Calorie goal

rjl1208

I'm new at this :P How do you know how many calories a day you should be eating?

I'm 5'9", 215 ibs, aiming for 170. Looking to lose a pound a week. The app i was previously using suggested 1300, which I was kinda hungry all the time but it was fine. This one suggested 1700? Is that a default? Open to suggestions.

Luna3386

Most people seem to find mfp's calories are fine if you set it at 1/2-1 pound a week. Eat half of your exercise calories and adjust up or down as needed.

TavistockToad

rjl1208 wrote: »

I'm new at this :P How do you know how many calories a day you should be eating?

I'm 5'9", 215 ibs, aiming for 170. Looking to lose a pound a week. The app i was previously using suggested 1300, which I was kinda hungry all the time but it was fine. This one suggested 1700? Is that a default? Open to suggestions.

Sounds fine to me. Why don't you try it for a few weeks and see what happens?

TeaBea

Luna3386 wrote: »

Most people seem to find mfp's calories are fine if you set it at 1/2-1 pound a week. Eat half of your exercise calories and adjust up or down as needed.

This^

MFP doesn't include exercise. So plug in your stats and if the number is lower than expected keep in mind it's a starting point. Log exercise and eat a portion of those calories also. Most people start by eating back 50% because calorie burns are estimates.

beanz744

1700 sounds fine for ur stats. make sure the profiles lifestyle is set to "not very active" so u can optionally eat back half of the calories u burned by exercising.

1. buy a food scale
2. set up a profile with an easy goal at first (start with .5 or 1lbs a week for the first 2 weeks to ease ur body into it)
3. take up exercising (try only eat back half of what u think u burned at max) n do the non impact ones if u never exercise before
4. join an online challenge (optional)
5. ditch any non supportive friends
6. donate all junk foods (ASAP)
7. dont tell people that u r trying to lose weight coz most will tell u to EAT MORE (smile n ignore them if they do but do not give in coz u have a goal n they dont)
8. LOG everything u eat consistently
9. google search for recipes if needed


GOOD LUCK!!!

tinkerbellang83

rjl1208 wrote: »

I'm new at this :P How do you know how many calories a day you should be eating?

I'm 5'9", 215 ibs, aiming for 170. Looking to lose a pound a week. The app i was previously using suggested 1300, which I was kinda hungry all the time but it was fine. This one suggested 1700? Is that a default? Open to suggestions.

It's not a default, it's calculated using your stats (Gender, Age, Height, Weight) and your non-exercise activity level (home/work/school life). This gives MFP your NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) which is an estimate of how many calories you burn in a day without purposeful exercises.

It then deducts an amount of calories based on the weight loss rate that you have chosen to create a calorie deficit. 1lb of fat is equivalent to 3500 calories so if you have chosen 1lb per week weight loss it will give you a deficit of 500 calories per day.

It then expects you to eat back any additional calories gained from purposeful exercise (MFP's Database is notorious for over-estimating this so it's commonly suggested if using this method to determine burns to eat 50% and review accuracy after a month).

NEAT - Calorie Deficit Amount + Calories gained through exercise = Calorie Goal

TLDR: Calories expected to burn (from personal info) - Calorie Deficit (from loss rate chosen) = MFP Calorie Goal