Maintaining weekly weight loss goal

bubbabr

Hi,

Apologies if this has been asked before - I searched the forums but didn't find what I was looking for.

I've been logging food and exercise in MFP for a little over three months now to good effect. From a starting weight of 118kg, I'm now down to 104.2kg, so things have been going well.

But as the weight's coming off I've been starting to think about my weekly weight loss goal. I cuurently have it set at 0.8kg a week, which gives me 1530 daily calories to play with in MFP. But surely, as I lose weight, my basal metabolic rate's going to be dropping, meaning 1530 calories is going to leave me with a steadily decreasing calorie deficit? Doesn't this mean that my weekly weight loss is also going to decrease?

While you're losing weight, how can MFP assign a fixed calorie limit while also keeping your weekly weight loss goal the same? I'd have thought either you'd need to reduce your calorie intake as you lost weight, or (if you keep the calorie intake the same), your weight loss would slow?

I'd appreciate if anyone could advise me about this.

Thanks

courtneyfabulous

I'm not sure if myfitnesspal occasionally readjusts your calorie goal as you lose weight? It should... do you log your weight? You might want to occasionally revise your stats in your profile or goals.

Sorry I'm not 100% sure because I manually set my calories and macros and adjust them myself every so often- but yes you are right you will need to drop calories a bit as you lose weight to maintain a deficit. You could wait til you hit a plateau and then adjust down, or you could readjust every 5 or 10 pounds lost.

kommodevaran

Weight loss will slow down anyway as you lose weight, because you can only metabolize a certain percentage of your body fat per day. As a rule of thumb, this is up to 1% of your body weight per week.

MFP will update your calorie goal as you lose weight, but only if you haven't set your calorie goal manually. In that case, you have to update it yourself, too.

capaul42

I strictly use the MFP app and never had it update my calorie goal, nor even remind me to do it myself.

You should be checking it periodically and adjusting as needed. All I had to do was go in and re-do my goals and it would update mmy calories to reflect current weight. I found it best to do this every 10lbs or so

red99ryder

Mine adjusted down when I hit a certain weight .. I do log my weight once a week .. I did change my goal from 2 pounds per week to 1.5 pounds per week. I wanted the extra calories .. I may go to 1 pound a week soon .. seems like I'm over more than on target .

Good luck

nowine4me

I log my weight in MFP and my calorie goal adjusts automatically. If you set you'd own calorie goal, it won't change unless you change it or update your goals.