new & any advice greatly appreciated

dotjust4

I am new to this site. Any positive & realistic advice would be greatly appreciated.

aliceinweightlossland

Hi dot! Welcome to MFP. :flowerforyou:

The best advice I can give you is the following:

- Always eat above 1200 calories. Just because you want to lose weight, doesn't mean you should ignore fueling your body.

- Pay attention to nutrition. Calcium, Protein, Vitamin D, etc... are you getting enough? Your macros are just as important as the number of calories.

- Drink lots of water. Are you thirsty? You shouldn't be. If you're dry, you're not drinking enough. Aim for half your body weight in ounces of water. Your kidneys and skin will thank you.

- Take one day at a time. Had a good day? Awesome! Had a bad day? No worries. Tomorrow is another day. Just keep at it.

- Keep finding ways to stay interested. There really isn't instant gratification when it comes to health & fitness. Try new exercises. Experiment with new foods. Have fun!

Best of luck. Feel free to add me if you like. I've got a long way to go, and I'm in it for the long haul.

asciiqwerty

check out the pinned thread in the forums ares on nutrition, weight loss and being new to mfp

there are lots of good information threads written by experienced users

ihad

This link has great information for people starting out:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

Good luck!

MelissaPhippsFeagins

Welcome! I've lost 44.4 pounds using MFP and my advice is:

1) find some exercise you will do and do it. I have a friend at work who walks with me at lunch. one day a week every other week, we break from walking and hit the farmer's market.

2) eat what you want, but measure it all and count it all. You may need a food scale for this. I have worked with food my whole life and didn't need the scale. When you start weighing food for the family businessfarm at 4, by 44 you know what ounces looks like. (It was what I could do to help, so they let me do it. And now you know why I love the farmer's market.)

3) Eat to the goal. I'd rather be 50 calories over than 200 calories under. Don't worry about whether it's a green or red number - the goal is the goal.

4) Be consistent.

Good luck!!!

Tertini

Hello... I am very new to this application and even I know what should be done, I am not sure about the amount of calories that is shown on the first page - especially the "net" - when I do not do any activity, I do not have a problem to understand. However, if I do any exercise, the amount I burned is added to the basic amount. When I need to lose weight, I suppose that I should make a calorie deficit, so I do not need to eat all calories shown... Am I right? I suppose there should be at lest 500 cal. deficit (more on outcome of course :-))...
Please, help me :-o

Thank you very much and good luck!

Tertini

dotjust4

Thanks your words of advice are awesome.

Daniellev2

Take it slow, and make realistic goals. Don't weigh yourself too often, because the scale is a tool, not a defining factor.

animatorswearbras

Find out your BMR and TDEE they are really useful tools to judge how many cals you should have.

BMR or basal metabolic rate is how many calories you need to fuel the basic functions of your body if you were in a coma, ie heart, lungs, digestion, tissue and hair regeneration etc

TDEE or your total daily energy expenditure is how many calories you burn a day at the moment, most people find if you eat this many calories you will neither gain nor lose. TDEE takes into account how active you are and gives you an estimate based on that. Personally because my exercise regime is erratic due to long working hours and the fact I have a desk job, I've set mine to sedentary and use a heart rate monitor or if that's not an option an MFP guess to find out my extra expenditure calories, which I eat back (usually on a weekend).

Alot of people find success in trying to eat somewhere between these two figures.

My BMR is 1350 my TDEE is1700 I aim to eat roughly 1450 cals on average giving me half a pound of loss a week (1750cal deficit), I get to eat more cals if I exercise, but I could theoretically not eat them back and lose quicker.

Hope that helps and good luck x

EDIT - if you are using MFP to guess how many cals you've burned in your exercise diary, take it with a pinch of salt and maybe only eat back two thirds of it's estimate, it can sometimes be quite generous.

asciiqwerty

Take it slow, and make realistic goals. Don't weigh yourself too often, because the scale is a tool, not a defining factor.

^^^^^ the key word is REALISTIC
don't just go for the 2lb/week, for most people this is neither sustainable or healthy

butlersoft

Hello... I am very new to this application and even I know what should be done, I am not sure about the amount of calories that is shown on the first page - especially the "net" - when I do not do any activity, I do not have a problem to understand. However, if I do any exercise, the amount I burned is added to the basic amount. When I need to lose weight, I suppose that I should make a calorie deficit, so I do not need to eat all calories shown... Am I right? I suppose there should be at lest 500 cal. deficit (more on outcome of course :-))...
Please, help me :-o

Thank you very much and good luck!

Tertini

MFP calculates your needs based on NO EXERCISE ..... so ... if you exercise, you should eat the calories back and look at the NET figure.

So .. if your Net is 1,500 and you do no exercise that day ... eat 1,500
If you exercise and burn 500 calories - then lucky you ... you get to eat 2,000 calories that day (your NET will still be 1,500)!!

Deipneus

You're getting good advice and I have nothing to add right now. Welcome and good luck!

Dalinair

Being fairly new (been on here a couple of months) I can understand how it take take a while to get used to things here are some things I noticed -

The initial setup is important as the guidelines it gives you are based on what you enter so be careful.

Be realistic with what you want to loose, don't expect miracles, its a long road.

Don't forget to log every single little thing and measure every portion as accurately as you can, one thing you will see on these forums, people love food scales.

The system will quite often tell you, if you keep at this for 5 weeks you will weigh xyz etc and if you try it yourself, you may find several weeks later the weight it says you should be, you aren't. This isnt necessarily because you are cheating or eating more than you think, for me personally it was just because I was eating whatever I wanted as long as I stayed within my calorie deficit limit I expected to loose weight, this for everyone is not always the case, I had to cut carbs by half of what the recommended limit was and as soon as I did, even if i was eating more calories, my weight dropped. You need to find what is right for you.

Eat extra if you work out, you dont want to starve yourself

Tertini

Thank you very much for your explanation! That is exactly what I neede to know!
Goog luck to you! :-)

T.

amberrenee813

Log in everyday and log accurately.

Some people get a food scale, some use measuring cups. Find what works for you.

daveymac31

Don't come back on here a week or so later that you haven't lost anything, or "only" lost a pound or two. You didn't put the weight on overnight, and you won't lose it over night.

With that being said, good luck and kick *kitten*