Do you reset your MFP goals?

amy19355

I have reset my goals in the app after losing 20 pounds and it lowered the amount of calories per day based on the new lower weight that the reset goal used.

I have since lost an additional 15 pounds, and my final target is another 30 pounds off.

I’m wondering if other folks reset their goals for a long-term weight loss goal or do you just leave it at the initial and go with it?

AnnPT77

Personal choice.

If you keep the same calorie goal, eventually you'll most likely lose weight more slowly, because a smaller body requires fewer calories. That may be OK, maybe even a positive thing, as long as you're still progressing toward your goals at a pace that works for you.

I'd add that some people find they automatically get more active as they get thinner, mostly in daily life stuff but maybe also some contribution from increased exercise intensity or performance as fitness also improves. The added activity burns some extra calories, possibly enough to partially offset some of the calorie needs reduction from being smaller. Whether or how much that may happen is very individual and unpredictable. It'll show up in the multi-week weight loss rate trend, though.

I didn't auto-reset my calorie goal by going back through guided setup as I lost weight. I made decisions about what I wanted my weight loss rate to be - slower as I got lighter, to minimize health risks and risk of muscle loss - and then reset calorie goal manually to where I wanted it. That worked well for me.

I think the key factor generally is watching weight loss rate, then thinking about your personal preferences.

cmriverside

Yeah, like Ann, I didn't reset it - well, not downward.

I mean - to be honest I wasn't sticking to it anyway. Doesn't it just lower it by about a calorie per pound? Pretty insignificant in the big picture.

If I had started at, "Lose 1 pound per week," like the program suggested, I would have been a lot better off. As it was I started at a too-low calorie goal and ended up raising my calories when I crashed and burned from no energy (and other physical issues caused by eating too little.) So I didn't go down in calories, I went up - by about 300 per day. That's where I would have been had I started at, "Lose 1 pound per week."

After you've logged food for a couple months you get a good dataset. You can base decisions going forward on that.

yirara

I never did. But I never chose the guided setup with the 0.5-2lbs per week defaults but chose my own calorie goal. Obviously, as I lost weight weightloss slowed down, and in the end my deficit was just about 300kcal per day. But it worked for me.

rockyhi512

It would be nice if MFP had a time frame listed when calculating the calories. I have another 35 lbs to lose but do not plan to achieve this loss until end of October. MFP suggests that I should be Eating 1200 calories, but I am using 1600 as my goal give or take 100. I managed to lose 30 in the last three months with out sacrificing tasty meals. I know that as I lose that amount will be lots, but I am also looking forward to when I achieve my goals and will have to maintain. I also change the macros as I follow low carb/keto format of eating.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48590543#Comment_48590543

If you know your current weight loss rate at X average calories per week, you can get a fairly reasonable estimate of a timeline. If you have a lot left to lose, and want to discount your loss rate since in theory we burn fewer calories when lighter, use a TDEE calculator to estimate the amount to adjust calorie needs downward based on weight change. I'm not saying to use the calculator's calorie needs estimate as gospel, I'm suggesting using its estimate of X fewer calories per 10 pounds lost (or 5 pounds, or whatever) to estimate the rate of decrease in your loss rate as you get lighter, using your experiential estimated current calorie needs as the starting point. Close enough, I'd bet.

I think it would be reasonably manageable arithmetic. Of course, most of us hated story problems in middle school math classes, and it IS a story problem. 😆

I think there are some outside calculators in existence that let you specify a goal weight and target date, then estimate the calories you need to accomplish that, if that's what you're talking about. It's been a while since I looked at it, but the NIH body weight planner may work that way, not certain.

That all said: Honestly, I don't think the calendar is a good weight loss tool. I feel like focusing on the timeline puts the emphasis in an unhelpful place. Maybe it's just me, but I preferred the emphasis to be on establishing some permanently-sustainable healthier habits, and on paying attention to balancing loss rate with other factors (especially stressors) in my life to keep energy level up and health solid all along the way. To me, weight loss isn't a project with an end date, it's a process of figuring out a new, healthier sustainable way to live . . . ideally for the rest of my life.

It's fine to use one strategy for losing early on, and switch, but I do think there's value to switching to maintenance-like habits (keeping a deficit) in the later phases of loss. Having that deficit still happening is a nice cushion in case of oopsies in maintenance-habit experiments.

To me, waiting to figure out the new habits at maintenance time seems like a high risk approach, lots of radical change all at once, some of it challenging. However, I'm sure I'm biased by doing it the other way: Maintenance was easy when all I needed to do was gradually increase calorie intake in total by a few hundred per day, and not need to change anything else I was doing. YMMV.

rms62003

I started with the calculated daily calorie goal from MFP, but found a better goal myself by trial and error. Unfortuately the human body doesn't read the books and doesn't follow the formulas!

I think everyone has to fiddle with it a little and find the best goal for them.