General weightloss advice/

gools71

I should be grateful if you could please help. Basically I had a baby two years ago and have struggled to lose weight. Before pregnancy I weighed 51 kgs I'm only 4 foot 11 tall. At present I weigh 64 kgs. Am absolutely desperate to lose weight. I have Bodymedia but am unsure what I should be trying to achieve on a daily basis. According to bodymedia I burn 2300 calories a day wit, take 10,000 steps I don't know what calorie intake I should have etc. I exercise 4-5 times a week generally a DVD at home. My weight is increasing. My sleep is roughly 5 hours a night according to Bodymedia. I consume around 1100 cals a day. Am puzzled and completely struggling with this whole process. Any advice most gratefully received.

Thank you

Annesoucy1957

1100 calories is not a lot of food are you sure about that number as far as what you eat. Do you mean you burn 2300 calories from exercises a day that is a lot.

I would sit down and verify everything because at 1100 calories I cannot see why you would not loose a pound a week.

FindingAmy77

eat what mfp says to eat. if its 1100 then eat that. weigh and measure everything. if you bite it, write it. Get more active. Be honest in your food diary. All of this will lead to weightloss.

SnuggleSmacks

If you want to lose 1 lb. per week, you should have a deficit of 500 calories. Bodymedia makes this easy by syncing with MyFitnessPal to see how much you're eating, and calculating your deficit/surplus for the day. It's the number beside "Calorie Balance" and is the third item down on the app/website. It will also adjust MyFitnessPal's goal with any extra calories you've burned.

SnuggleSmacks

Also, it sounds like you might have asked it to lose 2 lbs per week, which is way too aggressive for someone who doesn't have a whole lot to lose. You need, at minimum, 1200 calories per day just to ensure you're getting the nutrients that your organs need. Set your goal to 1 lbs per week, and try to make that number beside "Calorie Balance" on the BodyMedia site equal 500 deficit by the end of the day. Also, if you have put the same info into MFP, then BodyMedia will adjust your MFP goal to make sure you keep a 500 calorie deficit.

So, for example, if you start out the day expecting to burn 2200 calories, then you should eat 1700 calories. If you end up going on a run and burning an extra 200 calories, then BodyMedia will tell MFP to add another 200 calories to your goal, and you'll be eating 1900 calories.

ladiablo

Try this... Get a tape measurer, measure naked.
http://www.fat2fittools.com/tools/mbf/
Enter weight, height, and measurements as directed to get your body fat percentage.
There are a couple of different body fat calculators out there, but I've found the other formulas (Covert-Bailey and the site's formula) estimate my body fat WAY too low.
Write down your body fat percentage.

Then go here: http://www.fat2fittools.com/tools/bmr/
This will estimate your basic metabolic rate (BMR) - what you burn in a day if you just lie in bed and don't do anything - and your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) - what you burn in a day based on your activity level.
Put in your weight, body fat, etc as directed.

Scroll down to the bottom of the results page. What is the "moderate activity" calorie listing there?
Your TDEE is how many calories you should eat to maintain your weight at that energy level. Mine says 2327 if I work out moderately.
To lose weight, you want to cut about 20% of calories from your TDEE. So take the calories it tells you and multiply by 0.8 (100% TDEE - 20% you want to cut = 80% ideal calorie amount, and 80% = 0.8 times calories).
For me, 2327 x 0.8 = 1861. I would want to eat about 1861 calories per day.

You want to make sure you're giving your body enough calories to keep running, so that it doesn't break down proteins to compensate for lack of calories!

Also remember that it's super important to log all drinks and measure out your food - those little things add up quick! A soda here, a few bites of kiddo's mac & cheese there, a handful of blueberries; it all adds up. People are very bad about estimating how much they eat and are often surprised when they start measuring out amounts because it's less than they thought .


This worked SUPER well for me the first time I did MFP and the weight dropped off pretty easily. Unfortunately after a while I stopped caring/logging and I gained it all back (and a bit more) over the last year :S. Just started it again and hopefully it'll be as easy as it was a year ago!
Good luck!

ladiablo

Also - with that method, you do not log/eat back calories. The TDEE makes assumptions about how many calories you're burning and already takes that into account. So if MFP says you've burned 300 calories playing tennis, you will not need to eat that back - just make sure if you are more or less active than you thought, you change the activity level and re-calculate goals.

SnuggleSmacks

The Bodymedia will give correct numbers as long as you're feeding it the correct information. You don't have to calculate your TDEE if you're using the Bodymedia, although it is nice to know so that you can better understand how all the numbers fit together. You do need to follow the Bodymedia and MFP's calorie goal. Don't make your deficit so big that it's unhealthy. You can do yourself damage by eating so little.

gools71

Thank you for your replies/advice. So, today, i have amended my goals on bodymedia to:
Objective lose 0.5 kg per week
Daily Calorie burn 2050
Calories defecit 500
Calories consumed 1500
Does this sound ok?, realistic

Do I need to adjust anything in MFP?

Sorry if i sound hopeless, just trying to figure this out!

Thank you so much.

SnuggleSmacks

As long as you have the two linked, you don't have to adjust anything. You can tell by going to your Home, Food or Exercise section of MFP and seeing if there's a number there for exercise that you didn't input yourself. If so, that's the adjustment that Bodymedia is making to your MFP goal. So, if you walk, run, whatever and it burns more calories than Bodymedia was originally expecting, then it will add those calories to your goal so that you still have a 500 deficit instead of a bigger deficit caused by burning more. You don't have to do anything else, as long as you upload your Bodymedia info periodically and log your food in MFP. It will do the rest for you.