Using calories

greeboruffles

If I use my goal calories and active calories will I still lose weight?

AnnPT77

Yes . . . if your profile set-up is accurate, you're statistically average or close, and your logging is sufficiently accurate. If you have a fitness tracker device synched, it will also be necessary that it be one of the devices for which the integration is integrated properly (Apple is iffy), and the device accurate for you (again, that's about being statistically average, mostly - which most people are, by definition).

Yeah, that's a weasel-y statement.

What's often recommended here is that you set things up in a reasonable way, then test-drive it for 4-6 weeks, to see what your average scale weight results are. (Adult women not yet in menopause should test-drive for one or more full menstrual cycles, and compare body weights at the same relative point in at least 2 different cycles.)

If the first couple of weeks of that test period look wildly different from the later ones, ignore those, and use later weeks. (Sometimes water weight fluctuations are weird, right at first, making scale weight misleading.)

Then, compare your average weekly weight loss to the target weight loss rate you set up in MFP. If you've lost around that amount, you're golden. If you've lost slower despite being compliant, and would have room to lose faster safely, cut some calories from your goal. If you lost faster than reasonable, eat more.

To decide how much more/less to eat when adjusting, assume it takes 3500 calories (roughly) to gain or lose a pound of body fat, cumulatively speaking. For example, if you averaged half a pound a week loss, but it would be OK to lose a pound a week, eat 250 fewer calories daily ((0.5 x 3500) divided by 7 days).

My initial estimate was inaccurate, but once I had enough personal data, and adjusted as per above, I lost weight at the expected rate, on average.

It's kind of like running your own fun science fair experiment for grown-ups.

Best wishes!

BuddhaBunnyFTW

I agree. I lost 30 lbs by eating a low calorie vegan diet since my job leaves me sedentary. Due to stress, I gained 20 back during the pandemic due to me changing my diet and eating more junk food and drinking more wine. Now I'm ready to retry the experiment. We shall see if it works again. Science!

heybales

greeboruffles wrote: »

If I use my goal calories and active calories will I still lose weight?

Active Calories sounds like an Apple device figure.

If you setup MFP as Sedentary activity level (which is what Apple uses for their base calorie burn), and selected a weight loss goal, then your MFP eating goal while being sedentary will cause weight loss.

If Apple sees you burn more than base sedentary calories, it calls the extra calories Active (or workouts if you log it as workout), therefore if you ate those back you'd have the same deficit as before.

2000 base sedentary - 500 deficit = 1500 eating goal say.

Say Apple Active (or workout) calories 300 more than sedentary. 2000 + 300 = 2300.

1500 base eating goal + 300 = 1800 new eating goal.

2300-1800 = same 500 deficit.

Eating less than you burn. Hopefully by reasonable amount to keep it fat weight you are losing. Hate to lose muscle mass going extreme.