How many calories should I eat everyday?

meharmahshahid

I am pretty confused about how many calories I should eat everyday, and I don't trust mfp as my tdee may have fallen after being on CICO for three months. I want to hear from one of you who have a similar body profile as me and can share how many calories they eat. I'm 18, currently 129lb, 5"5, and am looking to lose around 15lb more in a span of a year.

DancingMoosie

If you put in your info, what does mfp give you? I would start there and tweak as necessary. I am a bit smaller than you, but also older. I lose weight eating under 1800 calories.

janejellyroll

If you don't trust MFP, why would you trust a rando MFP user?

Assuming you haven't done anything off the wall, your TDEE hasn't changed in three months of counting calories.

Do you think you need more calories than MFP suggests? Fewer?

moonangel12

How much have you lost in 3 months? Slow is good with such little to lose, but also maybe look at recomp instead of actual weight loss. You are smack in the middle of healthy on the BMI scale, losing 15 pounds will get you at the border of underweight. I know BMI isn’t perfect for every person, but 5’5” and 115lbs is pretty low.

AnnPT77

moonangel12 wrote: »

How much have you lost in 3 months? Slow is good with such little to lose, but also maybe look at recomp instead of actual weight loss. You are smack in the middle of healthy on the BMI scale, losing 15 pounds will get you at the border of underweight. I know BMI isn’t perfect for every person, but 5’5” and 115lbs is pretty low.

Every word of this.

Your own loss rate tells you your deficit. At your current weight, it's questionable whether you should lose much more. (It's possible, but individual. I'm very doubtful about the 115. I say both of those things as a 5'5" woman currently around 128, who is on the narrow-build side. There are women in the world with a more narrow/delicate bone structure than mine, but the reverse is more common. I've been 115 in recent memory, and it was way too thin for me, even as a woman totally without breasts (post mastectomies).)

If you are unhappy with how your body looks, as is all too common among young women, there's a good chance you'd get a better result by focusing on exercise (strength and cardio), rather than on weight as such.

MFP's estimate of your calorie needs will be a better starting estimate for you than some random number any of us might experience. Unless you've lost ridiculously fast for 3 months, there will be minimal impact on your TDEE from 3 months of deficit. The variation in TDEE just from individual unexplainable differences between individuals will be a much bigger factor. Even with some extreme loss for 3 months, I'm betting the impact would be less than you're thinking.

Believe MFP, track intake/exercise/bodyweight for at least one full menstrual cycle so you can compare weights at the same relative point in each cycle. After that, adjust based on your own personal results. That'll work, TDEE adaptation, or not.

That all said: I've been losing very slowly (averaging about a pound a month), on purpose, over the last several months, from the upper 130s down to my current 128-ish, at 1850 plus all carefully estimated exercise calories, while otherwise sedentary, at 5'5", and more than 3 times your age (I'm 64). It's unlikely that will be true for you, but I can't even predict whether you should expect faster or slower loss at a similar eating level.

Believe MFP, then track and adjust. That'll work.