Do I really have to eat 1400 calorie forever?

Seffell

I only make several trips to the bathroom per day. I am sedentiary. You aren't.

Eta: I'm 5'7 and 140lbs and maintain on 1550 as a result of my lifestyle. This sucks.

Anita4548

Violette_Qin wrote: »

The short answer to your question is: Yes, you are off with your calculation.

The 1400 calories you mentioned is the "bottom line" needed to keep your body functioning + maintaining a sedentary lifestyle output such as desk work, eating meals, etc.

In addition to those 1400 calories, you can eat whatever you burn EXTRA. This includes the calories you burn while walking your 10,000+ steps, or gym training.

The more extra activities you add to your day, the more extra calorie allowances you get to eat that day.

I recommend to use an activity tracker (what I use is Fitbit Versa) to know your correct daily calorie output.

Pair it with MFP's monitoring of your daily calorie input and MFP's real-time feedback on how much you can still eat for the day, you should be able to eat your way slim in a fulfilling way (as I am experiencing).

• How accurate are these activity trackers? Also how about the cheaper ones - do you think they are just as accurate? Do they work out your calories burned just by looking/measuring your heart rate? TIA

Tacklewasher

m4rtys wrote: »

I have a question regarding the daily calories..... i am trying to lose fat whilst attempting to maintain weight and add muscle. My BMR calculated by the fancy machine at the gym is roughly 1800 and MFP has set me 1500 calories a day.

My question is do i try to stick to the 1500 calories a day (Gross), or as long as the adjusted calories (Net) are below the 1500 I should be hitting the goal?

I am active throughout the week - gym (weights), Spin and walking, so some days MFP adds 1000 calories plus to my total. I am using my Garmin watch to record all activities which is linked to MFP so should be accurate.

If you are not trying to lose weight, you should be eating all the calories you burn. Which means your BMR (this is what you would burn in a coma), daily activity and exercise. Given what you posted, no way is 1500 correct.

Did you put a weight loss goal in MFP when doing your setup? Something isn't making sense here.

And watches like Garmin are not very good at estimating calories for anything except steady state cardio. I cut the calories given pretty much in half for anything except running.

IsETHome

Unfortunately, I too am sedentary - desk job. Not sure how many steps, but I only lose weight when I eat 1050-1200 calories. I do household work, I do some gardening, I do work out in the pool 3 times a week. Once I'm over that calorie level, I'm in maintenance mode. I am however 5'6 and 46 years old. Age has a lot to do with it as well. I was saddened with the realization that my maintenance will likely be 1400-1500 (at least at this weight it would be, I still have more to lose). Also are your steps really full steps, or just other movement. I saw a lady moving around to get her steps, but it wasn't exactly a brisk walk.

heybales

Anita4548 wrote: »

Violette_Qin wrote: »

The short answer to your question is: Yes, you are off with your calculation.

The 1400 calories you mentioned is the "bottom line" needed to keep your body functioning + maintaining a sedentary lifestyle output such as desk work, eating meals, etc.

In addition to those 1400 calories, you can eat whatever you burn EXTRA. This includes the calories you burn while walking your 10,000+ steps, or gym training.

The more extra activities you add to your day, the more extra calorie allowances you get to eat that day.

I recommend to use an activity tracker (what I use is Fitbit Versa) to know your correct daily calorie output.

Pair it with MFP's monitoring of your daily calorie input and MFP's real-time feedback on how much you can still eat for the day, you should be able to eat your way slim in a fulfilling way (as I am experiencing).

• How accurate are these activity trackers? Also how about the cheaper ones - do you think they are just as accurate? Do they work out your calories burned just by looking/measuring your heart rate? TIA

HR is actually only a decent estimate for calories for aerobic steady-state exercise, same HR for 2-4 min.
So no intervals, no lifting, no anaerobic, ect.
And even that decent estimate has known limitations because HR will change due to several factors that have nothing to do with your level of effort and calorie burn during aerobic exercise. (dehydrated, tired, caffeine, stressed, genetics, ect)

Steps giving a distance, and pretty accurate formula for distance and pace and weight leads to pretty decent estimate for daily calories outside of exercise.
If the steps are seen accurately, and the impact leading to a distance calculation. (like a wrist unit gripping a cart handle)

It can be good for average user - obviously a smallish error in those base calc's turns big if you do a lot of steps.

Or if you do few steps outside exercise but a lot of exercise - and it's got bad estimate for exercise calories.

Some things best manually logged - like lifting, even walking/running a known distance for time. Otherwise knowing the limits for workouts.

The cheaper units aren't using the propriety formulas for trying to determine that point where daily activity stops and exercise starts in order to start using HR-based calorie burn.
And getting resting HR stat's can improve that too for nicer formula's if used.

It's how some cheap treadmills may not ask your weight but provide a calorie burn based on who knows what weight.
Really nice ones ask weight, and watch the incline and do the math with pace.

Tamie_Girl

Yes, yes, you do....and so do I.

hotel4dogs

Me too

staticsplit

smolmaus wrote: »

cookie7777 wrote: »

I have been doing the every other day eating plan I only do it 3 days a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday eating only 500 calories and tracking what I eat those days only on MyFitnessPal. I lost weight as eating plan and book on alternate day diet says you will and kept it all off. The other days I eat what I want no real restrictions but in general I don’t eat red meat or much sweets as that’s not stuff I want anyway. Brownies and some sweets once in a while. I kept weight off and don’t exercise as with kids after work and this has really helped me and my hubby doing it lost and kept weight off a lot easier as only eating low calorie half the time. I urge you to try it get the book it’s called The Every Other Day Diet or The Alternate Day Diet. It works and no you won’t have to count calories forever and only stay at a certain number daily just restrict for 3 days or you can be strict and so every other day if you want to. Hubby and I separately lost 13-15 lbs each on this and still losing. Go off it for 1 week over holidays or on business trip weeks then get right back on.

I understand this works for you but if the OP is concerned that 1400kcal is too restrictive I don't think living half of the rest of her life on 500kcal is going to seem better.

I mean, yes it can work for some I guess, but I agree with smolmaus. Eating 500 calories a day 3 days a week is basically advocating a part-time eating disorder (it's why I'm so glad the 5:2 diet seems to be on the way out now). And if you're way over maintenance on the other days (say eating 3,500 or 4,000 instead of 2,000-2,500 for maintenance), then you're essentially in a binge/purge cycle to try and even it out (the purge being fasting). I used to get trapped in this type of cycle and my doctors diagnosed me with bulimia. When I ate like that, I maintained a healthy weight but my period stopped. I eat more regularly now but it still hasn't come back. Maybe some can be healthy eating like that, but I definitely was/am not.

Even when I was medically emaciated from anorexia I ate more than 500 calories a day. I think it's dangerous to suggest this way of eating to strangers.

lleeann2001

@staticsplit explain what the 5:2 is. is it completely not eating for 5 or 2 days then eating regular for the other portion? I thought I knew IF. I do the Lean Gains....16:8

heybales

Eat at normal maintenance 5 days - 2 days during the week eat at 1/4 that amount.
Time it well with workouts and life and you can have no impact.

For those not needing to diet - it means they eat a tad more on the 5 days to balance out.

The Woo's to those comments is because these eating methods don't lead to eating disorders automatically as suggested. Many many find them to be beneficial, and there are health benefits found in the 5:2 study besides weight loss.

In fact in the studies they did not log food on the 5 days, they only had to prepare for the 2 days well.
There were no purge/binge cycles going on.

Then again studies rarely allow in people with medical history of eating disorders.

Then again someone with eating disorder could easily find attempting to take a reasonable deficit for a diet to be too much and slip into bad habits.

sgt1372

Everyone's maintenace level is different.

Yours (and anyone else's) is whatever it takes to maintain your weight where you want it based on your normal activity and exercise level.

If that's 1400 for you then that's what it is whether you like it or not. The only way to change it is to exercise more so that you can eat more.

For example, I've determined that my maintenance level is currently only1500 cals/day but I'd "starve" on only 1500 cals/day.

So, in order to eat more, I row 5k or 10k meters/day so that I can eat 270 or 540 cals more/day w/a total intake of 1770 or 2040 cals/day instead, while still maintaining my weight at the desired level.

Maintenance is a zero sum game and there's no way around it.

staticsplit

heybales wrote: »

Eat at normal maintenance 5 days - 2 days during the week eat at 1/4 that amount.
Time it well with workouts and life and you can have no impact.

For those not needing to diet - it means they eat a tad more on the 5 days to balance out.

The Woo's to those comments is because these eating methods don't lead to eating disorders automatically as suggested. Many many find them to be beneficial, and there are health benefits found in the 5:2 study besides weight loss.

In fact in the studies they did not log food on the 5 days, they only had to prepare for the 2 days well.
There were no purge/binge cycles going on.

Then again studies rarely allow in people with medical history of eating disorders.

Then again someone with eating disorder could easily find attempting to take a reasonable deficit for a diet to be too much and slip into bad habits.

I'm not saying they automatically lead to eating disorders (I said in the post some can be healthy that way), but they easily can (as in my case). I'll admit I could have phrased that better but I was having a particularly tough day food-wise so was more sensitive to that type of comment than I'd usually be.

500 calories in a day is very low and can be considered purging via fasting. A lot depends on your mindset as eating disorders are mental health issues more than physical, though obviously there are physical side effects. I still think it's dangerous to suggest as a matter of course compared to a mild deficit, as it can contribute to an all or nothing mentality common in bulimics.