Are my calories wrong?

Talecia4300

5'7 female secondary 288

2700 calories per day for .5 weightloss a week

AnnPT77

Not enough information: Age, activity level - both daily life stuff like job/home chores, and intentional exercise? I'm assuming female from the ID, but I could be wrong. I'm also assuming you mean 0.5 pounds, so I'll run with that; the answer would be somewhat different if you mean 0.5 kilos, but maybe not dramatically different.

Not impossible that 2700 would give you half a pound a week loss, if you're somewhat active. If that's the number MFP gave you based on the most accurate data you can put in your MFP profile when you told it you want to lose half a pound a week, high odds that's at least close.

Try it for 4-6 weeks, sticking close, like +/- 50 calories daily on average; then look at your average actual weekly loss over the whole time period. If you have menstrual cycles, go for at least one whole cycle so you can compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles.

The tricky part is that a slower loss rate like half a pound a week can be more likely to play peek-a-boo on the scale for longer than a faster loss rate, so it could take a little longer than the above to find out. But that's the way to know.

If you're female and around age 30, you'd be expected to burn around 2000 calories daily flat on your back in bed for the full 24 hours, in a coma, because that'd be your estimated basal metabolic rate, BMR. If lots older, BMR wouldn't be lots lower, either. If you're male, BMR would be around 300 calories higher.

IMO, 1400 gross calories eaten would be crazy low, unhealthfully low. Even 1900 is fairly low, but we'd need more details to have a better feel whether it's too low, or just at the aggressive end of possible, instead.

If your 2700 estimate came from a research-based calorie calculator like MFP, using accurate personal data inputs, I can't imagine why polling random idiots like me on the internet would give you a more accurate answer.

If the problem is that the number seems high to you . . . it's a myth that all women need to eat tiny numbers of calories to lose weight as if they were delicate little birds; and you picked a slow loss rate, which isn't a wrong move but which will give you more calories to eat. (Some women would need to eat 1400 or fewer calories to lose half a pound a week, but they're much shorter, lighter, probably older than you are, and quite inactive.)

yirara

Sounds ok, without knowing more about you. But you're quite heavy, and a heavy body needs a lot of calories just to keep you alive. Plus anything other than laying on bed on top: yeah.

Talecia4300

When I hit complete diary yesterday it popped up that I WOULD GAIN .5 POUNDS IN 5 WEEKS* 😭 I checked my settings and I have it set to lose .5 a week. My calories are not correct, mfp came up with the number. I have looked up my info on other sites but no numbers are consistent

Talecia4300

I would love to eventually do a 2 pound weight loss per week but I can't even get the numbers right for a .5 loss weekly

AnnPT77

Don't believe the "in 5 weeks" thing. It's generally idiotic.

You say: "My calories are not correct, mfp came up with the number."

In particular, if you checked ALL your profile entries - not just loss rate - and they're all correct, and you got a calorie goal . . . why decide to disbelieve that goal and instead believe the "in 5 weeks" message you're getting from the very same piece of software?

Since they conflict, I get why you're confused and alarmed, truly. And yes, they're both estimates. But the initial calorie estimate - assuming correct data entered - has higher odds of being correct than the "in 5 weeks", which is - mathematically and practically speaking - a much shakier foundation.

Let me repeat something I said earlier: You will know whether your calorie goal is right by following it reasonably closely for 4-6 weeks or one whole menstrual cycle, and comparing results to target loss rate.

Better yet, if you take that persistent approach, even if it IS wrong, you will have all the information you need to adjust it to be much more personalized and accurate for you. That personalized estimate is a super powerful thing to have as you move forward. Personally, I wouldn't be in year 9+ of maintaining a loss from obese to healthy weight, if I didn't have that personalized estimate.

You also wrote "I have looked up my info on other sites but no numbers are consistent". I believe you. But generally, they're all based on one of the same two or three research-based estimates of our basal metabolic rate (BMR), then they add calories to adjust for daily life activity and exercise, both of which burn calories on top of BMR. Since nearly all of them hide that arithmetic from you, it's hard to see where the differences arise. It's not from magic. 😉😆 There is no magic.

A few things about the multiple sources.

1. Usually they're only differing by a couple of hundred calories. That may seem like kind of a big deal, but it's not a total deal-breaker. Just pick one to use for the 4-6 week trial. MFP is a reasonable choice.
2. Be aware that MFP is designed to have us set our activity level based on our life excluding intentional exercise, then log exercise when we do some, and eat those calories, too. There are other ways to use MFP if you don't want to do that, but that inherently makes MFP's estimates differ somewhat from other sites that are designed to average in calorie burn from planned intentional exercise.
3. Different sites use different ways of defining the daily life/exercise activity level they use to adjust BMR to estimate total daily calorie needs (a.k.a. Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE). That's going to make the estimates differ. Loosely, the more different levels, the more clear/complete the descriptions, the more likely we can dial in our estimate more closely.
4. If you want a site that lets you compare multiple different research-based methods for estimating BMR, has lots of different activity levels with reasonably clear descriptions, and that shows all its arithmetic, try this one: https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/ . That one looks complicated at first because there's so much information, but take a deep breath and step your way through it. You can understand it if you do that. You can even average all the estimates if you wish and use that result.

You wrote: "I would love to eventually do a 2 pound weight loss per week but I can't even get the numbers right for a .5 loss weekly."

I'm going to lead with tough love: You are catastrophizing about this - basically saying "if I can't do up this one buckle on my armor, I'm going to lose the whole war.". All that does is create excuses for giving up. You're not going to give up, right? It's going to take patience and persistence, yes. But you can succeed. Again, take a deep breath.

If you'd like more help with your MFP set up, one option would be to take a screen capture of your profile settings, and post it on this thread. I know that's scary, but we'd do our best to help you.

We would probably ask more questions then - true. But we want you to succeed. For myself, losing weight and keeping it off has been such a huge quality of life improvement for me, I want that for everyone else who'll commit to doing the work, including you. From having posted here for almost a decade, I'm quite confident that others want to help equally much. That's not a demand that you post the screen shot, by the way, it's an offer, one you can take or leave.

Here's another option to consider: You say all the sources differ which worries you, and you'd like to lose faster but are struggling with the set-up. One thing that could work in your situation, since you still have a fair amount of weight to lose, would be to take your 2700 estimate, knock off another 500 to get a 2200 goal, and stick close to that for 4-6 weeks. If you want to compare that to all the other sources, you can estimate your total daily calorie needs (TDEE) with as many other calculators as you like, knock off the same number of calories from all of them for the same half a pound per week weight loss (which would be 250 calories), and if any of those come out lower than 2200 - which I think they won't - come back here and give us the details and we'll help you sort things out.

P.S. If MFP's right about your calorie needs at 2700 calories to lose half a pound a week, 2200 should yield a pound and a half weekly weight loss, but that's not absurdly fast at your current weight, as long as you find you can stick with it. If MFP's wrong - too high - the 2200 definitely ought to be low enough to yield at least some loss without being punitively low. I'd still say your best bet, if you really want the half a pound a week rate, would be to test-drive the 2700 for 4-6 weeks or one cycle, staying calm about any weight changes up or down anywhere along the way, then use that set of results to adjust your calorie goal going forward. Even if you gained weight during that period of time, you'd get that good information and be able to use it to dial in success.

You have quite a bit of weight to lose, so realistically it's going to take months, up to a small number of years even, maybe. Investing a month or two in getting solid estimates up front is going to pay off.

Repeating: I want you to succeed, even though I'm a total stranger. Maybe think of me as your concerned internet auntie who wants to help you do that, because I'm for sure old enough to be your auntie.

Best wishes!