Including boyfat in calcs

jenanon1

Hi folks
I could do with some advice, or even better confirmation that my throughts are on the right track.
my diary is open, and if you go back to the start of Jan, I've logged two days of typical pre-mfp eating. Before starting mfp I was maintaining ok, possibly gaining slowly.
my starting weight was a guess, scale weight is only accurate for the last 2 weeks.
I have been logging accurately, not cheating, weighing rather than eyeballing where possible.
I dont log drinks because I only drink water.
I work in a desk job so sedentary.
ive been messing about with logging calories burned, but not convinced of accuracy
I'm not feeling deprived particularly, and could happily keep eating 1500 - 1600 cals or so for the foreseeable future.

ok. So my mfp calcs say I should be losing 2lbs a week. However, when I input bodyfat % into a bmr calculator, my bmr is around 1600 (58% body fat). Tdee is around 1900, so currently eating a deficit of 300ish a day. Sort of makes sense that I'm not losing quickly then.
so if I can manage on 1500-1600 a day, but can up my exercise levels, I could lose more than the paltry 0.8lbs a week that is theoretically currently possible.

so frustrating that I have loads to lose, but it seems that unless I starve, its going to have to be slow and steady (very very slow and steady!)

Does this make sense, and does anyone have any tips that might make me a bit less frustrated?!

yarwell

I follow your logic, the standard formula used by MFP gets a bit carried away with the BMR of obese people and the body fat based ones are better.

Some of your logging just has calories and not the macros (carbs/fat/protein)

If you could take out some bread or pasta here and there it would speed things up. Don't drop the protein or fats though.

LexiMelo

Hi Jen, great job in those 15 lbs! I checked out your diary, there is a lot of calorie dense food there but very little veggies. If you are concerned with satiety, try working some higher volume foods in there. For instance last night I had 4 oz chicken breast (baked with layer of hot sauce) 1 c brown rice, 5 asparagus 1/2 onion, 1/2 c black beans, the veggies sautéed in 1/2 T of fat and it was approximately 500 calories. This meal literally took up my entire 13" plate. (I added Jamaican jerk seasoning it was sooo yummy) Sometimes adding a handful of arugula will bring up the volume of the food too for very little calories. Just some ideas on how to stick to 1500-1600 calories per day!

Remember if you can lose it quickly you could regain it quickly! Slow and steady wins the race (and also allows the skin time to tighten naturally)

P.s. I got a fitbit and I'm in love. It literally makes me take the stairs at work and some of my coworkers and I have a friendly step competition going on. (Dance party in the living room to up our steps for the day? You got it! Lol) it really does help me see how many calories I'm really burning (as opposed to a blank "sedentary")

Annie_01

I have taken a slightly different approach...might not work for others but for me it has and still does work for me.

At me SW 246 I ate 1200. Because of my knees and hips my exercise was minimal. I stayed at 1200 until I lost the first 25lbs.

At 225lbs I raised my calorie goal to 1300-1400. By this time my exercise ability had increased.

At 200lbs I increased my calories to 1400-1500 and exercise more.

During all phases I sometimes ate my exercise calories back and sometimes I didn't...depended on how hard my efforts were.

At 175lbs I will start eating at the maintenance level of my GW which is 145lbs which will put me at about 1800 calories a day.

So far by using this method I have averaged losing 2lbs a week...notice I said averaged...I do not lose consistently every week...sometimes nothing...then I will lose up to 7lbs in one week...a little frustrating at times but I know that the weight loss will catch up. Increasing my calories as I go has not slowed the average down.

I fully expect the last 25lbs to be rather slow and I am okay with that.

The first 50lbs I concentrated on weight loss and beginning exercise but didn't concern myself with nutrients. When I hit the half way mark my focus changed slightly to nutrients and increasing the intensity of my workouts. I split my workouts between cardio and strength training along with exercises designed to help my worn out joints.

I use MFP's suggestions as a basis of where to start but I tweak them to fit what I feel my body needs and what I am able to stick with.

Francl27

Where do you get your body fat % from though? It's actually pretty hard to get it exactly, you have to use calipers and measure it that way... the rest is just an approximation.

But you don't have to starve to lose weight. Eat more filling foods (high protein, high fiber), limit processed foods that are typically not filling for the calories. And remember that all those calculators are just approximations. I've always used the 'lose 1 lb a week' setting (until I switched to TDEE-20%) and ended up losing an average of 1.5 lb a week.

jenanon1

Thanks to all for your comments, its nice to know my theories sort of make sense, and corroborate what is happening on the scale. I'm going to try adding in a bit more cardio, eat a few less carbs and definitely more weights / muscle work to see if that will help increase my deficit. Given my experience of maintaining at 2k cals, I reckon that mfp is being very generous with its calcs for me, so I'll put up with slow loss and keep going with a target of 1500-1600 which I know I can maintain without cheating or feeling deprived. Slow and steady will have to win this race

nenshali

Hello dear friend!

I just wanted to leave this link here: http://www.hussmanfitness.org/bmrcalc.htm
Here you can also give in some measurements etc.. which I found (and still find) helpful to get a more accurate number.
While MFP would have set me ~1200 kcal (I must confess I also don't know anymore what I logged in how fast to lose the weight), I got a BMR of 1450 kcal per day.

Good luck with it!