Calories

chrisvideoedit

How did everyone here decide how many calories they should be consuming?

Is 2,000 calories enough? Is it realistic?

Nony_Mouse

Enter your stats (gender, height, current weight, daily activity level excluding deliberate exercise) into MFP, pick an appropriate weekly weight loss target (based on how much you have to lose, unless it's a large amount - over 100lbs - 1 lb per week is usually appropriate). Eat that plus at least half of any additional calories you burn through exercise. Reassess after 4-6 weeks to see if your expected average weekly loss is in line with your actual loss, and tweak intake if necessary (reduce calories if you're losing slower than expected, increase if you're losing faster). Most people have a larger weight loss their first week or two, due to a drop in water weight, so exclude those when you reassess. Voila!

windra06

Everyone's body is different so any metic that's calculated will always just be a starting point.

Nony summed it up pretty well, trial and error until you get it just right. If you are new to calories it could be helpful to log what you eat on a normal day for a week or two to assess your current consumption. This will at least give you a benchmark to know what is too much or too little depending on whether your goal is to lose, gain or maintain.

quiksylver296

What did this site tell you when you entered your stats?

cmriverside

Pick the "Lose 1 pound per week" rate of loss (like it suggests in the wizard.)

Use a realistic Activity Level (the choices are described in Goals.)

Log food and Exercise and eat a little more on exercise days.

Stick with those choices/settings for 4-6 weeks. At the end of that time adjust if necessary. I'd say don't jump around in the beginning. All the first 4-6 does is give you a base data set.

lemurcat2

MFP figures it out for you.

I doubled checked the numbers with some TDEE calculators, which helped me understand how MFP came up with the numbers, but it wasn't necessary.

Once you get started you can adjust based on actual results.

cwolfman13

chrisvideoedit wrote: »

How did everyone here decide how many calories they should be consuming?

Is 2,000 calories enough? Is it realistic?

This calculator calculates it for you once you've put in your stats and weight management objectives.

MFP gives me about 1900 calories to lose 1 Lb per week without any exercise. With exercise I was eating more like 2300-2500 to lose 1 Lb per week.