My total calorie goal went up????

AlliH621

I am trying to stay around 1200 calories/day and just tonight I noticed that my total daily calorie allowance is 1350. I do not remember changing this manually. I’ve been logging my food for almost 3 weeks now, and can’t seem to lose a pound. I’m wondering what I’m doing wrong. I know my food choices aren’t the best, but calories seem to be still around the 1200. Why am I not losing? And why did my calories suddenly change to 1350, when it has been 1200 for three weeks now???

L1zardQueen

Did you add exercise?

AlliH621

No, it’s before exercise. I think I just figured it out. It say 1350 at a goal of 1/pound loss/week. I changed it just now to a goal of 1.5/pounds/week and its back down to 1200. I must have clicked that by accident.

I’m starting to not take too seriously my exercise calorie deficit, because what if it’s not accurate and I didn’t actually burn that during my cardio exercise.

malibu927

Personally I would change it back to a pound a week. In order to lose 1.5 pounds a week your goal would be 1100 calories, but 1200 is what's given to you as that's the minimum intake.

That said if you aren't losing you're probably eating even more than that. How are you measuring your calorie intake?

AlliH621

Ok. I’m just logging everything as close as I think it can be. Meat ounces could be off because those are just estimates. I’m scanning labels for everything else like protein powder, frozen fruit, crackers with homemade chicken salad, etc.

collectingblues

Do you weigh your food? I’m confused about how you’re saying the meat could be off because it’s an estimate.

Unless you weigh, you don’t really know what you’re eating.

AlliH621

No I don’t weigh the meat or anything actually. For example I cooked shredded chicken tacos in the crockpot last night. Would you recommend I weigh my cooked meat before I put it on my plate? I’m just checking....should it be measured raw or cooked? Sorry for my lack of knowledge.

AlliH621

It seems very difficult to me to know how I can know exactly how many calories are in things with added ingredients. How can I come up with an exact number? That is why I haven’t bothered weighing, just close guesses when it comes to homemade recipes.

Danp

Weigh everything by the gram. Unless it's liquid then measure it by the mil

AlliH621

Ok. Thanks.

ceiswyn

AlliH621 wrote: »

It seems very difficult to me to know how I can know exactly how many calories are in things with added ingredients. How can I come up with an exact number? That is why I haven’t bothered weighing, just close guesses when it comes to homemade recipes.

And that is why you’re not losing.

For homemade recipes, weigh the ingredients before you put them in, and then divide by the number of servings you get. You can use MFP’s Recipe Builder for things you make a lot. Some of your servings will be a little over and some will be a little under, but overall it’ll be exactly right.

Also, don’t forget the oil you cook it with!

TavistockToad

AlliH621 wrote: »

It seems very difficult to me to know how I can know exactly how many calories are in things with added ingredients. How can I come up with an exact number? That is why I haven’t bothered weighing, just close guesses when it comes to homemade recipes.

Weigh your food

Tacklewasher

Couple of threads around here about why to use a scale.
Here's a video on it.

https://youtu.be/XpHykP6e_Uk

AnnPT77

AlliH621 wrote: »

It seems very difficult to me to know how I can know exactly how many calories are in things with added ingredients. How can I come up with an exact number? That is why I haven’t bothered weighing, just close guesses when it comes to homemade recipes.

Um . . . so, if you can't be exact, that means it's OK to be even less exact?

One thing to add to tips: You mention scanning bar codes when you can. That's no more accurate than looking things up manually. (People often think it's more accurate, because technology. But no. Trust me, I'm a long-time IT pro.) The entire food database is crowd-sourced, and the entries are only as accurate as some other user who entered them bother to make them. They can be good, or very bad.

A better strategy is to be careful as you're first using MFP, and make sure the scanned entries you use actually agree with what appears on the package. For some products, the "per serving" weights/measures on the package are very approximate, so it's helpful to weigh the item (especially for very calorie-dense things like oil, peanut butter, etc.)

If you're adding cooked multi-ingredient foods to your diary, it's particularly risky to use someone else's recipe entries in the database. Picking an example out of the air, if I look up lasagna in the database, there are entries from 220 calories per serving to well over 800 calories per serving - who knows what's in each one? (Sometimes, it's necessary to estimate when eating dinner at someone else's house, and that's OK (maybe pick a medium-high one), but for homemade things there are better options, as described in other posts above).

This will all seem like kind of a time-consuming pain at first, but within a fairly short time, your "frequent" foods list will be populated with accurate entries for things you eat often, you'll have some basic recipes and meals saved, you'll start having a better handle on how to find accurate entries for new foods, you'll learn the food scale tricks, and everything will be much, much easier.

Best wishes!

thisPGHlife

ceiswyn wrote: »

AlliH621 wrote: »

It seems very difficult to me to know how I can know exactly how many calories are in things with added ingredients. How can I come up with an exact number? That is why I haven’t bothered weighing, just close guesses when it comes to homemade recipes.

And that is why you’re not losing.

For homemade recipes, weigh the ingredients before you put them in, and then divide by the number of servings you get. You can use MFP’s Recipe Builder for things you make a lot. Some of your servings will be a little over and some will be a little under, but overall it’ll be exactly right.

Also, don’t forget the oil you cook it with!

If you aren't sure if the number if service you're going to get, there is a work around.

1. Weigh every ingredient before you start coming.
2. Put the recipe into the recipe builder and put in a random number for the services as a place holder and save the recipe.
3. Do your cooking.
4. Weigh the total finished product in grams, minus the weight of the dish it's in.
5. Change the number of servings to the total weight in grams.
6. Whenever you have some, the weight in grams of your portion becomes the number of servings.

This works because your saying that each gram of food is one serving. I do this a lot when I prep good that is for my partner and I and I expect to eat it for a couple days.