Needing clarification on numbers please!

staciecrooks
staciecrooks Posts: 11
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello, I'm a little intimidated to post but figured I needed the help so thank you in advance to anyone who can dumb this down for me!
I have been using myfitnesspal for over a year. I measure and weigh my food so I'm pretty comfortable that I'm inputting accuratley. I am 5'8 and 212 lbs. I've managed to lose about 60 lbs since October 2012, I feel good about that, but I'm not done! I am trying to stick to about 1200 calories a day per my doctors advise. I have a desk job and after work I go to school. My exersize routine consists of 20-30 minutes of treadmill in the morning and some dumbbells whenever I can fit it in. I am only getting about 6.5 hours of sleep a night.
I'm starting to worry that I'm not seeing the numbers on the scale go down. From what I've read on TDEE I should have enough of a deficit that I see weight loss but I'm thinking I"m doing something wrong. I knwo I should get more cardio in and I'm trying to do what I can as I am able... i.e. park far away, take steps, wahtever. For right now, I have no time until school is out to do the gym. I have three kids and I'm doing the best I can. Amy I calculating things wrong? Myfitnesspal has me at 1200 calories a day and my doctor said that is approrpiate but I can't help but wonder if my body is in "starvation mode". Most of the time I am not very hungry. I drink a lot of water as Colorado is really dry.
Thoughts?

Replies

  • deksgrl
    deksgrl Posts: 7,237 Member
    MFP assumes you will do no exercise and does not give you calories for that UNTIL you exercise. So are you eating 1200 PLUS more for exercise calories? (also known as 1200 NET calories).
  • deksgrl
    deksgrl Posts: 7,237 Member
    Also suggest you set MFP to lose 1 pound per week if it is not already.
  • Shaky44
    Shaky44 Posts: 214 Member
    A few thoughts:

    - Congrats on your weight loss! Losing 60 lbs is awesome.

    - If you are legitimately consuming 1200 calories per day, then you should be losing closer to 10 lbs / month for your TDEE.

    - With all due respect to your doctor and MFP's goal calculation model, I think your intake goal should be higher: closer to 1700 (or even 1900, although I think 1700 is fine considering your weight loss goals). I would just hard-code that number into MFP without going through their calculation model. I'm not sure if you are eating back calories now, but under this system you would not eat back calories.

    - I suspect you need to really buckle down on weighing and measuring food.

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