Net calories under goal seems very low...am I doing this wrong?

butterfly1921

Hi!

I've been using MFP and tracking calories for a little over a month. To start I was 5'4 and 173 lbs, sedentary lifestyle. I used that Scooby calculator and got a calorie goal of somewhere north of 1400.

Every day since, I've eaten less than 1400 calories. I usually eat a smaller breakfast (200-300 cals) and I'm very busy during the day so I don't always have lunch...sometimes my dinners with my family are around 800 calories. I've heard the timing of meals doesn't matter so much so I wasn't worried about that. I usually have about 150-200 calories leftover at the end of every day.

However looking in my weekly progress tab, it's showing that my "net calories under goals" for each week are numbers in the 300-500 range. Is this odd? Everyone on here seems to have numbers in the 4 digits.

Am I doing something wrong? Everything is plugged into MFP as far as I'm aware. Calorie goal is set at 1400. Am I eating too much?

jdleanna

Are you losing weight? That's how you'll know if you're eating too much. Also, are you logging exercise into MFP? If you aren't then that's why your net calories leftover is lowish. Not a big deal at all.

But, is there a reason you're not eating your full calorie allowance each day? Since you're doing the TDEE method you won't be eating back exercise calories (which is what that whole net calories thing refers to) but you should really aim for the full 1400 in general.

jdleanna

Oh... I assume that your 1400 is TDEE -minus a percentage (10% or 20%), right? Looking at your post I'm actually not sure if that's what you meant, or if you meant that your actual TDEE is about 1400.

(Edited to fix a million typos)

jeffpettis

If you are gaining or maintaining then you are eating too much. Any calculator you use is only going to be an estimate, just a number to get you started. Eat that amount for a couple of weeks, being as accurate as possible, and see what happens.

butterfly1921

jeffpettis wrote: »

If you are gaining or maintaining then you are eating too much. Any calculator you use is only going to be an estimate, just a number to get you started. Eat that amount for a couple of weeks, being as accurate as possible, and see what happens.

I'm down to about 165.5 as of today so it feels like im losing weight, albeit slowly. Maybe that's water weight, no idea!

I don't log exercise because I've heard the MFP estimates of burned cals are not as reliable, but I do try to exercise every day.


Thanks for the help!

butterfly1921

jdleanna wrote: »

Oh... I assume that your 1400 is TDEE -minus a percentage (10% or 20%), right? Looking at your post I'm actually not sure if that's what you meant, or if you meant that your actual TDEE is about 1400.

(Edited to fix a million typos)

My TDEE was something like 1600-1700, can't remember exactly but when I subtracted 20% it gave me a little over1400. I lowered it to 1400 just to be safe, and now I've lowered it to 1350 because I feel like I'm probably eating too much!

umayster

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but did you ever set the weight loss goal at the bottom of this page?http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided

butterfly1921

I think so?

This is what it looks like in my app:





So that week for example was 380 calories under, but every week pretty much looks like that: numbers in the 3, 4 or 500 range. Just a bit confused? I never go over my calorie goal, I'm usually under and hardly ever exactly at it so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong!

umayster

Did you log on the 12th?

minties82

You're not doing anything wrong, why do you want to be way under your goal?

segacs

Click on "net" instead of "total".

VintageFeline

350 calories under your weekly goal means you have 350 calories left from your overall deficit needed to lose weight, not that that is your total deficit for the week. You're reading the data incorrectly is all. You are averaging 1000 calories per day and not eating any exercise calories, so even if you have overestimated your TDEE you're waaaaay undereating.

Francl27

It's because you skipped logging one day, that's all... of course it's going to mess up your weekly numbers.

jdleanna

Yup. You're looking at total, not net, weekly calories based on the screen shot you attached. You shouldn't be under at all for your total calories, in general. People who have weekly calories under are looking at net calories - they're also logging their exercises and not eating back all those calories. That's where their leftovers are coming from....not from undereating their base calorie goal!

VintageFeline

Francl27 wrote: »

It's because you skipped logging one day, that's all... of course it's going to mess up your weekly numbers.

That's not it, her goal is 1400, she never hits that. As far as I can see, MFP hasn't included the missed day in its calculations so the 6 day average is 1000 odd.

You need to eat all of your calories OP, assuming your missed and half logged day are as low as the others shown here especially as you're not logging or eating any exercise calories, you'll burn out very quickly.