Newer people - Setting goals for weight loss (calculators)

MuseofSong

If you're like me, starting at MFP is a little overwhelming. It's a lot of information to process. And, I am sure this is all over the forums in various places, but I just wanted to do a consolidation of the big ideas I've learned here so far.

I found this on Trogalicious' profile:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12 <-- it's a huge thread!

The main thing I got from it, besides macros and don't starve yourself by eating below your BMR, was how to calculate my body fat percentage:

http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/ <-- I used the military body fat calculator

And I found this weight loss/gain calculation file, which puts everything together in a neat spreadsheet, on a blog back in July--the site was karacooks.com:

www.karacooks.com/share/Calculations.xls‎

I couldn't get it to work right because I did not know my body fat percentage, but now that I do, I think the average of all three meters: Harris-Benedict, Mifflin-St Jeor, and Katch-McArdle is a great target for a 20% deficit. The average takes your body fat into account.

So, I wanted to share the spread sheet tool with everyone because it's easy to use and have on your home computer. It turns out, due to my body fat % that my TDEE-20% is a bit lower than it would be with the MFP calculation x .8, but setting MFP to the 2 lbs per week setting was setting my calorie goal too low.

I'm in my third week here, so I'm by no means an expert. But, I do appreciate clear guidelines when I can find them and thought I'd share.

Like it says on the fat2fit site: "If you start eating those calories right now (eating like the thinner you), you will eventually become that thinner person."

Sorry for repetitive info for experienced, long-time members, this was really geared towards the newer crowd, like myself. I hope it helps.