Calorie goal

seanjennings1863

Hi all

I have set myself to lose 2 lbs a week and my goal is 1990 cals but I’m currently consuming around 1600 cals a day with exercise of about 500 cals

The 1990 cals. Does that mean I can consume that much a day and still hit 2lbs a week?

Please feel free to direct message me

Today my goal was 1990 cals
Food in take 1430 cals
Exercise 533 cals

Giving me a remainder of 1,212

So does this mean I can have another 1,212 cals more today to hit my
Goal and still loss 2 lbs a week?

Thank you

Lietchi

That's the theory yes, if:
- your logging is accurate
- your exercise calories are accurate
- your chosen activity level is correct
- and your metabolism is (statistically) average

The best thing is to try it out for one or two months (menstrual cycles for women), see how much you lose, and adjust upwards or downwards if necessary.

Two lbs per week is already an aggressive rate of loss, so I wouldn't recommend going much lower than the number MFP gives you, because undereating is not a good thing (potential loss of muscle mass,...).

tomcustombuilder

What is your height and weight?

The more fat you have, the bigger deficit you can run. You'd need around a weekly deficit of 7,000 calories for a 2 lb a week loss. Unless you have a big maintenance amount this may be tough. You have to be careful to not try to lose on too few calories.

noodlesno

So in theory yes...However, food calories and exercise calories are an estimation and never as accurate as one would sometimes believe, even if you are weighing everything and wearing a heart rate monitor.

This is my third time losing some weight, last time I lost 100lbs in 11 months. A bit of that has crept back on over COVID and then a very tough year afterwards (got made redundant, had a huge injury, lost my flat...etc).

When I was doing it the last time I did a bit of experimenting on what worked for me with calories. I found that if I ate back 100% of my exercise calories I would gain weight. 30% was my magic number to keep to the weight loss.

However, I always struggled with not knowing how much exercise kcals I would burn in a day, so I did not know till the end of the day how much I could eat. So the thing that worked for me was to use a BMR calculator https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html

This works out your resting calorie need and then look up my average activity per week (on the table they provide) to give me an estimate of what my maintenance calories would be.

For example, I am 199 lbs and 5'6". This puts my BMR at 1658 kcals. I go to the gym 6 days a week and walk the dog for 2 hrs a day. So that means with that exercise I am about 2570 to hit my maintenance. This is actually about right as this is what my Garmin watch tells me I am at too.

I am looking to lose 1.5 lbs a week so I have taken this off from my maintenance (750 per day to lose 1.5lb) and that gives me 1820kcals a day to eat. This number is working for me but I track how much I am losing each month and if I can see I am going too fast or slow I will adjust accordingly

Hope that helps

yirara

Yes, in theory. The big question here is whether the exercise calories are correct, as those are easily overstated by devices and/or the database here. What did you do and for how long? How heavy are you and what's your gender?

You should certainly eat a part of the exercise calories back. Because, say your numbers are true and you ate 1600 calories and exercised for 500, then that's pretty much the same as only eating 1100 calories. That's starving for a woman of a higher weight, and possibly rather dangerous for a man. Thus at least eat the calories MFP gives you and then for a start maybe half the exercise calories. If you lose faster for at least one menstrual cycle or a month then eat more (your body really needs the nutrition). If you lose slower then maybe eat a bit less back. Rinse and repeat.

westrich20940

If you used the guided set up correctly, are more or less correctly accurate with your calorie consumption and burns....then yes, you can (and should) eat more.

You are consuming VERY few calories if you are only consuming 1400-1600 and then burning 500 on top of that. That's putting your NET calorie intake at 900-1100. That's not enough for most adults.

The important part for the above info is that you are 'more or less accurate'. Like....how do you know you burned 500 calories from exercise? How'd you get that number?

kshama2001

I just want to make sure that two pounds per week is an appropriate rate of loss for you. How many pounds do you have to lose?