Am I eating enough calories

napilibay

Fitness Pal set my calories at 1200/day to lose 1.5lbs/week. However, I edited it to be 1350 because 1200 seemed really low. I exercise 4-5x week and burn an average of 400-500 calories. This should work for weight loss right? I'm having really slow loss so wanted to get other opinions. Fitness pal shows that "I'm on track to lose 8 lbs in 5 weeks" but there's no way that will happen as of now.

My diet is typically an isagenix shake, fruit/cheese, lunch: protein/veggies, protein snack, dinner: protein, veggies, carb

kimny72

What are your stats? Height, weight, how many lbs do you want to lose?

senecarr

1. 1200 calories is the minimum recommendation for women that MFP uses based on a few clinical medical recommendations.
2. MFP's calories are based on what is called the NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogensis) method. The figure out the calories you should eat to lose X/week based on how much you probably burn WITHOUT exercise.
3. Because of the above, MFP is designed to have you eat back your exercise calories, those most people eat 50-75% back because they find the numbers in MFP are inflated.
4. If you aren't measuring what you eat with a food scale, you could easily be eating more calories than you expect.
5. Depending on what you weigh now, losing 1.5 lbs/week might be too much to lose.

napilibay

I'm 5'5", 169lbs and want to lose ~25-30#. I weigh everything and feel confident my calories entered are correct. At the end of the day, my result is usually 1,300 calories eaten, 400 calories burned.

Nuke_64

napilibay wrote: »

I'm 5'5", 169lbs and want to lose ~25-30#. I weigh everything and feel confident my calories entered are correct. At the end of the day, my result is usually 1,300 calories eaten, 400 calories burned.

1300-400=900.

900 is too few calories but most do not eat back 100% of exercise calories. Eat back 50%-75% or more and track your results

1300-400+400*50%=1100
1300-400+400*75%=1200

I'd suggest not going below 1200 net calories.

Also, how are you determining your exercise calories? What are you doing for exercise?

napilibay

Hi, thanks I just read a MFP article that explains I should eat my exercise calories. I have a Polar heart rate watch that I activate during my workout to get an accurate calorie burned. I will start eating some-most of my exercise calories and see if that helps out....thank you!