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keyydav89
keyydav89 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello! According to my weight age height etc mfp is stating I need to eat 3,000 calories a day!!! Can someone please explain to me with eating 3,000 calories and working out 3 to 4 days a week for 45 minutes will I lose 1 pound a week? Is that too many calories to intake for a day?

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  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,248 Member
    edited February 2023
    keyydav89 wrote: »
    Hello! According to my weight age height etc mfp is stating I need to eat 3,000 calories a day!!! Can someone please explain to me with eating 3,000 calories and working out 3 to 4 days a week for 45 minutes will I lose 1 pound a week? Is that too many calories to intake for a day?
    Lol, yes way too high. What is your weight and height?
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,788 Member
    keyydav89 wrote: »
    Hello! According to my weight age height etc mfp is stating I need to eat 3,000 calories a day!!! Can someone please explain to me with eating 3,000 calories and working out 3 to 4 days a week for 45 minutes will I lose 1 pound a week? Is that too many calories to intake for a day?

    It very much depends on your current weight. If you weigh 400 pounds, then yes, you very well may lose weight on 3000 calories, for a while. It take many more than 3000 calories to sustain that much weight. However, if you are at a lower weight, then yes, it will likely be too high.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,307 Member
    Weight, height, age, activity level all work together to ESTIMATE what your maintenance calories would be. Eating 500 Cal a day less than maintenance will generally speaking lead to losing 1lb a week once you average that over many -500 days and many weeks. This estimate will be accurate for most but not all. Some will be under-estimated. Some will be over-estimated. Inputting correct values for weight, height, age, and most importantly activity level also plays into all this.

    I have a bit of an issue with the idea that we first pick a rate of loss and then figure out what we should eat to hit it. to me going at it this way increases the likelihood of pursuing inappropriate goals.

    Generally speaking most people who try to lose weight over the long run will have a relatively good chance to succeed if they achieve the loss of 0.5% to 1% of their body weight per week while applying deficits that do not exceed 25% of their TDEE (maintenance calories). Generally speaking 0.5% will be tolerated better than 1% for people who are leaner or who have been losing weight for a while.

    Starting from a high weight the long game and taking the time to understand oneself are pretty important. so is making choices one believes they will be able to sustain for the foreseeable future as long term adherence is the name of the game.

    Let's consider some examples.

    I am 240lbs. My TDEE is 3500 Cal. 25% of that is 875 Cal. That's 1.75lbs a week which is between 0.5% and 1% of my body weight. This is a good target. I could set MFP at 1K deficit and assume that sometimes I won't hit that. Or set it to 750 and make sure I always hit it with a tiny bit to spare.

    I am 350lbs. My TDEE is 3500 Cal. Technically a safe loss rate for me would be between 1.75 and 3.5 lbs a week. 3.5lbs a week requires a 12,250 per week / 1750Cal per day deficit. That would be a 50% of my TDEE per day deficit. That's quite high. OK to maybe do for a few days. But not for the long run. 1.75lbs on the other hand requires 6125 Cal per week of deficit, or 875 Cal a day. It is 25% of my TDEE. That's as fast as I would choose to go for anything more than a few days.

    Time is open ended. Especially if you're starting from a morbidly obese position, you should probably start thinking of weight control as a lifelong commitment. One that can actually be quite fulfilling and fun! But NOT a 'quick loss and I'm done' sort of thing.

    So pure speed is of much less concern as compared to learning how to make choices you will be able to continue making again and again.
  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,724 Member
    keyydav89 wrote: »
    Hello! According to my weight age height etc mfp is stating I need to eat 3,000 calories a day!!! Can someone please explain to me with eating 3,000 calories and working out 3 to 4 days a week for 45 minutes will I lose 1 pound a week? Is that too many calories to intake for a day?

    As stated above it’s hard to tell without your stats, but do make sure you’re not double counting your activity. I just checked and the difference between “Not very active” and “very active” was about 800 calories per day for me. This discussion is a quick read and summarizes what I’m getting at:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10829436/activity-level

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