Do I need 1200 calories?

Duck_Puddle

NorthCascades wrote: »

ghudson92 wrote: »

I do believe, and someone correct me if I am wrong, that if you are syncing an activity tracker for calorie burn then you should have your activity level on mfp set as sedentary. That way it just gives you what you need to survive, and your tracker adjusts those accordingly throughout the day. E.g I am 5"1 and my daily calories are 1300, but most days my garmin ups them to around 1400. Double check what I have told you though, but it has worked for me!

If you (1) use a linked activity tracker, and (2) slow negative calorie adjustments, it doesn't matter what your activity level is. The system will reconcile predicted with actual and adjust from there.

If course this is assuming your tracker is reasonably good at calories.

Yes in theory. But mfp will never adjust below 1200. I have times I should have a negative adjustment (that it won’t adjust) because it would put my goal below 1200. When maintenance calories aren’t very high and the actual calculated calorie goal for a deficit is below 1200, negative adjustments don’t work quite as well - especially if you need it to adjust for an entire activity level (all of which is happening below 1200 calories).

WinoGelato

kymmixxx wrote: »

That's why I said start at 1700 and see how it goes. I'm 4'9 and 133lbs currently losing 1lb a week eating between 1500 and 2800 a day

So rather than using the statistics and calculations that are based on her inputs, or her activity tracker that is also working off of her own specific details, you think she should just start with your numbers and adjust from there?

Look I’m a big proponent of eat more to lose weight, working off of an appropriate deficit for ones goals, proactively trying to elevate one’s NEAT to therefore increase TDEE and often quote the wise rabbit, “the winner is the one who eats the most and still loses the weight.” I too am a bit of an outlier in that I’m petite, over 40 with a desk job and my TDEE with moderate activity is over 2100.

That said, there is nothing In the info that the OP provided that warrants starting at 1700 calories for weight loss and adjusting from there. She should start with trying to log consistently and accurately with her Garmin synced and get a true picture of her actual burn and actual results. Then if she’s losing at faster than 0.5 lb/week she could increase calories slightly. She could add more purposeful movement to her day to increase NEAT and TDEE as many of us do - this would also help keep her energy up and potentially impact her long term ability to maintain at a higher calorie intake. But immediately adding 500 or more cals to her day is likely to skew her results so significantly that she’s unable to glean any helpful information due to the myriad reasons why her weight would likely spike.

Psychgrrl

mittencat77 wrote: »

@middlehatch : thank you for your insights. My Garmin actually says I am in considerable deficit everyday. It gives me lots of exercise calories but when it syncs with MFP I seem to get very little in the calorie adjustment.

Thought I should follow MFP, but maybe I should follow what my Garmin is saying. Would make life much easier!! I would get more food and log more deficit each day. MFP seems to say my exercise is worth nothing. I see others logging huge calorie burns from exercise and see I do to when I log exercise in manually. But syncing with my Garmin result in MFP saying my exercise is worth very, very little.

I think the translation from Garmin to MFP might be due to your activity level settings in MFP. What did you choose? Sedentary, Lightly Active, Active, etc. I have a Garmin and my calories burned in MyConnect change when I adjust my activity level setting in MFP.

paperpudding

kymmixxx wrote: »

paperpudding wrote: »

Why?
why not start at something the calculators say is right for you and then tweak it, - why start at something clearly too high?

Could say the same thing about eating too low! I dont want to be stuck on 1500 maintence calories for thr rest of my life because I've lowered my metabolism so much

well of course same could be said about starting too low - but 2 wrongs dont make a right and that is total strawman anyway as nobody is suggesting starting too low.

They are suggesting starting at correct level - as far as can be ascertained from calculators (MFP calculation or alternatives) and then tweak as required from results.

There is no point randomly picking a number clearly too high for her, like 1700, and then working backwards from that.


and 1500 net for maintenance could well be her long term maintenance number - not because of any so called metabolism changes but just because she is small, female, petite.

That seems highly likely.

I am about 5 inches taller than her and maintenance weight is 136lb (BMI of 23), about 20 lb more than her goal, and my maintenance calories are 1710.

I imagine hers will be in the 1500 ball park - which makes sense if 1200ish is a 250 calorie/day deficit.