Adequate calories?

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lucyanne15
lucyanne15 Posts: 4 Member
in Getting Started
Hi! If you have a second I would love some guidance please. How do I eat enough so that I'm still losing weight? I'm not restricting too much, 1500 calories a day, and I exercise most days about 30 minutes. But I am plateauing. Do I need to increase my exercise? I'm trying to fully understand how eating more calories actually helps with weight loss. Thank you for your time!

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  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 13,411 Member
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    Have you been through the set-up process on MFP to help you figure out your calorie goal? It's a pretty good tool.

    Answer the questions honestly. The number you get is your calorie estimate BEFORE you do any intentional exercise. If you add exercise, log that, and then eat most or all of the calories you burn from exercise.

    With no idea of your gender, mass, height, or activity level,1500 calories is somewhat meaningless. It's the minimum suggested for a male under any circumstances and that's before exercise.

    The way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you oxidize through activity. You need to figure out what that number is. Fortunately, MFP provides an estimate. Eating MORE calories won't help with weight loss. If you are eating exactly the amount of calories you are burning, you won't gain or lose. If you eat MORE, then you gain. If you eat less, you lose weight. So the first step is to set your goal.
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 889 Member
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    This is going to depend on what you find the least confusing way to calculate what you want to do.

    If you use MFP to calculate your calorie goal per day --- it will give you a calorie goal based on your current stats (weight, height, age, sex, how much you want to lose, ect) and give you a goal. Then, if you log cardio exercise, it will ADD those calories to your daily goal (i.e. you will be able to eat more because the goal MFP sets for you already puts you at a deficit). I'd say eat back at least 50-100% of your burned calories from cardio exercise (depending on how your weight loss goes/how hungry you are).



    Alternatively -- you can use a TDEE calculator --- which will also give you a BMR estimate. This will ask you for your daily activity level just like MFP --- I choose to use 'sedentary' bc I have a sedentary job and mostly if I'm not running, walking, or hiking I'm sedentary so I find it easier for me to just log those workouts and eat back those calories. Anyway...you can choose a daily calorie goal that is HIGHER than your BMR, but LOWER than your TDEE and manually use that as your daily calorie goal.

    This is all just trial and error thought until you have an actual good idea of what your TDEE is and what is a little lower than that to lose weight.

    Most TDEE calculators might even give you an estimated goal of how many cals to eat if you want to lose weight, maintain, or gain...etc.

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