App not showing accurate results based on my goals imputed

denesanluciana

Hi,

I currently weigh 69.3 kg. I have a goal of losing 1 kg per week. Whenever I complete my diary, it shows, "If every day were like today, in 5 weeks you would weigh 66.4 kg," which is definitely not accurate.

I have checked my weight entries, and I am eating the number of calories provided for losing 1 kg per week. I don’t understand why it's showing me wrong numbers there. Any ideas ?

Thanks,
Luciana

Retroguy2000

I've been here several years, never closed my diary once. So I've never seen that estimate. You don't need to close yours.

AnnPT77

My idea is that it says "if every day were like today", and every day can't possibly be like today, so it's a dumb prediction.

More seriously: It's never been accurate for me, but using MFP has been successful for me for going on 9 years now, loss then maintenance.

Your personal weight loss trend, when averaged over 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycle for those who have them), tells the most accurate story about calorie needs, effective deficit, and whether we're succeeding in our weight management goals. Anything else - MFP, TDEE calculator, fitness tracker - is just an estimator that spits out the population-wide average for people who are similar to you in the few data values that estimator knows. You're not an average or a population, you're a unique individual.

Any of these tools are just giving us a starting estimate, to be validated by experience (or revised intelligently by us based on our experience). If we turn out to be close to average, they'll be close to accurate.

Don't give it any more power than that. That would be my suggestion.

Best wishes!

PAV8888

The fine print in guided setup says that if the speed of loss you're trying to dial in pushes you below the default sane minimum of 1200 Cal a day, MFP will prioritize safety to your desire for more speed and assign you to the minimum safe intake level of 1200.

Whether and under which circumstances edge cases make this a great or terrible idea are up for discussion. But there's a good chance that this is what's happening.

That said the prediction means absolutely nothing.

Your weekly intake as consistently recorded when compared to your weight level trend over a sufficient length of time (think 4 to 6 weeks or longer)... that's what's going to help you figure out how to adjust

cmriverside

I think her problem might be that she asked for a 1kg per week weight loss, but she only weighs 69.3kg (which is around 152 pounds.) Of course she doesn't tell us what the calories are that were recommended nor how tall she is, but I'm guessing that if she's being given a five week prediction of about a six pound weight loss, that her Goals work out to be close to a loss of one to 1.2 pounds per week.

The reason for that, denesan, is that (I assume) you don't have a whole lot of weight to lose. Myfitnesspal will only cut your calories to 1200. If that is where you are set (1200) then the weight loss it is predicting would be for one pound per week...and that's the most you can expect to lose in a healthy way because you don't have enough body fat to lose a kg a week and be above 1200 calories.

yirara

Yeah, you are likely too light to lose 1kg per week. This goal is really only for very obese people who have a lot of weight to lose. The lighter you are the less energy your body needs, hence weightloss will be slower.