How close should I get to calories goal?

GertRademeyer88

Hello everyone,

My daily calorie goal is 1550, how close should I be getting to that everyday? At the moment I'm trying to keep it at 1300 or under, is this bad? Or should I be hitting 1550 everyday?

mtaratoot

Welcome to the community!

The super-short version: Try to get as close to your goal as possible, but focus on weekly average as more important than every day.

The only slightly more detailed version:

How did you settle on your goal of 1550? Does it include a deficit? If you use the MFP goal setting tool, you can tell it how much you want to lose per week. Pro tip: don't be too aggressive. To lose a pound a week, you will be trying to have a deficit of 500 calories per day (3500 calories per week). That would be a reasonable goal if you had 20-40 pounds to lose. You should aim for no more than 1% of your mass. Your goal will change as you lose weight. I digress.

If your goal of 1550 came from telling MFP you wanted to lose a pound a week, then if you ate 2050 calories per day you'd neither gain or lose. You should try to get as close to your target as possible. It's OK if you're a little over or under on any given day as long as, on average, you hit the target. In the case of a 1550 calorie per day goal, you should be trying to get super close to 10,850 calories per week as possible. If you got your goal from the MFP tool, you have to add exercise to your diary and then eat those extra calories too.

If your target is 1550 to lose a pound a week but you eat 1300 calories per day, your deficit is 50% higher than it should be (750 calories per day). There are a whole host of reasons it's not a good idea to be too aggressive with your weight loss. Here's a few:

• If you underfeed yourself, you are at risk of a binge from time to time, and that can end up being more calories per week than if you just stuck to your goal
• You might move less because you're not getting enough fuel.
• It might be difficult to get adequate nutrition if you are trying to eat too few calories.
• When you are in deficit, your body gets fuel from stored energy. Ideally most of this comes from fat. If you are too severe in your restriction, your body will also start to digest its own muscle. That's hard to build back. Oh, yeah; your heart is a muscle. You don't want your body to eat it's own heart out.
• Hair loss and brittle nails.
• And so on

Try to eat to target as close as possible. Log honestly and completely every day. After a few weeks, see if your results match your expectations. If they don't, you can change your target up or down until you get the results you expect. Then, as you lose weight, you will need to change your target. If there's less of you, you don't need as much fuel. As you lose weight, you should slow down your loss RATE which gives you back some of those calories.

And finally - STICK TO IT! Don't quit even if you have a bad day or even bad week. Get back on track as soon as you notice you're going off track. Don't wait until tomorrow. Do it TODAY.

AnnPT77

My serious answer is around plus or minus 50 calories from goal IMO, but I agree that it's fine to look at that as a weekly average.

In practice, when I was losing, I thought it was sort of fun to try to develop eating patterns that got me as close to goal as possible without getting silly obsessive about it - sort of game-ifying it. I figure that she who loses at a sensible rate while eating the most calories is winning.

Too-fast loss increase health risks, plus makes it more likely the new routine won't last, as discussed in more detail above.

Your best estimates of your calorie needs will come once you stick close to a defined calorie for at least 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycles if that applies). That way, you can look at your loss data, and fine-tune your calorie estimates based on that, with the assumption that 500 calories a day is a pound a week. (Use arithmetic for fractions of pounds.)

It's useful to have an estimate of how many calories it would take to stay at your current weight. What?!? Heh, I know you don't want to stay at your current weight! Still, it can be reassuring to know that number. Any day we eat less than those maintenance calories, we can expect to be losing fat. If we're a little over our goal calories for some reason, but under the maintenance calorie number, we've simply delayed reaching final goal weight by literally a few hours, not "ruined everything".

Best wishes!

GertRademeyer88

Hi Mtaratoot.

Thank you very much for the information it is much appreciated. Yes the 1550 goal was given by MFP after I entered my age, weight, hight and how active I am and how much I wanted to loose per week. I opted for 1kg per week. I wanted to clarify something regarding exercise, if my current stats are as follows for example

Goal:1550
Total logged for the day : 1200
Exercise: 320
Total remaining is: 670

Does this then mean I need to eat An additional 670 calories for that day to hit my target, in other words if I hit 1550 and burn 200 calories during exercise I then need to eat an additional 200 calo6for that day?

I apologize if it's a dumb question I just wanted to clarify so I do this correctly.

kshama2001

GertRademeyer88 wrote: »

Hi Mtaratoot.

Thank you very much for the information it is much appreciated. Yes the 1550 goal was given by MFP after I entered my age, weight, hight and how active I am and how much I wanted to loose per week. I opted for 1kg per week. I wanted to clarify something regarding exercise, if my current stats are as follows for example

Goal:1550
Total logged for the day : 1200
Exercise: 320
Total remaining is: 670

Does this then mean I need to eat An additional 670 calories for that day to hit my target, in other words if I hit 1550 and burn 200 calories during exercise I then need to eat an additional 200 calo6for that day?

I apologize if it's a dumb question I just wanted to clarify so I do this correctly.

Questions about exercise calories are very common

Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

That said, I want to make sure 1kg per week (2.2 pounds) is an appropriate goal for you. Is it in line with this chart?

mtaratoot

GertRademeyer88 wrote: »

Hi Mtaratoot.

Thank you very much for the information it is much appreciated. Yes the 1550 goal was given by MFP after I entered my age, weight, hight and how active I am and how much I wanted to loose per week. I opted for 1kg per week. I wanted to clarify something regarding exercise, if my current stats are as follows for example

Goal:1550
Total logged for the day : 1200
Exercise: 320
Total remaining is: 670

Does this then mean I need to eat An additional 670 calories for that day to hit my target, in other words if I hit 1550 and burn 200 calories during exercise I then need to eat an additional 200 calo6for that day?

I apologize if it's a dumb question I just wanted to clarify so I do this correctly.

I don't think it's a dumb question at all. You are seeking clarification for something you don't fully understand, and you want to understand it. That's GREAT.

I look at it a different way.

Goal without intentional exercise: 1550
Exercise: 320
Goal including exercise (target for the day): 1550+320= 1870

Then you've logged 1200, so you are indeed 670 calories short of your daily target.


If you told MFP you wanted to lose 1kg per week (2.2 pounds), your target would be a deficit of 7700 calories per week or 1100 calories per day. That's already a large deficit. It means that, if the original goal of 1550 was correct, your daily deficit is actually 1770 calories. That seems like a very large deficit, and possibly unsustainable.

Please do look at the chart that @kshama2001 shared. Your deficit of 2.2 pounds per week is literally off the chart even if you have 80 pounds to lose.

There's another chart in the same area where @kshama2001 got that one. It's below and can show how too big a restriction can be counter productive. It doesn't even bring up the health effects it might lead to if you're able to actually stick to such a large deficit.