Goals changing

2bullis

hello there I need some help here, I'm changing my weight goal but the daily calorie goal remains the same, I saved the changes, I refreshed the page. I use Chrome.. please any ideas?

Lietchi

Your weight goal doesn't affect your calorie goal. What will influence it: your selected activity rate and chosen rate of loss.

2bullis

yes I adjusted these but for example with the same selected activity rate and rate of loss, it gave me the same daily calorie goal for 80kg and for 85kg

yirara

How big is your weekly weightloss goal and how many calories do you get? If you get 1200 (female) or 1500 (male) then your weightloss goal is too aggressive. MFP would never give you less than this, thus if you changed your goal and you still get this then reduce your weightloss goal per week to a lower number.

2bullis

for weight goal of 80kg and 85kg, it gives me the same daily calorie goal, I choose a 0.5kg loss rate per week and light activity

Lietchi

2bullis wrote: »

for weight goal of 80kg and 85kg, it gives me the same daily calorie goal, I choose a 0.5kg loss rate per week and light activity

I'm going to repeat myself: your goal weight does not impact your calorie goal.
Your calorie goal = number of calories estimated for weight maintenance minus calorie deficit required to reach the rate of loss you selected. Goal weight is not relevant for your calorie goal.

AnnPT77

2bullis wrote: »

for weight goal of 80kg and 85kg, it gives me the same daily calorie goal, I choose a 0.5kg loss rate per week and light activity

To put what Lietchi is saying in a different way:

Let's say I'm currently 100kg. If I choose a given weight loss rate (let's use 0.5kg like in your case), I will expect to lose half a kilo a week, right?

To lose half a kilo per week, MFP will give me a calorie goal that is 550 calories lower daily than the number of calories it thinks I'd need to eat to stay at my 100kg weight. That's because a pound of fat is roughly 7700 calories worth of energy. Half a kilo is therefore about 3850 calories worth of energy. Because there are seven days in a week, I need to eat 550 calories fewer daily than my body burns up in calorie energy (because 3850 divided by 7 is 550). Do you follow me so far?

So if my goal is 80kg, I have 20 kg to lose in total. If I lose that half a kg per week, it will take me 40 weeks to get to 80kg. (40 weeks times half a kilo per week = total of 20 kilos.)

But if my goal is 85kg, I have 15 kg to lose in total. If I stick with losing that half a kg per week, it will take me 30 weeks to get to 85 kg. (30 weeks times half a kilo per week = 15 kilos).

So if we keep asking MFP for the same weight loss rate, we get the same calorie goal, in this example, our estimated weight maintenance calories minus 550.

When we change the goal weight, what changes is the number of weeks it would take to reach that weight, not the number of calories we need to eat. The number of calories is all about how fast we want to lose the weight, not how many weeks it will take to reach goal.

I hope that makes sense.

P.S. In reality, the arithmetic is a little more complicated. As a person gets lighter in weight, it takes fewer calories per day to do whatever we do, i.e., the number of calories to stay at (say) 90 kg is fewer than the number of calories to stay at 100 kg. Therefore, our weight loss rate is likely to gradually slow down. If we go back through MFP guided setup every 5 kg or so lost, it will recalculate the calorie goal to keep the same loss rate.

2bullis

AnnPT77 thank you for your time to give me this analysis, now it's crystal clear, thanks also Lietchi for your time.