Your Experience with Calorie Allotment on MFP

AshleyBHawkins

Hi all!
I'm just starting out again and I wanted to know your experience. Did you go by the calories the app have you? And if you did, did you successfully lose weight eating that amount?
My calorie allotment seems a bit high, but I'm ok with it as long as it'll actually help me lose the weight.
Thank you for your answers!

Lietchi

I followed MFP, combined with the Pacer app for calorie adjustments at first, then a Polar tracker and now a Garmin tracker.
I lost weight slightly faster than the intended speed, actually.

I found it very helpful to track my weight trend (for example using Libra or Happy Scale) against how much weight I should have lost according to MFP/my tracker. That way, adjustments can be made: MFP (and fitness trackers) base their numbers on statistical averages, but you may or may not be average 🙂

yirara

yes, works. My loss was always a bit higher than the chosen loss rate because my body burns a bit more energy than average. After a few weeks it's possible to see whether this works, or some more adjustments are needed. These adjustments can include eating more, eating a bit less, changing activity setting, but also using a foodscale and checking database entries extra thoroughly. And with any calorie amount of 1200 (women) or 1500 (men) the chosen loss likely won't happen as this is the lowest MFP will go even if a bigger deficit is needed for the chosen loss rate.

sijomial

After a few weeks of consistency my weight loss showed that I was out by only about 1,000 cals a week, adjusted to eat 200 cals less five days a week and proceded to lose pretty consistently at my chosen 1lb / week.

But I'd put that fairly small difference between expectations and results down to slightly sloppy (but consistent) food logging plus slightly exaggerated exercise calorie estimates from gym equipment and a heart rate monitor.
For me at least I'd say the estimate was more accurate than I was!

Although it's clearly an average and there will be outliers (both ways) I'd be surprised if the estimate was so far out for someone not to lose any weight if their logging is anywhere close to reasonable. As part of that reasonable accuracy beware using cups to estimate your food intake, calories are in relation to weight and not volume.

AnnPT77

MFP's estimate was several hundred calories *too low* for me. This is rare, but it can happen. It's funny that people never seem to worry about this possibility, only about losing too slowly, even though it's too-fast loss that more commonly creates increased health risks. (In my case, even though I corrected as soon as I realized, I got weak and fatigued, then took several weeks to recover back to feeling normal. I was lucky that not much worse happened.)

MFP is giving you a statistical estimate based on reasonable, sound scientific research. The estimates will be close for most people, noticeably but not problematically far off (high or low) for a few, and quite far off for a rare few (also potentially high or low). That's the nature of statistical estimates: They're close for people who are average in statistically relevant ways, and it isn't always obvious why a particular person turns out to be not average.

Try to think of MFP's estimate as the starting point for your own personal adult science fair experiment. Follow the estimate, using the best logging practices that are practical for you, for 4-6 weeks, then take a look at your average weekly weight loss rate. (Premenopausal women should use whole menstrual cycles, in order to compare weight at the same relative point in at least two different monthly cycles, because hormonal water weight shifts can distort results.)

If the first couple of weeks look wildly different than the following weeks, throw those weeks out, and use 4+ subsequent weeks. Once you have some reasonable personalized data, if your weight loss rate is too slow (and could sensibly be faster), eat a bit less or add more activity to your days. If it's too fast for best health, eat more. Use the rough estimate that 3500 calories is one pound of fat, and do the math. Stick to your MFP goal for the 4-6 weeks, unless you have early signs of too-fast loss (like unexplained weakness, fatigue, hair loss, etc.) alongside what looks at that point like fast loss on the scale. If that happens, eat more, sooner.

That should work fine. Best wishes for success!

ETA: I've been calorie counting the overwhelming majority of days for what will be 6 years this July. I've always eaten back all my (carefully estimated) exercise calories in addition to my MFP base calories. Now in year 5+ at a healthy weight, MFP would put my before-exercise calories at around 1500ish. In reality, maintenance is 2000 or a bit over, before adding exercise calories. I'm non-average, for some reason. 🤷‍♀️ I'm grateful to be non-average on the "eat more" side, for sure.

wunderkindking

Like Ann, a couple of months of weight loss and doing the math (pounds of weight lost *3500, that answer divided by number of days) showed that the MFP recommendation was about 250 calories too low (per day) for me.

Not a problem early in weight loss - I was eating a relative lot, taking frequent diet breaks and no problem with higher than expected rate of loss.

As I tried to slow loss down once I was moving within a healthy weight it became an issue. Not because I didn't still want to lose weight but because I was feeling like crap.

My goal here was being healthier and more active. Feeling like a slug and being miserable was not working for me!