More calories when sick?

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Replies

  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    Nony_Mouse wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Wino, if I eat back all my calories as I earn them (which I'm more comfortable with) it's identical to setting it lightly active!

    It's fine to do it that way if you're more comfortable, just make sure that you've set MFP to 1lb loss per week so that your deficit isn't too aggressive (ie, you end up 500 cals below your end of day Fitbit total).

    I think she is wanting to set her MFP goal at 1746? This is what I’m confused about. Sometimes I think too many data points can be overwhelming and I think that may be what happened here.

    I recommend letting MFP set the goal based on current stats and a 1lb/week loss. She wants to go with sedentary and with the FitBit and eating back cals that should be fine.

    Nope, I think she's wanting to use that as her baseline sedentary TDEE, subtract a 500 cal deficit, then eat back exercise cals. So basically yes, set at sedentary, eat back cals.
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    Wino, this is my discussion. Can you please not refer to me like I'm not going to be reading these posts? This reminds me of Seinfeld and the person talking in 3rd person for some reason.....
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    Sorry we're talking past you, OP!
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    Yes, Nono is correct.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Don't know which to listen to

    You're over-thinking/over-complicating. Just put your stats into MFP, tell it you want to lose a pound a week, and figure out over time what percentage of the calories you earn from exercise you can eat back.
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    Thank you for all your help everyone! I appreciate it so much!! I have one more pressing question. Every Sunday, my family and my sister's family go to my mom's house for a big home cooked dinner and dessert. It's such a fun tradition! The meals are cooked from scratch and would be too difficult to track but only losing one pound a week, I could blow my weight loss very easily. Can I save calories during the week? How much would you recommend? One pound doesn't have a lot of wiggle room and feels restricted.
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Thank you for all your help everyone! I appreciate it so much!! I have one more pressing question. Every Sunday, my family and my sister's family go to my mom's house for a big home cooked dinner and dessert. It's such a fun tradition! The meals are cooked from scratch and would be too difficult to track but only losing one pound a week, I could blow my weight loss very easily. Can I save calories during the week? How much would you recommend? One pound doesn't have a lot of wiggle room and feels restricted.

    Yep, you can absolutely save calories. Hard to know how many without knowing what dinner and dessert consists of, but if you did 100 cals a day, plus ate a bit lighter for your other meals on Sundays, that should give you a decent cushion. After 4-6 weeks, look at your average weekly weight loss, and adjust if necessary.
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    Ok, it took so much willpower but I reduced my weight loss to 1lb per week. I trust you guys! BUT...... It only have me 40 more calories! 😭 I was secretly looking forward to eating a little bit more! Will it up it more in the morning?!
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    I guess it makes sense but it's not even 3500 more per week. Shouldn't it be 1250? I can't imagine that the people who were up in arms about me eating and 1200 will be happy that I now am allowed 1240 😂
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    I guess it makes sense but it's not even 3500 more per week. Shouldn't it be 1250? I can't imagine that the people who were up in arms about me eating and 1200 will be happy that I now am allowed 1240 😂

    It's because MFP bottoms out at 1200 for women. So even though you'd picked 2 lb per week, you didn't have enough room from a sedentary setting for a 1000 cal deficit.

    Also, we established that you're not actually eating only 1200, because you're eating back the adjustment from Fitbit (which might be bigger now that you've set to 1 lb - on a day like yesterday you'd end up with something in the low 1400s, on a more active day, you'll end up higher than that). People were concerned that you may have picked a goal that was far too aggressive (which you did, but MFP basically stopped you from executing because, as it turns out, a little over 1200 would be right for you if sedentary). We see a lot of people here who are pushing really aggressive deficits initially, not eating back exercise cals despite working out daily, etc, hence the reaction and wanting to make sure yours was actually appropriate for you. It was all from a place of concern and wanting what's best for you :) If you now say you're set to 1lb per week, and have a base of 1240, plus you eat back your exercise cals, everyone will be fine with that.

    This is one of the reasons I suggested setting to lightly active (even though it ends up the same in the end), because that's a truer baseline for you, and isn't quite as depressing as seeing 1200 in your diary first thing in the morning.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,254 Member
    Nony_Mouse wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    I guess it makes sense but it's not even 3500 more per week. Shouldn't it be 1250? I can't imagine that the people who were up in arms about me eating and 1200 will be happy that I now am allowed 1240 😂

    It's because MFP bottoms out at 1200 for women. So even though you'd picked 2 lb per week, you didn't have enough room from a sedentary setting for a 1000 cal deficit.

    This is one of the reasons I suggested setting to lightly active (even though it ends up the same in the end), because that's a truer baseline for you, and isn't quite as depressing as seeing 1200 in your diary first thing in the morning.

    To explain this a tiny bit.

    With negative calories enabled it doesn't matter (at midnight) what setting you pick on MFP: sedentary, active or even very active. The "adjustment" at the end of the day will make it so that your total calories (from which MFP subtracts your 500 deficit to come up with your eating target) will be the exact number that Fitbit detected as your expenditure for the day.

    But there are vast differences in the various adjustments numbers you would see during the day since they change based on time of day and activity to that point of time. At which point it does become a bit of a mind game as to the times and sizes of adjustments you prefer to see.

    Generally speaking and based on what you've said... you will probably end up averaging a TDEE closest to MFP's lightly active setting, i.e. that of someone who averages 4,000 to 7,500 steps during their daily living activities
  • xxzenabxx
    xxzenabxx Posts: 935 Member
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Humans reducing calories by 15% got 2 years - "The study found that calorie restriction decreased systemic oxidative stress, which has been tied to age-related neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, as well as cancer, diabetes, and others."

    This is important to me. Reducing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases as well as cancer and diabetes....VERY important but of course, YMMV. In 2001 I had a severe traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for 2 weeks. Subsequently, I was diagnosed with Narcolepsy. My resting heart rate is very slow, it feels like my entire body is slowed bc I'm constantly tired. I'm hypothyroid. I'm short, 5'3. Narcolepsy is thought to slow metabolism, which makes me twice as likely to be obese. Besides being more likely to be obese, having such a severe traumatic brain injury makes me much more likely to develop neurological diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Additionally, I had gestational diabetes in 2 of my 3 pregnancies which puts me at a much increased risk of developing diabetes someday.

    Reducing your calories by 15%-20% of TDEE is what is typically recommended for safe and healthy weight loss. If you consistently stayed at a 15% deficit from TDEE, you would ultimately wither away and die...so I think there needs to be some context there.

    Let's also say your TDEE is a mere 1800 calories which would be about average for a sedentary female but unlikely for someone very overweight or obese...a 15% cut would be 270 calories giving you a target of 1,530 calories. A 20% cut would be a 360 calorie reduction which would give you a target of 1,440 calories. This is why people are questioning whether 1200 is really appropriate...namely it is the lowest default for a women selecting sedentary on MFP and 1.5-2 Lbs per week weight loss target which is a pretty aggressive target. Nobody is saying 1200 calories is wrong in all instances, but it is often overly aggressive and has you starting at the floor of what is considered to be minimum calories for a sedentary female not under medical supervision. A lot of the responses you are getting are from people who've had a lot of success and have a lot of experience using MFP.

    Apparently you did not read the post about my health. My metabolism is already low. My TDEE is not an average TDEE

    So I’m 5’ 4” F and 156lbs and with PCOS. Apparently I had a slow metabolism but turns out I was wrong! In 2018 I dieted with 1500 calories and lose my sanity. My hair fell out, my muscles hurt, joint pain, constipation, mood swings, got anemic (again) just because of undereating. And I felt fine in the first few months. The reason why I went so low in calories was because I assumed that with PCOS I HAD TO eat between 1200-1500 calories. Now after many months of figuring out my TDEE, through trial and error, I found out it’s around 2350/2450 depending on my activity levels. That’s 500 more than my predicted TDEE of 1900/2000. Undereating is no joke. But you seem like you know what your doing right?
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    This is how I coordinated my fitness tracker and MFP:
    • I plugged my stats into MFP to lose 1 lb. a week.
    • I recalculated for each 10 lb lost (1960 calories to start. Now I am at 1746)
    • I set my activity level to sedentary in both MFP and Fitbit (later Garmin)
    • I did not enable negative calorie adjustment
    • I ate ALL my base MFP calories
    • I entered my swimming calories manually since my tracker would only record about 100 "steps" for 90 minutes of laps.
    • I let the tracker tell MFP how many extra calories I earned and ate back 50%. I was losing too fast so I raised that to about 80% with some days 100%.

    I am now 60 lb. less than I was when I started.

    Sometimes too much information can confuse the issue so the most important thing is to trust the numbers and trust the process. Pick one platform to be your main source of daily information (I chose MFP because it is easier) and just use the other for sidebar type info. You do not need to know stuff like BMR to lose, you only really need to know your height, current weight, and age. All else is done for you.

  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    beulah81 wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Wino, this is my discussion. Can you please not refer to me like I'm not going to be reading these posts? This reminds me of Seinfeld and the person talking in 3rd person for some reason.....

    She was simply trying to help you. @WinoGelato is one of the seasoned with experience posters on this forum! You should be grateful to have her participate as much as she did. Bless you @WinoGelato for being so helpful on this forum. Your posts have been extremely helpful to me!

    Absolutely! I am very grateful. It just felt weird to be talked about like I wasn't there? I wasn't angry, I just wanted wino to direct questions at me.
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    Nony_Mouse wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    I guess it makes sense but it's not even 3500 more per week. Shouldn't it be 1250? I can't imagine that the people who were up in arms about me eating and 1200 will be happy that I now am allowed 1240 😂

    It's because MFP bottoms out at 1200 for women. So even though you'd picked 2 lb per week, you didn't have enough room from a sedentary setting for a 1000 cal deficit.

    Also, we established that you're not actually eating only 1200, because you're eating back the adjustment from Fitbit (which might be bigger now that you've set to 1 lb - on a day like yesterday you'd end up with something in the low 1400s, on a more active day, you'll end up higher than that). People were concerned that you may have picked a goal that was far too aggressive (which you did, but MFP basically stopped you from executing because, as it turns out, a little over 1200 would be right for you if sedentary). We see a lot of people here who are pushing really aggressive deficits initially, not eating back exercise cals despite working out daily, etc, hence the reaction and wanting to make sure yours was actually appropriate for you. It was all from a place of concern and wanting what's best for you :) If you now say you're set to 1lb per week, and have a base of 1240, plus you eat back your exercise cals, everyone will be fine with that.

    This is one of the reasons I suggested setting to lightly active (even though it ends up the same in the end), because that's a truer baseline for you, and isn't quite as depressing as seeing 1200 in your diary first thing in the morning.

    It's motivating to me! Makes me want to get more steps to get more flexibility in my diet!
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    xxzenabxx wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Humans reducing calories by 15% got 2 years - "The study found that calorie restriction decreased systemic oxidative stress, which has been tied to age-related neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, as well as cancer, diabetes, and others."

    This is important to me. Reducing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases as well as cancer and diabetes....VERY important but of course, YMMV. In 2001 I had a severe traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for 2 weeks. Subsequently, I was diagnosed with Narcolepsy. My resting heart rate is very slow, it feels like my entire body is slowed bc I'm constantly tired. I'm hypothyroid. I'm short, 5'3. Narcolepsy is thought to slow metabolism, which makes me twice as likely to be obese. Besides being more likely to be obese, having such a severe traumatic brain injury makes me much more likely to develop neurological diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Additionally, I had gestational diabetes in 2 of my 3 pregnancies which puts me at a much increased risk of developing diabetes someday.

    Reducing your calories by 15%-20% of TDEE is what is typically recommended for safe and healthy weight loss. If you consistently stayed at a 15% deficit from TDEE, you would ultimately wither away and die...so I think there needs to be some context there.

    Let's also say your TDEE is a mere 1800 calories which would be about average for a sedentary female but unlikely for someone very overweight or obese...a 15% cut would be 270 calories giving you a target of 1,530 calories. A 20% cut would be a 360 calorie reduction which would give you a target of 1,440 calories. This is why people are questioning whether 1200 is really appropriate...namely it is the lowest default for a women selecting sedentary on MFP and 1.5-2 Lbs per week weight loss target which is a pretty aggressive target. Nobody is saying 1200 calories is wrong in all instances, but it is often overly aggressive and has you starting at the floor of what is considered to be minimum calories for a sedentary female not under medical supervision. A lot of the responses you are getting are from people who've had a lot of success and have a lot of experience using MFP.

    Apparently you did not read the post about my health. My metabolism is already low. My TDEE is not an average TDEE

    So I’m 5’ 4” F and 156lbs and with PCOS. Apparently I had a slow metabolism but turns out I was wrong! In 2018 I dieted with 1500 calories and lose my sanity. My hair fell out, my muscles hurt, joint pain, constipation, mood swings, got anemic (again) just because of undereating. And I felt fine in the first few months. The reason why I went so low in calories was because I assumed that with PCOS I HAD TO eat between 1200-1500 calories. Now after many months of figuring out my TDEE, through trial and error, I found out it’s around 2350/2450 depending on my activity levels. That’s 500 more than my predicted TDEE of 1900/2000. Undereating is no joke. But you seem like you know what your doing right?

    No, I don't know what I'm doing just like you when you started your journey. But thanks to the kind, helpful, supportive advice that I've received, I know a lot more now!
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    Yes, my apologies as I did notice it later.
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
    edited February 2020
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Thank you for all your help everyone! I appreciate it so much!! I have one more pressing question. Every Sunday, my family and my sister's family go to my mom's house for a big home cooked dinner and dessert. It's such a fun tradition! The meals are cooked from scratch and would be too difficult to track but only losing one pound a week, I could blow my weight loss very easily. Can I save calories during the week? How much would you recommend? One pound doesn't have a lot of wiggle room and feels restricted.

    I just wanted to offer some reassurance with regards to the bold statement above.

    Assuming you stick more or less to your calorie target the rest of the week in order for this meal to blow your weight loss you'd need to eat 3500 excess calories during that meal. This would need to be 3500 calories above and beyond the normal amount of calories you would have eaten. As you can imagine that's no mean feat!

    So yes, you can bank calories throughout the week in order to maintain your rate of loss. Alternatively you can stick to your calorie targets throughout the week and just simply indulge and enjoy the meal. Even if you go over your calorie target by, lets say 350cals because of this meal it will only have a minimal impact on your progress. We're talking about your weight loss slowing at a rate of about 4lbs or 5lbs over the course of the entire year. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things!
  • mgalsf12
    mgalsf12 Posts: 350 Member
    aokoye wrote: »
    mgalsf12 wrote: »
    I'm just getting over the flu. I drank tea and water for several days, no food, I just couldn't keep anything down. So should we consume more calories when we're sick? I suppose it depends on what you are sick with.

    Note, just because you can't get anything other than water and tea down doesn't mean that you shouldn't a. try or b. be concerned. I ended up in the ER twice during one rather epic UTI turned kidney infection because I couldn't keep down water, let alone food. Needless to say, in addition to the IV fluids (and antibiotics via IV), I was also given an antiemetic while there and a script for them to pick up after I left. Yes part of that was that I needed to be able to drink water, but also becuase I needed to be able to eat at least a minimal amount of food.

    I was able to keep down water and tea...I kept hydrated and just slept for days. Sorry you ended up in ER.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,226 Member
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    Duly noted. My base cals are set to 1200 but I eat back approx half my "exercise" cals (even when I don't exercise, Fitbit counts steps/increased in hr as exercise)

    FitBit is an activity tracker, and for many of us, a darned accurate one. It estimates your total calories burned from all activity, NEAT and purposeful exercise alike. This is an estimate of your TDEE and if you have it synced with MFP and are seeing large adjustments, it’s an indication that you are more active and burning more calories than the calculations that MFP derived from your inputs would indicate.

    I've found that my Fitbit tends to estimate my cardio lower (seemingly more accurately?) than my Polar chest strap? Everyone says the chest strap is more accurate but I'm not so sure anymore. Anyone have this experience? Maybe I should make this it's own discussion lol

    I don't know if you've made this a separate discussion. If you have, and I didn't see it/respond/realize that, I apologize for coming back to it here.

    I think you're conflating 2 separate ideas here.

    People say that a chest strap is a more accurate way of capturing heart rate. That's because there can be missed beats with a wrist monitor for a variety of reasons, from arm flexing during exercise that causes disconnects, to dark skin tones that don't work as well with the wrist-based optical sensor. The chest belt monitors heart rate more directly, so it's less likely to have those problems. That difference is an issue of how reliable the wrist vs. chest sensor is.

    The accuracy of calorie estimates is really a separate issue. Heart rate is a reasonable (though still imperfect) correlate of exercise intensity for some activities (like moderate steady-state cardio with relatively little strength component to it) and a terrible one for others (like strength training or high intensity intervals).

    The old-school Polar heart rate monitors measured heart rate only, and used that (plus some statistical data about average people, and some algorithms) to estimate calories.

    Modern fitness trackers, depending on the specific model in use, can be measuring lots of things: Arm movements, altitude changes, heart rate, GPS-based coordinates when outdoors, and more. They still rely on statistical data about average people to make assumptions, and they still use algorithms to estimate calories based on the measurments they have.

    There are some limitations to using heart rate to estimate calories, one of which I mentioned above. Others are that using "average people" statistics means that the estimates are likely to be less accurate for people who are much fitter than the studied average people, or much less fit; and that most people don't know their true maximum heart rate, so the devices usually use age estimates, which can be very wrong for a large fraction of people (fit or unfit - it's mostly genetic). That limits the accuracy of the calorie estimates based on heart rate, even beyond the basic problem of heart rate not correlating all that well with all-forms calorie burn in the first place.

    The modern tracker devices, with more data than just heart rate, have the theoretical potential to make better calorie estimates. However, whether they accomplish that improvement or don't is largely a function of the assumptions and algorithms programmed into the devices. Those tend to be proprietary, so the companies don't reveal them. All we can do is read scientific review of the accuracy (as compared with better calorie-consumption measurement by specialized lab-based equipment), or learn from our own and others' experiences (which is very subject to inaccurate inferences). It seems extremely likely that they're more accurate for some exercise types than others, and more accurate for some people than others.

    Overall, I'd expect a multi-measurement device (like a Fitbit using heart rate plus other measurements) to be slightly more likely to be accurate than a heart-rate-only device, but that's a pretty tentative conclusion. And it's separate from the question of whether the heart rate data is accurately gathered in the first place (the sensor question).
  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    Thank you for that enlightening reply! That was a lot of information you spent time typing out and I appreciate it!!

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