"Cheating" in MFP

mylittlerainbow

I imagine we all do this but thought it would be good to check in - I "cheat" on what I actually eat vs what I put down. If I've put down 1 cup of almond milk for breakfast, I might really have 1/2 cup - if I put 2 tbsp goat cheese in my salad, I might really have 1 tbsp - etc. So I leave myself a cushion in case I'm underestimating anywhere along the way. I also stop short of my TDEE of 1400, since MFP keeps yelling at me that I will be gaining weight any time I exceed 1200 (even though every other calculator I've found online puts my TDEE in the 1450-1500 range, MFP thinks it should be 1200), so I'm usually 100 calories or so short of that - although I do typically go over in carbs just because of my breakfast cereal (shredded wheat with bran) and all the fruits I eat. I also don't eat back my calories when I exercise.

And then I wonder why I keep losing weight in maintenance!

Has anybody else been having trouble interacting with MFP (since it wants my goal so low) plus "cheating" that way to leave a margin, or am I just weird??

newmanel

I don't understand your question. You enter more food than you actually consume to meet a goal that is already too low, so of course you are losing weight -- you are consistently eating at a larger deficit than what you log. Or am I totally misunderstanding?

TavistockToad

unless you are 2 foot tall and bed ridden, i doubt your TDEE is 1400?

mylittlerainbow

I have done it twice and my TDEE keeps coming out to 1200. That's why I've used calculations from other websites, all of which are in the 1450-1500 range. I enter all the same stuff in all these different calculators for age, height, goal weight, and activity level, but MFP keeps coming back with 1200.

I only round down my actual portions a little bit, just to leave a cushion in case I measured something wrong and there were actually more calories than I had thought.