

DeguelloTex

I think it's every 10 pounds.

I manually reset mine every time I reach a new low weight.

callsitlikeiseeit

mfp does it every 10.

jaga13

Thank you. I'm tempted to just plug in some random lower number to see what it says. I should probably put in my goal weight so at least I'll know what my maintenance number will be. I just don't want my progress chart here to go down and then back up, even though no one will know!

jaga13

OK, every 10 lbs lost. So is it safe to assume when I lose another 6 lbs (since I'm 4 down since the last adjustment), MFP will lower it by approximately 20 calories again?

futuremanda

If you want, just rerun your goals. You don't even have to change them -- just go in, choose guided, and hit save again without changing anything. MFP will update your calorie target.

I like to see mine change by a smidge every lb rather than a bigger amount every once in awhile, so I rerun it every time I drop.

jaga13

Good idea, thank you.

jaga13

Ugh! I just changed it to reflect the next 10 lbs lost, and it reduced my maintenance by 60 calories. But get this. When I changed it back to my current weight (which I recorded last week), my maintenance dropped by 30 calories from a few minutes ago. At the same weight. That is really frustrating. Now I don't know what is the correct amount since MFP didn't drop my calories when I recorded my current weight last week.

DeguelloTex

The current amount is the "correct" one. It just hadn't been bumped down yet because you hadn't hit the 10 pound threshold.

jaga13

no, what I'm saying is I recorded my current weight last week, and MFP didn't drop my calories. After experimenting with that 10 lb loss and then bring it back up to the SAME weight I had 10 minutes ago, it removed 30 calories. I don't get it. If I needed 1500 calories to maintain 129 lbs for the past few days, why do I now only need 1470 calories to maintain the same weight?? Did MFP mess up and not lower my calories last week when I recorded this current weight?

I guess you're saying that 1470 is and always was correct, but MFP wasn't going to tell me that until I lost another 10 lbs, and now that I pretended I did, it triggered the correct amount? That sucks.

DeguelloTex

Right. It didn't drop your calories because you hadn't hit the 10 pound threshold. It did drop your calories when you manually changed the settings. That's what it should do.

MFP doesn't automatically adjust for every pound you lose. It does it every 10 pounds. If you're in between adjustments, it will be very slightly overestimating your calorie goal until you get to the next threshold.

DeguelloTex

Yeah, that's it. It's a handful of calories, probably well within the noise of random and measuring error. I wouldn't worry much about it, but that's the reason I manually adjusted the goal after each new low weight... so that MFP was always giving me the "actual" number of calories.

jaga13

So adjusting the goal is different than simply recording weigh loss from what you're saying. Good to know!!