Help please! I'm a beginner at all of this..

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  • Pearl4686
    Pearl4686 Posts: 918 Member
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    seltzermint555 wrote: »
    poisonesse wrote: »
    I'm 5'8", I started my journey at 213 pounds, my caloric goal was 1200. Since the only exercise I think you're doing is walking to get those 10K steps, you're overeating. DO invest in a food scale, because believe me, you have no idea how much you're really eating until you start weighing it!!! Then just give it time, stick to the plan, and let us know how much you've lost. ;)

    This seems very unlikely regardless of age. Unless you were using some other method than My Fitness Pal to calculate. I agree with others who say why start so low? That's a little absurd.

    Agree and just want to add: poor advice for newbies.
  • tkmcc85
    tkmcc85 Posts: 10 Member
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    tkmcc85 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    glovepuppet wrote: »
    KayPoel93 wrote: »
    LyndaBSS wrote: »
    Hi. What is your daily calorie allotment?

    Do you use a food scale?

    2100, I don't use a scale..

    That seems high. Are you really tall? NHS recommendations are 2000 calories per day for women.

    One of the top reasons people here don't lose at first is that they fail to weigh what they're eating. It's a good investment.
    glovepuppet wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    glovepuppet wrote: »
    KayPoel93 wrote: »
    LyndaBSS wrote: »
    Hi. What is your daily calorie allotment?

    Do you use a food scale?

    2100, I don't use a scale..

    That seems high. Are you really tall? NHS recommendations are 2000 calories per day for women.

    One of the top reasons people here don't lose at first is that they fail to weigh what they're eating. It's a good investment.

    10k steps puts her in a pretty active category. Without knowing for sure it should create about a 750 calorie deficit over the course of 7 days for 1.5 pound of loss per week. Without a food scale, of course, it would be hard to verify her actual calories.

    With 10k steps, isn't the average burn nearer 500cals?

    Both the calorie intake needs and the calories burned from walking will vary with the person's size.

    If the NHS is quoting 2000 calories to maintain, they're talking about an "average" woman. The average woman is probably somewhere around 5'4"-5'6". OP is 5'9", and she's still somewhat heavier than average. Therefore, her calorie needs (for any given weight management goal) are likely to be higher than average.

    And steps burn calories by moving one's body weight through space, which is work in the physics sense of "work". Since OP is tall and has weight to lose, her calorie burn for X number of steps will be greater than it would be for a shorter, lighter person.

    Some of way to succeed at the weight management process is personalizing many aspects of the process, including the numbers.

    It looks like MPF uses the Mifflin St Jeor equation to calculate basal metabolism rate. That takes height, weight, age and gender into account.

    I'm not convinced that a taller person burns significantly more calories per step. An easy beginner mistake is to assume they're so different from the averages that they're burning more calories, and then counting on that to eat more. MFP goes into some detail about how input from walking factors into the lifestyle selection - for example, a sedentary lifestyle assumes 5000 steps, so you don't get many extra calories until you exceed that.

    The daily activity level settings are also effectively scaled to the person's demographics, because they are multipliers of the person's estimated BMR, which, as you point out, is estimated with height, weight, age and gender as inputs.
    And MFP uses METS-based methods for estimating exercise calories. Those are also scaled to a person's weight.

    A taller individual person doesn't necessarily burn more calories than a shorter individual person, per step . . . at the same bodyweight for each. But taller people tend to be bigger than shorter people, so on average tall people burn more calories walking X distance than shorter people.

    It just makes more sense, to me, to start with sound research-based estimates, not with other people's individual experiences (or worse, guesses), which vary all over the place . . . and I think people at the extremes (not average) are more likely to comment.

    Common advice here is to start with the MFP estimate, use it for 4-6 weeks, then adjust based on actual personal results. I think that's good advice, since we have no idea in advance whether an individual's calorie needs will be higher than average, average, or lower than average. The 4-6 week experiment helps them figure that out. And starting with a research-based estimate (that is the average of large numbers of similar people) is a good place to start that experiment.

    And I say that as someone for whom the MFP estimate turned out to be quite, quite wrong: Way too low. (Some will find it too high, many/most will find it reasonably close to accurate. That's the nature of statistical estimates.)

    Nice summary - definitely good advice!
  • Abraham6126
    Abraham6126 Posts: 1 Member
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    Hi I just started Myfitnesspal on 7/24 and have lost 6.5 pounds. I am 5'9" and weighed 210.4 pounds when I started logging. You are welcome to look at my diary and see if looking at what am doing helps you. In short I walk 10 miles almost every day (25000 steps) and on average eat 1600 calories or less.
  • littlegreenparrot1
    littlegreenparrot1 Posts: 694 Member
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    I find it helpful to have goals other than the scale to measure my progress.

    I lose weight slowly, doesn't bother me much as it's about re-establishing better habits and an active lifestyle.
    The scale fluctuates a lot, but if I have lost an inch that will not re-appear a week later.

    Measurements, how clothes fit, some fitness goals, all help with motivation as they show progress.
  • kylemkrueger
    kylemkrueger Posts: 16 Member
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    Track food accurately will help immensely, I also joined a meal service (hello fresh) to help me eat healthy meals at dinner time.

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