No wonder why everyone is confused!!!

Go_Mizzou99

tyvm chocolate lab with the small bladder. Enjoyed this post!

BTW - I had to increase my calories per day by 250/day to stop losing weight.

I think the biggest problem is selecting the activity level...some days I am sedentary and other days very VERY active.

pdelgrosso

If you haven't lost weight you are eating too much. MFP is really just simple math. To lose 2 lbs you have to drop 7000 calories a week from your diet....1 lb is 3500 calories. I am 6' and dropped my last 52 lbs with MFP at about 2 lbs a week on average. It started me at 1900 and then every 10 lbs it dropped me 200 calories until I was at 1250 Keep in mind that the 1250 is before exercise so a quick 1/2 hour walk with my wife added about 180-200 calories ...so now 1450 calories. Stick to the numbers and use a heart rate monitor and Endomondo (or just Endomondo as it has an incredibly accurate estimate without the HR monitor for the 30 or so exercises it lists) for exercise calorie tracking. Stick to the numbers and you will reach your goal much faster. Skip the weights for now and add them in once you she'd 25-30 lbs to help tone that last bit and boost the metabolism near the end.

Annie_01

Not to beat a dead horse, but.......

.... in a fit of sleeplessness at 4 a.m. this morning (thanks to a chocolate lab with a small bladder), I did a quick survey of 15 online weight loss calculators to see how many calories each would recommend I consume to lose 1 pound a week. In all cases, I entered my age, height, current weight, and activity level and I was conservative with this. I was a little surprised to see the wide range of answers. Here they are:

Freedieting.com 1850
Mayoclinic.com 1450
Caloriecount.com 1699
Self.com 2400
My-calorie-counter.com 2000
Exrx.net 2500
ACE fitness.org 2229
webMD.com 1452 + exercise cals (200)=1652
fitwatch.com 1750
healthstatus.com 1700
healthyweightforum.com 1840
healthcalc.com 2000
fpnotebook.com 2000
Shape.com 1934
Iifym.com 1850

1923 calories is the average answer for these 15 websites. This is much higher than I've been eating. MFP suggested I eat 1250 and my dietician cousin suggested 1330 (but advised me not to eat any exercise calories). I am eating nowhere close to 1923 and after a 5 lb. loss in my first week, I have only been losing .5 a pound a week for a total loss of 8 lbs. in 7 weeks.

So I'm going to try eating more to see if I will lose closer to 1 lb. per week, which is what many of you have advised. Maybe upping my calories will speed up my weight loss? We will see....I have 40 to lose, so I expected to drop more weight initially since I have a ways to go. Hasn't happened.

It just goes to show you that there is so much information out there and sifting through it all to figure out what is legitimate or not is a challenge. No wonder why so many folks are confused!

I did the exact same thing this afternoon. I too came up with the variables using the TDEE formulas. Some of them varied as much as 300 calories.

I decided to stick with what I am doing since it has been working for me and have been meeting my nutrient levels. Right now I am averaging 2lbs a week but at some point I want to slow that down as I get closer to goal weight...though I am guessing as I lose weight since my BMR and my exercise burn rate will decrease it will take care of it for me.

cwolfman13

I would be curious to see what you put in for loss rates on those various calculators. I have found some variation between calculators, but for the most part they're all in the ball park if you're comparing apples to apples loss rate goals. For example, you can't compare a 2 Lb per week loss rate goal on MFP to a 20% or less cut from TDEE because that 20% cut or less is going to be 1 Lb per week or less. Also you have to factor in that MFP uses your NEAT rather than your TDEE which means you're supposed to be eating exercise calories back.


The differences between various TDEE calculators has more to do with how that particular calculator is factoring in exercise. Ultimately, these calculators are just intended to be a good starting point....nobody has a TDEE of exactly some number these calculators spit out. Ultimately it still comes down to the individual making adjustments as per real world results.

wonderwoman234

Okay so weigh in #1 since starting my experiment and......

I am down 1 pound since eating MORE CALORIES....about 100-200 more per day. I will see what next week brings but it's great to know I can eat a bit more and it got me over the .5/lb a week plateau.

Given how careful I am about logging, weighing food, and how hard I am working out (heavy lifting and adding weight each week and kicking *kitten* and intense cardio), I would like to think this is early evidence that too much calorie restriction actually slows your weight loss because your body is trying to hold on to every source of energy to get what it needs.

Still, I will continue testing this theory for several more weeks.

allana1111

yes no wonder I am so confused!

eso2012

What confusion? Never confused, I know exactly how much to eat down to the .00 digit. NOT

Thanks for the info!!!!!

rockmama72

When I cut my calories to 1400 I tend to be less accurate with logging and cheat more which ends in either gaining or maintaining.

This is so true...

YEP! The extra couple hundred calories makes all the difference in the world--I can have some wine without blowing through my limit and I don't feel like I've ruined my day. My logging has been so much more consistent.

Galatea_Stone

OP, I'm glad you have found something that works for you.

When it comes to my calorie intake, I use a TDEE method, but I have to subtract several years from my actual age to get it to be more accurate. I attribute that awesome discovery to strength training. And the more I train and the leaner I appear, the more I get to eat. When I started out, I maintained on 1895 and lost on 1400-1500, while doing at least 60-90 minutes of cardio a day. Now, I maintain on 2200-2300 and lose on 1800 doing 30-40 minutes of cardio a day and weight training 30-60 minutes 5X a week.

Because the data that the programs use can be inaccurate (e.g., calorie burns from exercise, body fat percent considerations, overall health of the person), very few people are going to find the formulas precise, and most are going to have to tweak after trial and error.

Tweak as needed.

Eleonora91

I usually get different results while calculating my recommended intake to lose a certain amount of weight or even just to mantain my weight... but they're usually not so different from each other.

wonderwoman234

Here is some research I found on too much calorie restriction:

Why Low-Calorie Diets Slow Your Metabolism

If you are on a very low-calorie diet, you may wonder why the numbers on your scale aren’t budging, but your diet buddy is slimmer by the month.

The reality is that different people respond differently to low-calorie diets. When your body senses that food may not be in plentiful supply, it may slow down your metabolism as protection against the possibility of starvation, even if you are obese and deliberately trying to lose weight.

“In some people, the metabolic rate [how fast the body burns calories] is only slightly reduced to make up the shortfall in energy difference, while in others it is far greater. It is this variability in the metabolic rate with energy restriction that causes much of the variability in weight loss between people,” explains Leanne M. Redman, PhD, an instructor of human physiology at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. Redman and colleagues have been studying the impact of very low-calorie diets on weight loss and other measures of health."

By Madeline Vann, MPH
Medically reviewed by Lindsey Marcellin, MD, MPH

This is good to keep in mind, since some people said I was eating "too much" and that was why weight loss was slow. It's about finding the sweet spot, I guess.