Seriously?? How many calories?!

thechaffinmexican

Ok. So, I weigh 219 and I'm trying to lose about 70 pounds. Ideally, I'd love to be losing 2 lbs. a week. MFP gave me 1200 calories/week, but I felt like that was too few, so I upped it to 1380 earlier this week.
However, I came across that Scoobie Workshop calorie calculator and, based on my goals, etc. it gave me 2208. !!

That seems INSANE to me. That's way too many, right??

I work out 5 days/week, with anywhere from 45-60 minutes of cardio and some weight training. I'm pretty new to this, so I just want to make sure I start out right and don't get myself all screwed up.

(This is where I got the crazy calorie amount from - http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ )

gigglesinthesun

MFP expects you to log your exercise and then eat those calories back. I suspect also that for scoobie you didn't put yourself as sedentary either. In the end though you pick one calorie allowance and try it for 4-6 weeks and then see what you lost on average and go from there.

To lose 2lbs a week you have a daily deficit of 1000 calories, to lose 1lbs its 500. So if you start out eating 1600 and you lose 3lbs on average per week then you know you can eat more. If you only lose 1lbs you know that either your logging is off or you are not burning as much as you think you are.

unFATuated

MFP expects you to log your exercise and then eat those calories back. I suspect also that for scoobie you didn't put yourself as sedentary either. In the end though you pick one calorie allowance and try it for 4-6 weeks and then see what you lost on average and go from there.

To lose 2lbs a week you have a daily deficit of 1000 calories, to lose 1lbs its 500. So if you start out eating 1600 and you lose 3lbs on average per week then you know you can eat more. If you only lose 1lbs you know that either your logging is off or you are not burning as much as you think you are.

THIS ^^

neandermagnon

using the TDEE method (like the scooby calculator) you need to be realistic about your activity factor:

sedentary = sitting on your butt all day pretty much

lightly active = on your feet all day, OR sedentary job plus gym/exercise/sport in the evenings for moderate intensity workouts, or walking a lot

moderately active = on your feet all day AND at the gym in the evenings

very active = manual labour job or a similar amount of exercise, i.e. you're pretty much on your feet doing fairly strenuous stuff for a big chunk of the day nearly every day


^^^^ the above is a guide, not a definitive written-in-stone statement, because some jobs where you're on your feet all day you could be moderately active without going to the gym, it really depends how much you have to move around and how much lifting and carrying you have to do. Most people don't fall neatly into one category or another. And some people drastically underestimate their activity factor (e.g. saying they're sedentary when they're on their feet all day because they don't go to the gym) or overestimate it (putting very active because they go to the gym 3x a week even though they have a sedentary job)

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using the MFP method you should log and eat back exercise calories, if you do the maths right, the total number of calories eaten after eating exercise calories should be about the same as what TDEE calculators give you for a total daily amount to eat at a given deficit (using this method you don't eat back exercise calories). They're two different methods to calculate the same thing, i.e. how many calories you need to eat to lose weight. Remember that these are estimates, you need to observe your actual results, i.e. whether you're losing weight on that number, whether you're excessively hungry etc, and then adjust the number based on that. No calculator on the planet can tell you exactly how many calories you're burning, and it's not going to be exactly the same each day either. But the goal is to find a number that gives you enough food to feel satisfied and eat all the foods you want in sensible portions, where you can stick to this number in the long term, yet low enough that you're still losing weight steadily.

Serena272

Bump

TavistockToad

i would start with a higher amount, and then reduce your cals slightly if necessary - the more food you can eat and still lose weight, the better!

mcibty

i would start with a higher amount, and then reduce your cals slightly if necessary - the more food you can eat and still lose weight, the better!

This. It was glorious when I realised I could eat more than 1,200.

89nunu

Pretty much all of the above.

Let's look at it realistically, with 70 lbs to lose you will be here for quite some time. Doing 1200 calories or even 1380 calories for a week or two is managable but for 6 months or even longer?

Do you really want to do that?

So I'd say start higher and see how much you can lose that way, you can always go further down if you feel comfortable to do so and want to speed things up a bit.

And of course: Eat back your exercise calories!! If you do so, your mfp calories shouldn't be to far off what scooby says (apart from that the -20% from scoobys calculator might not actually result in a 2lb loss)

ETA: I mean this in the nicest possible way. Have this kitteh gif to show my sincerity:

thechaffinmexican

Thank you, everyone!! You're all so helpful (and no one was snarky)! I appreciate it. This is all hard for me to figure out, so thanks for your input!

katiemegcz

Glad you posted this! I had the same question and the answers helped.

IrishGabriella

Glad you posted this! I had the same question and the answers helped.

Same here. I'm getting myself v confused. I've been on 1200 cals for a few months , & exercising for about an hour 4/5 times a week. I was eating back a lot of those exercise earned cals. I've been losing weight slowly & steadily. Then I too decided to go have a look at Scoobies site & got some mad amount of cals too! A lot of people say 1200 cals is too low..
So I've upped my cals to1400 for the past week & I've gained 5lbs! :sad: I don't know what to do now?! Go back to 1200 cals?

Sorry OP for hijacking your thread.