Adjusting calories/day

JenniferM1234

Hi, I'm actually not just getting started, but I don't know what category my question goes in and, well, this kind of seems the closest.

I am one pound away from my goal weight now! Very exciting, but, I wanted to adjust my data here to reflect that I'm basically, so so close to maintenance, and give myself more calories/day. Before, when I was starting, it had my "regular" calories per day as 1550, and set my calories/day to reach this goal at 1350. (I'm 5'3".) Honestly, for me personally, this was too low and I kept going over, but not up to 1550. Some people can do 1350 without blinking an eye, even 1200, but my friendship get-togethers and "date nights" are too important to my overall happiness, and every weekend and often Thursdays, this usually involves dinner and drinks.

Now that I'm a pound away from my admittedly arbitrary goal weight, I thought I could slow down the loss and enjoy myself more, and when I went to "Home" on MFP and to my stats page, and adjusted everything, my calories/day went DOWN! To 1320!

So...all this to say, help? What gives?

Thanks for any insight.

middlehaitch

You weigh less now than when you started so your body needs fewer calories to maintain your weight.

Increasing your daily activity, or exercise, will give you more calories.

Something to look at is how big a deficit you were in over the last month/4weeks.
If you were losing on average 1lbs a week you can add 500 cals to the average daily intake over that time for your maintenance cals.
If 0.5lbs a week, add 250 cals.

Try those numbers for a couple of weeks then adjust up or down as needed.

Cheers, h.

JenniferM1234

Thank you, @middlehaitch -- that makes sense, I just don't like it, haha.

picklenees7538

You might try a website called scoobysworkshop for a calorie calculator that you can adjust to see what differences physical activity and your goal make to your calories. I find it helpful

JenniferM1234

@picklenees7538 Thank you - I'll go there right now!

Luke_rabbit

I'm also 5'3". Even with a little exercise - about 10,000 steps a day - my maintenance calories will be about 1500. It sounds like yours will be higher since you are losing on something closer to that.

Why not try adding about 50 -100 calories higher every few weeks and see what happens. That's my plan as I get close to goal, which is still 8 pounds away for me.

JenniferM1234

That makes sense, @boldknee and I suppose part of my concern is technical not physical -- I wanted MFP to show more allowed calories per day, if you know what I mean. I can eat 1500 calories a day and maintain, but MFP would say I went way over, which is hard to read and sort of humbling.

Luke_rabbit

You can manually change your goal. I had mine set to 1300 for quite a while until I started using a Fitbit. Since the Fitbit adds a huge amount of calories, I went back to letting MFP use their estimate (1210), but I still eat around 1300.

Alternatively, you can set MFP to maintenance and/or change your activity level to get a calorie goal that matches what you eat.

JenniferM1234

Thank you, @boldknee -- I manually reset it now! I mean, it's just to avoid that weird sinking feeling when I appear to have gone over the calorie/goals here, but didn't "really" do so in my mind. I appreciate your help!