Why is eating under calorie count a good idea?

glitterng

I've seen some posts that mention eating under your calorie requirements for your weight loss as a good thing. I understand you would lose weight faster this way, but it seems counter productive to me. You put in your age, current weight, height, how much you want to lose per week, how much you want to lose overall, and it tells you how many calories to eat to achieve your goals. Why would shorting yourself 200, 400 or more calories per day be encouraged? Wouldn't this just leave you feeling deprived and hungry and make you go off plan? Or am I missing something? LOL If you do set goals to eat under the calories allowed, can you explain, please? I'm a bit confused.

cwolfman13

'cuz a lot of people want to be skinny yesterday and they don't really look what could happen long term and all that matters is the number on the scale...not health, not fitness...just some number on the scale.

gamerbabe14

They also may not be using a foodscale and truly not understanding how many calories they're eating. They also may not understand that they're already at a significant calorie deficit if their goal is to lose 2lbs/week , meaning if they exceed their calorie goal by 100 calories in day or even everyday that week, they won't gain weight.

I personally feel confident using my food scale to get as close to the calorie goal and go over frequently by 50-100 calories. I lose just fine.

middlehaitch

I have seen posts by people eating under their calorie goals.
These goals are not encouraged by most of the people who reply, especially the people who have been around MFP for a long time.
My usual response includes a food scale, a realistic goal, eating to their calories MFP assigned, and eating back at least a good portion of exercise calories, if not all.

Low calorie goals, especially ones of 1200 (1500 men) or less, are usually questioned not encouraged.

I don't know where you saw it being said it was a good thing. Example please?
Cheers, h.

cgvet37

Everyone has a BMR (basic metabolic rate). This is how many calories you need to survive. Then you add in your activity level to determine your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). That is how many calories you burn on an average day. Including work, and other activities. If you eat over your TDEE, you gain weight. If you eat at your TDEE, you maintain your weight. If you eat under your TDEE, you lose weight. There are 3,500 calories in one lb. of fat. So, if you eat 500 calories under your TDEE per day, or 3,500 calories under your TDEE per week. You should lose one lb. per week. The heavier you are, also has an affect on how much you will lose. Hope that makes sense.

glitterng

middlehaitch wrote: »

Low calorie goals, especially ones of 1200 (1500 men) or less, are usually questioned not encouraged.

I don't know where you saw it being said it was a good thing. Example please?
Cheers, h.

H,

I saw it under the May Challenge, or whatever the chat name was. It's one of the goals for May I think, to eat 400 calories under your daily allowance, unless I misunderstood it. Always a possibility with me. But I just felt that was not a very good goal for a MFP "challenge."

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middlehaitch

@glitterng, aaah that explains why I have never seen a post encouraging eating under ones goal calories, I don't look at the Challenges sub-forum very often at all.
To me it isn't a good idea to cut calories like that.

Cheers, h.