Need some general calorie-tdee- activity level help-> starting mfp again

fuzzysham

I used mfp with my fitbit in the past but had no success with it- I think partly because I didn't really understand the TDEE thing. What did help me was writing everything down in a food journal manually and just using my BMR. I've learned that this is not healthy and I want to start using mfp again and I want to do it right this time.

So here are my calculations but I need some help from you guys please!
I'm 6', 195 lbs right now, (female).
I used this link
http://www.fat2fittools.com/tools/bmr/

to calculate that my TDEE would be 2364 for Lightly Active.

My first question is- am I lightly active? I work at a retail store 4 to 5 days a week for about 7 hours a day and am on my feet most of those days. With my fitbit I log about 6k steps on each of those days. The other days I'm off it's like 3k at the most unless I actively go out and do anything. Is that enough to be considered lightly active?

So I did go ahead and subtract 500 from 2364 which left me with 1864. I've stuck to that for the past week and gained half a pound =( So I know it's only been a week but I'm not sure if I'm doing this right or not. Should I try sedentary? Should I try what mfp gives me and keep my fitbit hooked up to it and eat my exercise calories back? (I disconnected my fitbit and before that I didn't eat my exerise calories back that it gave me since that was calculated with an external TDEE calculator).

Any other tips to help me be successful?

Thank you in advance! I really want to lose these last 20 lbs.

shadow2soul

What does Fitbit say your avg 30 day calorie burn is? (you can see this by going to the fitbit website and viewing your profile page)

fuzzysham

It says that the 28 day average is 2429 calories

lemonychild

You have a Fitbit you don't need to worry about the calculators. You need to allow MFP and Fitbit to sync daily so that you can figure out how much u actually burn. You also should allow negative adjustments for those days ure not as active and just eat the calories allotted to you by MFP+Fitbit .

fuzzysham

So basically forget about calculating my TDEE separably, put in my activity level in mfp, link my fitbit back up with mfp and I'm good to go?

lemonychild

Yup, it is exactly what I'm doing and it's working

fuzzysham

Do you have your activity level the same on mfp as you do on fitbit?

Also, do you agree that I should stick with the lightly active activity level?

Christine_72

fuzzysham wrote: »

So basically forget about calculating my TDEE separably, put in my activity level in mfp, link my fitbit back up with mfp and I'm good to go?

Yep that's exactly what I do. I've set myself to sedentary on here and let fitbit and mfp adjust the numbers for me.

PAV8888

You SOUND like you're lightly active. You could easily become more than lightly active by doing some extra stuff on the weekend

Your Fitbit confirms that you are lightly active.

in fact, your Fitbit says that you average 2429 vs 2364 that MFP thinks a lightly active person would spend. So on average, your Fitbit will return a 65 Cal positive adjustment if you set yourself up on MFP as lightly active.

Given that I believe Fitbit to underestimate long periods of standing with light movement, the estimates of your burn are likely to be bang on or too low.

Connect MFP and Fitbit and enable negative adjustments. Set yourself as lightly active on MFP.

If you become inactive in the evening substantially before midnight, expect to lose some of your positive adjustment as the day balances out at midnight.

The formula to estimate how much of an adjustment you will lose when set to lightly active on MFP is: (BMR calculation: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator): 0.4 x BMR / 1440 * time in minutes to midnight.
However, this is nit picking :-)

Set yourself to -500 on Fitbit and MFP

Connect your Fitbit.com account to www.trendweight.com (and possibly www.weightgrapher.com) and start operating on the basis of trending weight as opposed to scale weight ( to nitpick some more: tell both trendweight and weightgrapher that your goal is to maintain so that they don't bug you with advice).

Measure your food on a scale. Choose database entries that are verified. Verify entries yourself against nutritiondata.self.com (already contains the usda nutrient database for standard reference)

Eat less than you spend. Lose weight.
Engage in strength training. maintain (or even increase in the beginning) your lean mass.

Eat food that keeps you full, and doesn't have too many calories.
Assuming no kidney issues increase protein consumption to ~0.7g per lb of body weight to preserve lean mass.

Conceptually simple!