Discussion on low calorie diets

SezxyStef

Antiopelle wrote: »

SezxyStef wrote: »

Antiopelle wrote: »

When I started MFP last year (certainly not for the first time) I entered my stats: 5'7 & 172 lbs - setting to sedentary as I have an office job + 2 trainings a week - wanting to lose 1 pound a week. So I'm not tiny, far from petite, I didn't want to lose quickly (now I know that 1 a week is pretty quick) and I knew that sustainability would be key.
My recommendation was ... 1.200 kcal. Coming from former WW, I thought I needed to try to avoid adding my exercise cals as little as possible. So, I did for months, feeling frustrated every day I got over the 1.200, which was often.
It's only when I started to read the boards here that I understood how low that was. Even if I have been on & off dieting for more than 30 years, and I consider myself well educated, I believed that 1.200 kcal was the ideal goal as MFP told me so.
Now, I know better and I've upped my cals, adding exercise and I hope to maintain around 1.900 - 2.000 a day. Therefore, a very big thanks to all the regular posters here on the boards, who have certainly changed my view on food and health dramatically during the last months.

Except MFP is not WW and when doing using MFP it is expected that you would eat back exercise calories...

If you had read the method in which MFP used you would have known that NEAT vs TDEE etc...

As well I had similar stats to you...aka 5 ft 6 and 175...the calories it gave me for 1lb a week was 1460...I find it odd you got 1200....

I just did the calculation again, and the result was 1250 kcals. I enter it using the metric system (171 cm, 78kg, wanting to lose 0,5kg/week), I guess that this may cause the difference (although it shouldn't).
I agree that after reading the method I now know the concepts of NEAT and TDEE, but that information is available on the forum, nowhere in the app itself. If you are not interested in discussing weightloss on the forum, you will miss this info and I think that is a pity and a missed opportunity.

which is even weirder for the first calculation as 1/2kg is more than 1lb so it should have stayed at 1200...but yes there is a different between those stats.

171 is 5 ft 6,78 kg is 171 and 1/2kg is 1.1lb so a smaller person losing more gets to eat more than you?

something is off.

PS as for your new TDEE I would be wary as mine was 1600...and I lost 1lb a week consistently until I changed my intake when I got close to goal so I could slow the process.

At present at 148lbs 5 ft 6 I can maintain on anything between 2000 and 2400 depending on my exercise...but I am extremely active as well...aka walking at least 5k a day for just *kitten* n giggles and lifting and biking and and and...if I didn't exercise I would maintain on about 1800/

lemurcat2

Antiopelle wrote: »

SezxyStef wrote: »

Antiopelle wrote: »

When I started MFP last year (certainly not for the first time) I entered my stats: 5'7 & 172 lbs - setting to sedentary as I have an office job + 2 trainings a week - wanting to lose 1 pound a week. So I'm not tiny, far from petite, I didn't want to lose quickly (now I know that 1 a week is pretty quick) and I knew that sustainability would be key.
My recommendation was ... 1.200 kcal. Coming from former WW, I thought I needed to try to avoid adding my exercise cals as little as possible. So, I did for months, feeling frustrated every day I got over the 1.200, which was often.
It's only when I started to read the boards here that I understood how low that was. Even if I have been on & off dieting for more than 30 years, and I consider myself well educated, I believed that 1.200 kcal was the ideal goal as MFP told me so.
Now, I know better and I've upped my cals, adding exercise and I hope to maintain around 1.900 - 2.000 a day. Therefore, a very big thanks to all the regular posters here on the boards, who have certainly changed my view on food and health dramatically during the last months.

Except MFP is not WW and when doing using MFP it is expected that you would eat back exercise calories...

If you had read the method in which MFP used you would have known that NEAT vs TDEE etc...

As well I had similar stats to you...aka 5 ft 6 and 175...the calories it gave me for 1lb a week was 1460...I find it odd you got 1200....

I just did the calculation again, and the result was 1250 kcals. I enter it using the metric system (171 cm, 78kg, wanting to lose 0,5kg/week), I guess that this may cause the difference (although it shouldn't).
I agree that after reading the method I now know the concepts of NEAT and TDEE, but that information is available on the forum, nowhere in the app itself. If you are not interested in discussing weightloss on the forum, you will miss this info and I think that is a pity and a missed opportunity.

For fun, I just tried it with my own age, 5'7, and 172, and 1 lb and got 1210 (I'm assuming you are a bit younger than me), which would explain the difference between 1250 and 1210.

cmriverside

Antiopelle wrote: »

SezxyStef wrote: »

Antiopelle wrote: »

When I started MFP last year (certainly not for the first time) I entered my stats: 5'7 & 172 lbs - setting to sedentary as I have an office job + 2 trainings a week - wanting to lose 1 pound a week. So I'm not tiny, far from petite, I didn't want to lose quickly (now I know that 1 a week is pretty quick) and I knew that sustainability would be key.
My recommendation was ... 1.200 kcal. Coming from former WW, I thought I needed to try to avoid adding my exercise cals as little as possible. So, I did for months, feeling frustrated every day I got over the 1.200, which was often.
It's only when I started to read the boards here that I understood how low that was. Even if I have been on & off dieting for more than 30 years, and I consider myself well educated, I believed that 1.200 kcal was the ideal goal as MFP told me so.
Now, I know better and I've upped my cals, adding exercise and I hope to maintain around 1.900 - 2.000 a day. Therefore, a very big thanks to all the regular posters here on the boards, who have certainly changed my view on food and health dramatically during the last months.

Except MFP is not WW and when doing using MFP it is expected that you would eat back exercise calories...

If you had read the method in which MFP used you would have known that NEAT vs TDEE etc...

As well I had similar stats to you...aka 5 ft 6 and 175...the calories it gave me for 1lb a week was 1460...I find it odd you got 1200....

I just did the calculation again, and the result was 1250 kcals. I enter it using the metric system (171 cm, 78kg, wanting to lose 0,5kg/week), I guess that this may cause the difference (although it shouldn't).
I agree that after reading the method I now know the concepts of NEAT and TDEE, but that information is available on the forum, nowhere in the app itself. If you are not interested in discussing weightloss on the forum, you will miss this info and I think that is a pity and a missed opportunity.

Not true.

From "HELP" at the top of every page: Under, "Using the App: "

https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

I mean, unless you're one of those people who buys something and doesn't read the instructions - which in my experience almost always leads to leftover screws.

cmriverside

^^Which is why we get so testy..."I can't make this work..."

Did you read the instructions?

Using this site could not be easier.

It tells you when you start to choose, "Lose 1 pound per week."

If people did that and then entered Exercise and ate more when exercise was done like the program tells you to do, and then used some common sense by adjusting when things were not exactly right, 90% of forum threads would be gone.

Are you unable to stick to your low 1200 calories and end up eating everything in site? Are you fatigued and losing hair? Um. Eat more?

Thinking that a computer program can predict with 100% accuracy the calorie needs and use of every person is just...I don't know...a delusion of some sort?

lemurcat2

If MFP gives you 1200, and everything you've read your whole life largely reinforced the "1200 is a good way to diet" message, and you feel just fine on 1200 (as a lot of us did, at least at first), then I don't find it terribly surprising that so many people assume 1200 is the right number for them.

The only reason I read enough during the set up process to figure out how MFP worked and that I was supposed to eat back my cals and so on was because I didn't have the diet culture assumption that 1200 was the normal diet number, and so it struck me as unreasonably low and not right. (I completely admit that I'm not a "read all the instructions first" person and do sometimes end up with extra screws.)

I think MFP could add something where it asks how much you are going to exercise to indicate "this does not go into your total calories, but will be added when you log exercise" and I also think MFP should indicate a step estimate for the different activity levels, as it currently seems from the description as nearly all with an office job would qualify as "sedentary."

That aside, I think a high percentage of people will still end up with 1200 since diet culture says that's a good number and many want to lose as fast as possible, at least initially.

cmriverside

I started at 1200, but I had 80 pounds to lose.

As soon as that became untenable, and I started having problems with my hair, skin, and energy levels, I ate more. I had been eating all my exercise calories up to that point too - because I blindly believed that the site wouldn't tell me to eat them if I wasn't supposed to eat them - so I had actually been eating about 1700 per day when I got to 180 pounds (5'7", Female.) 1700 wasn't enough.

I ended up at 1600-1700 on NON exercise days and more like 2100-2200 on days I exercised to lose that last 40 pounds. It was that or sleep all day and lose all my hair. I mean, how does one not know something is wrong when they start feeling awful? Or are people chalking it up to "life" or stress or personal issues or something?

I feel horrible when I under-eat. Really awful. I can't imagine continuing like that, and I knew enough to know that food is what makes the body run...

bmeadows380

I was like Lemurcat2: I was coming in without much experience at all in diet culture, and thus didn't know anything about the 1200 calorie rule. I just knew I had over 200 lbs to lose and was sedentary, so used those stats and ended up starting with something like 2200 as my goal. I've lost half of that so far, and am down to 1450 as my goal - but I'm also 5'8", which makes a big difference.

I've lost without having an exercises program, but I know I'm starting to hit the minimum of what I can sustainably eat and have been looking at trying to get more activity in to get from sedentary to lightly active, or at least to add back exercise calories. I am, on a typical week day, a sedentary person - I bought a step counter and found that I was lucky to be getting 3,000 steps in on a good day. The frustration I'm running into, though, is getting a reasonable calorie burn for my activity. For instance: MFP says I should have burned 275 calories for 15 minutes on the elliptical (I had actually done 30 minutes, but figured I'd better cut that value in half because I've heard MFP's values are inflated). But I've only just started using the elliptical, and while I can keep a steady pace and do feel some effort, its would definitely be considered light use at best, so I figured there was no way I actually burned that many calories. The machine doesn't ask for body stats, so I know I can't trust the amount it uses, and I don't have a fitbit or anything like that.

Most days when I do get active, I have a hard time getting into the mindset to add those calories back (or at least, some portion); I can help but feel like I'm cheating!