Calorie IN/Calorie Out question

corinne0805

I hope this doesn't sound dumb, but I have never had to count calories before. I used to be extremely fit and ate what I wanted. Then 11 kids happened, as well as my 40s. Now I find myself with 35lbs to lose. I have never been a junk food lover, my problem is I carried on eating as though I was working out avidly, which I was not! So I started MFP a few days ago, after I had been running for 8 weeks and seeing only a few pounds drop off (although I saw inches disappear).

MFP gives me a baseline of 1200 calories. Today, for example I burnt 750 calories, so MFP tells me that I have 1950 calories to consume. I have instead consumed 732. My question is, do I disregard the 1200, and work off the 750 calories that I earned through working out? In other words, if I had consumed 1400 calories today instead of 732, am I going to maintain, or lose?

Also, I hear so much about starvation mode, but it really does not make sense to me - people say that your body will hang onto the fat it has stored - tell that to the people in concentration camps in WWII - not trying to be flippant. I can understand that initially your body may balk and hold on, but sooner or later fewer calories = loss of weight.

cmalmos

It took me a little while to figure this out too, but the app will tell you if you are doing it wrong and eating too little. If your calorie intake is set to 1200, you must consume at least that much. If you burn 700 that day, you have that much to play with. The less over 1200 you eat the faster you will lose, but don't consume over 1900 or you will go the wrong way. 1900 will still allow you to lose, but it will be closer to .5 or 1 lb per week. I hope this helped.

Aaron_K123

MFP is a calculator, it is designed to give you a number based on your input. It refuses to give a number lower than 1200 so if it tells you 1200 it means you have put in an overly aggressive weight-loss plan and it bottomed out at its minimum value.

First I would change your "I want to lose X pounds a week" to a value that returns you something greater than 1200 so you know the value is genuine.

That is the amount of calories you have to eat to have a deficit great enough to lose X pounds per week if you do no exercise. If you exercise then you need to eat the number of calories you burned through your exercise in addition to your goal calories in order to maintain that deficit.

If you try to go overaggressive with your diet and establish a very high deficit you are right your body will not magically "hold on to fat" and you are right if you keep that up you will end up like a concentration camp victim because in addition to losing fat your body will be losing muscle and bone density.

The goal here is to establish a moderate caloric deficit (something like 400 calories per day) and maintain that long term with exercise in order to lose fat but maintain your muscle and bone.

If you try to have as large a deficit as you can muster you will end up negatively impacting your fitness and health.

Using myself as an example I want to be losing about 1.4 pounds per week so I set my activity level to lighly active (because I walk to and from work and do some activity) and MFP returned that I should net 1800 calories a day. If during that day I do some exercise and predict my burn to be 600 calories then that day I strive to eat about 2400 calories to preserve my 1800 net and maintain my deficit.

So far in the last 12 weeks I have lost on average about 1.3 pounds per week doing this.

Aaron_K123

It took me a little while to figure this out too, but the app will tell you if you are doing it wrong and eating too little. If your calorie intake is set to 1200, you must consume at least that much. If you burn 700 that day, you have that much to play with. The less over 1200 you eat the faster you will lose, but don't consume over 1900 or you will go the wrong way. 1900 will still allow you to lose, but it will be closer to .5 or 1 lb per week. I hope this helped.

1900 in this example isn't maintenance its the deficit you set. If you ate more than 1900 calories you would still be in deficit up to the point that you hit maintenance. If your deficit is set to 500 calories for example you would have to eat 2400 calories to hit maintenance, not just over 1900.

Aaron_K123

The simplest way of putting it is the number MFP tells you as your goal is the number of calories you would have to eat with no exercise in order to make a caloric deficit that would allow you to hit the amount of pounds lost per week that you told MFP you want. If MFP returns "1200" as a value that tells you that it bottomed out because MFP refuses to go below 1200 which tells you that your "amount of pounds per week" that you requested was overly aggressive for your current weight and activity level.

besaro

11 kids?

Aaron_K123

11 kids?

She was a surrogate to birth children for others which is a pretty darn selfless act if I do say so myself. Got to give a little respect for that.

OP after giving that much of yourself you should treat your body better, it is not healthy to be doing as aggressive a deficit as you seem to be trying to do. Look into concepts like BMR, NEAT, TDEE and set yourself a goal that has you eating a reasonable amount. You have time, use it to lose weight healthily I urge you.

dlionsmane

First WOW 11 kids... OMG!!!

Okay now on to my answer and forgive me if I am repeating anything anyone has already said (I didn't read everything as it's my bed time)

with only 35 pounds to lose you should not be selecting 2 pounds per week.... this may be why the MFP gave you a low number. You may have also selected Sedentary which you may not be, Look at another online calculator as well to compare against.

I would say shoot for 1 pound per week to start with.

Now as to the calorie number itself. This is what you should be trying meet. NOT EAT LESS THAN. Sorry for the all caps. I cannot stress this enough, You need to fuel you body! You want it to work for you, feed it! The way MFP has the calories calculated it works in your entire deficit (including your normal daily activity level) and does not include exercise. So you would eat back at least some of those calories depending on how you determine that number (MFP calculations are high, HRM's are closer but sometimes off as well)

corinne0805

Thanks guys - I am not trying to starve myself! These are honest questions. I fell full after what I eat - loads of fruits and veggies so wonder how I can get more calories in? Perhaps shakes? I love steaks though! Those are my downfall.

I was a gestational carrier and carried 6 babies for 4 couples and I have 5 of my own kids. My kids are 24, 18, 16, 15 and 14. After I had them I weighed 125lbs. I then carried twins in 2005, a single boy in 2007, another boy in 2008, his sister in 2010 and one final boy in 2012. My weight is currently 166lbs, and an ideal weight now would be around 130lbs. I am not trying to be aggressive, but it is frustrating to know that I have been exercising and not seeing much weight loss. Of course the last time I deliberately worked to lose weight was after the birth of my now 14-year old and I was in my early 30s. Things have changed...

nyiballs

Bottom line is 750 is too low... You should eat at least 1000 a day. The baseline on MFP is based on the activity level you set in your profile... If it says 1200 to lose 2 lbs per week, for example, that means your normal daily activity is burning roughly 1600 calories, and the 1200 in will provide the correct deficit. Workouts entered go above and beyond your normal calorie burn, so you would want to offset that with food.

All that being said, you need to either eat more, or burn less.

Scale back on workouts, but better yet, get more calories, but the good kind. Larger portions of lean meats will help. Nuts and fruit can add up quickly too. Even an extra glass of skim milk, or cup of fat free yogurt.

Aaron_K123

Thanks guys - I am not trying to starve myself! These are honest questions. I fell full after what I eat - loads of fruits and veggies so wonder how I can get more calories in? Perhaps shakes? I love steaks though! Those are my downfall.

Honestly there is nothing wrong with eating steak. Vegetables, lean meats, all of these things are good ways to get full on very few calories but if your not eating enough then all you have to do is eat some steak along with that, or some ice cream, or some peanut butter. The point is to hit a calorie goal, there are no taboo foods here only the foods that most easily allow you to hit your goal while still feeling satiated. You just have to find that balance.

To find out what you should be eating you should first try to figure out what amount of calories would maintain your weight and then just eat a little bit below that. You can use calculators online to give you a rough idea of what your maintenance calories would be.

Here are two as examples:

http://exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html
http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator/

You have to assume some error here and it takes trial and error to really get a handle on it but figure out roughly what you would maintain at and then eat something like 20% less than that. If you maintain at 2000 calories then eat 1600 calories. If you maintain at 1500 calories then eat 1200 calories. I think you will be surprised how many calories it takes to actually hit maintenance, usually it seems like a very big number to people. Personally I maintain around 2700 calories.

My guess is the number you will arrive at for a healthy diet is going to be above 1200.