What's your buffer?

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hmhill17
hmhill17 Posts: 283 Member
in Food and Nutrition
What do you do to insure that you're not going to go over your calorie goal by mistake?

I have my goal set for 2 lbs a week and a sedentary lifestyle. I do add exercise, but I look for the lowest number option. Basic idea is in the event the recipe I entered didn't calculate out correctly or my exercise didn't burn as much as I thought. Or those random days that exercise I didn't put in my diary shows up because of some weird feature in Runkeeper

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  • lalalacroix
    lalalacroix Posts: 834 Member
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    Every measurement that you record, whether exercise calories or food intake, is an estimation. Try to pick the best estimate and move on. If you aren't losing as much as expected after several weeks then take another look at your exercise burn and calorie intake to see if you are measuring incorrectly.

  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
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    If you are trying to lose 2 pounds a week you have a 1000 calorie per day deficit. That should provide plenty of buffer for any initial mistakes that are made. Basically you will lose some weight as long as you don't mistakenly go over your calorie goal by 1000 calories.

    I use a food scale and I am careful to verify that the database entry I pick either matches the nutrition label or the USDA site.

  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
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    Your calorie goal is not meant to be something that you never go over. Otherwise it wouldn't be a goal. Yuu should over it some days, and under it some days, and it should all about even out. If you are under it every single day, then it's not really your calorie goal. Especially at 2 pounds a week of loss, which is an aggressive weight of loss that has a 1000 calorie per day deficit, you already have enough of a buffer built in.

    I do my best to do good faith estimations of what I eat and burn each day, and use those. I don't intentionally try to overestimate or underestimate. Some days I will naturally do one or the other, so it will even out.

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