Close to goal weight...how to create goals

rikkejohnsenrij
rikkejohnsenrij Posts: 510 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Lucky me..i'm only 300 grams from getting a normal BMI...I would like to get down to only 23ish BMI, as most of my weight is placed on the belly.
I'm not really in a hurry...on the other hand I'm often eating at friends/family, so I dont weigh the food as often as I should.
So far this has worked fine, as I just set my goal to lose 0.5 kg/week (I'd like to lose about half that, but the rest has been making up for my logging errors)

I'm 1,68 m, 39 years and my weight is now 70.8 kg. I have a deskjob and use a fitbit to calculate activity
But today I recalculated my calories/day and it says 1200/day (marked in red). I now I'm not supposed to go below that...and I dont (I eat my exercise calories) but I'd like to know what the calories/day is meant to be, so I can get rid of the last few kg's

can someone help?

Replies

  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    if it says 1200 but you're not accurately logging 1200, so its actually 1400, then that's fine?
  • rikkejohnsenrij
    rikkejohnsenrij Posts: 510 Member
    yeah..the problem is, I dont know it it's 1200, 1100 or even less :)
  • amy19355
    amy19355 Posts: 805 Member
    I have been adjusting my calories upward to slow my rate of loss.

    In the process I am somewhat stalled on the losing plan, HOWEVER, I have held steady for a week plus at the weight I was the day I decided to increase calories.

    This caused me to go do a TDEE calculation again, (actually several of them and I take the average result).

    What I found was that my adjustment up had put me in the tiniest of deficits (100 cal a day) when compared to the fresh TDEE calculation.

    As a relative newbie to TDEE math, I could have been in error from day 1.

    My point is - check the numbers you are working with every couple months as a control checkpoint to be sure there isn’t any fat-fingered typos going on.

  • rikkejohnsenrij
    rikkejohnsenrij Posts: 510 Member
    cmriverside wrote: »
    If you're not going to be able to keep accurate logs of most of your food, then you have to accept a bit of uncertainty.

    The last few pounds are difficult for all of us anyway, because the margin between what we need to eat to feel good and what we need to eat to lose at the rate of 0.5 pounds per week is really small.

    I logged everything and it was still difficult and took a long time. Patience is really your best friend at this point, and not under-eating.

    It's just that I hate adding more uncertainty...I log all I eat...but a weekend where I have all meals created by other people makes it damn hard to guess the amounts:) that's why I like having the extra room for errors
  • mountainmare
    mountainmare Posts: 294 Member
    Since you are close to goal think about the long term way you are going to eat. Do you intend to tighten up your logging in maintenance? Once you are at goal are you going to be worried when you are with friends and family?
    You say you want to lose more to get to a certain BMI number. Have you looked at what your maintenance calories are for that weight? I'm where you are, I have touched my goal weight but am still not solidly there enough to officially call it. I'm tiptoeing into maintenance, slowly getting to maintenance calories as the scale wavers between goal and 1 pound above. My logging has been "pretty good" without being super strict and it has worked to lose 40 pounds. It sounds like this is the same for you, what you are doing has been successful and fits your lifestyle.
    Congrats---you are fine
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,419 Member
    rikkejohnsenrij wrote: »
    cmriverside wrote: »
    If you're not going to be able to keep accurate logs of most of your food, then you have to accept a bit of uncertainty.

    The last few pounds are difficult for all of us anyway, because the margin between what we need to eat to feel good and what we need to eat to lose at the rate of 0.5 pounds per week is really small.

    I logged everything and it was still difficult and took a long time. Patience is really your best friend at this point, and not under-eating.

    It's just that I hate adding more uncertainty...I log all I eat...but a weekend where I have all meals created by other people makes it damn hard to guess the amounts:) that's why I like having the extra room for errors

    I don't know how long you've been logging food but it's a skill that serves me well when I am eating out or at someone's house. I can guesstimate and still log it. Sometimes I take a picture of what I ate so I can log it later. I always log it.

    It's holiday time for a lot of people which means lots of meals out and at parties etc. I have a goal range of body weight. For me (I'm in maintenance at 22 BMI) that range is 140-145 pounds. If I get close to the top end I watch what I eat until I get back down a couple pounds. I don't let it become six pounds. Just that five pound range, no more. That may mean bypassing party foods for a week or eating less of that meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

    I mean, I can look at foods now and know pretty closely the calories. I log food every week that someone else prepared or that I ate at a restaurant or someone's house. It's entirely possible to do, lots of us do it.

  • apullum
    apullum Posts: 4,838 Member
    rikkejohnsenrij wrote: »
    yeah..the problem is, I dont know it it's 1200, 1100 or even less :)

    You don’t need to go under 1200 plus exercise. The last few pounds are always tough and take a while because your deficit is so small.

    Here is the thing that is sort of unspoken in all the posts so far: if you’re frequently eating food that you didn’t cook yourself, you may be routinely wiping out that very small deficit. There are a few steps you can take to help with that.

    One is to consistently overestimate everything you did not cook yourself. Assume it has more oil or butter than you think, and that the portion size is a little bigger than you think it is. If there are multiple database entries, choose the one that is higher but not exaggeratedly high.

    Depending on what your weekends look like, you may be able to help cook some of the food or bring food to share at your social gatherings. Either of these things would give you a better idea of what you’re eating.

    Another option that may or may not work with how you want to live your life is to reduce the amount of food you eat that someone else cooked. If these are meals where everyone sits down together, then you probably value the food as part of the social interaction, and would not want to change that. But if you’re talking about parties or other events where the food is secondary to the social interaction, you could eat a substantial snack before you go, and then eat less of the party food.

    Another idea is to bank calories during the week. You can save a few calories each day so you can then eat them on the weekends. It sounds like you’re sort of doing this already.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    rikkejohnsenrij wrote: »
    Lucky me..i'm only 300 grams from getting a normal BMI...I would like to get down to only 23ish BMI, as most of my weight is placed on the belly.
    I'm not really in a hurry...on the other hand I'm often eating at friends/family, so I dont weigh the food as often as I should.
    So far this has worked fine, as I just set my goal to lose 0.5 kg/week (I'd like to lose about half that, but the rest has been making up for my logging errors)

    I'm 1,68 m, 39 years and my weight is now 70.8 kg. I have a deskjob and use a fitbit to calculate activity
    But today I recalculated my calories/day and it says 1200/day (marked in red). I now I'm not supposed to go below that...and I dont (I eat my exercise calories) but I'd like to know what the calories/day is meant to be, so I can get rid of the last few kg's

    can someone help?

    With so little left to lose, you should be aiming for @ 0.5lbs per week (which I think is @ 0.25kg, correct?) That is a 250 cal daily deficit. I plugged your stats into a TDEE calculator and it estimated your sedentary TDEE at 1682, so 1200 cals would be @ 1 lb per week (technically 1182).

    I do eat at other folks homes several times a week. I have found that weighing everything possible at home (so I know at least all that stuff is pretty accurate) plus really paying attention to what a "serving" looks like when I have it on the scale so I can estimate better when eating out, has worked fairly well for me. But fair warning - it took me almost a year to lose the last 10 lbs. Good luck!
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    Getting close to, or arriving at, goal is awesome - congrats!

    One of the most annoying parts about maintenance for me is that being off consistently in one direction or the other matters. It just slowed or sped up the loss during that phase. I have finally accepted the "bouncing up and down the range" idea and don't fuss over trying to get consumption or burn exact. I log it all and weigh food when convenient, but I am not nearly as strict about it. I weigh often enough to see the trend up or down and adjust my goal depending on which way I need to go - up or down - if I am far enough off center to take action. I have given up on the idea of always eating the right amount. I try to, but I don't obsess over the count like I did at first because the results weren't any better. I have stayed inside my range for almost 9 months; the first 6 driving myself crazy trying to get it exactly right.
  • amy19355
    amy19355 Posts: 805 Member
    I’ve been considering that my long term goals of “sticking to it forever” might be more effectively achieved if I interject some maintenance practice along the way.

    In ten weeks, I’ve lost 20 of the 60 pounds I set out to lose. In the last two weeks I’ve a)increased my calories to slow my rate of loss, and b) kept off those 20 pounds.

    It strikes me a reasonable to think that another two weeks holding those 20 lost pounds at bay will help reinforce the behaviors that most help me stay on target: logging food is MY #1 self-control, because, everything else just seems to flow naturally from that one single step. (Everything, to me, is the doing of things by a plan, with results that are logged, giving me the accumulation of data that permits objective analysis to either say ‘yay don’t stop’ or ‘revise and keep going’).

    Then, I’ll cut back on the calories again, (but half the speed < 2 lb/wk) and proceed with confidence to drop another 20 pounds, said self assurance driven by the still fresh satisfaction of that 20lbs recently shaken off. I know me pretty well by now, and short term goals are my best motivators, so this is how I am trying to reset myself with regards to sticktoitism.

    So, to the OP, and setting goals for maintenance, I’d say to look back over the time spent getting to where you are now. What’s in your diet history that would serve as the basis for a reminder? I think our experience has a lot of juice, if you will, when it comes to being a motivator.

    Maybe you could count and compare things that your new found fitness will permit , and chart the progress improving new skills. Me, I’m going to be thinking about the altitudes of hikes up mountains as a goal with many milestones to occupy me when I’m fit enough to hike uphill again.

    Good luck to you and good fitness to us all!
  • rikkejohnsenrij
    rikkejohnsenrij Posts: 510 Member
    kimny72 wrote: »

    With so little left to lose, you should be aiming for @ 0.5lbs per week (which I think is @ 0.25kg, correct?) That is a 250 cal daily deficit. I plugged your stats into a TDEE calculator and it estimated your sedentary TDEE at 1682, so 1200 cals would be @ 1 lb per week (technically 1182).

    Thank you..that was he way of calculating I was looking for :)

    Thanks all who bothered to reply. For those who are curious. I started at 78 kg after new years eve, so it's taken me most of a year to drop 7,5 kg (and getting rid of the extra pounds after summer vacation).
    I'm content with this rate of loss...but I still need a little more before I get rid of my belly fat.



  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    edited November 2018
    rikkejohnsenrij wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »

    With so little left to lose, you should be aiming for @ 0.5lbs per week (which I think is @ 0.25kg, correct?) That is a 250 cal daily deficit. I plugged your stats into a TDEE calculator and it estimated your sedentary TDEE at 1682, so 1200 cals would be @ 1 lb per week (technically 1182).

    Thank you..that was he way of calculating I was looking for :)

    Thanks all who bothered to reply. For those who are curious. I started at 78 kg after new years eve, so it's taken me most of a year to drop 7,5 kg (and getting rid of the extra pounds after summer vacation).
    I'm content with this rate of loss...but I still need a little more before I get rid of my belly fat.



    Damn belly fat, it's so persistent :disappointed: Since nobody's linked it yet and it might give you some extra useful info, check out this post too when you get a moment: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1161603/so-you-want-a-nice-stomach/p1

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