Question about calorie deficit

shaywarren18
shaywarren18 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
When I type in all my stats in my profile and put that I want to lose .5lb a week. Is the number it gives me my maintenance or is that what I eat to lose .5 lb a week?

Best Answer

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    Answer ✓
    It's what MFP estimates you'd need to eat to lose half a pound a week.

    Two things to keep in mind:

    1. It's an estimate, basically the number of calories the average person with your demographics would need to lose at that rate. Most people are close to average, but a few can be noticeably different from average (high or low) and a truly rare few can be surprisingly far from average. Once you have enough weeks of personal data, you can use your personal results to adjust your calorie goal if necessary.

    2. With a slow loss rate - which is entirely most appropriate for some of us - it can take longer for those personal results to show up clearly on the bodyweight scale. It's normal for body weight to fluctuate by several pounds from one day to the next from perfectly healthy shifts of water retention, or varying amounts of food waste in our digestive tract on its way to the exit. Those larger fluctuations will play peek-a-boo on the scale with the smaller-magnitude gradual fat loss. For someone losing a pound or more a week, 4-6 weeks (at least one whole menstrual cycle if a person has them) is usually enough time to see a trend. Losing slowly, it could take more time to be sure, realistically.

    Over about my first years of maintenance after a big loss, my weight had crept up a little beyond ideal, though still in a healthy range. I decided to lose very slowly, which was perfect and quite painless. However, I saw that above effect quite clearly. :D At the most extreme, there was a period of around 6 weeks at one point where I was pretty sure I was losing fat, but the scale looked like ups/downs around the same weight. At the end of that phase, there was a bigger drop, landing me right where I expected based on my personalized calorie needs estimate. Bodies can be weird!

    Wishing you success!

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