Has anyone increased calories eaten per day & lost more weig

sunshine269

I thought the starvation mode was crazy, but I must concede, it"s true. I hit a plateau and stopped losing. Once I mixed it up and went over by a little bit 1-2x a week, the weight starting coming back off. I also got in a rut with the foods I was eating and switched that up and that seemed to help as well. Also SALT is a major weight/water retention thing for me. I have a bad salt day (sodium was off th charts) and I gained 2 pounds from one day to the next so I majorly watch my sodium intake as well.

baisleac

Yup! Lost 10 lbs from 10/29/10 to 03/07/11 (or 4+ months or 1/2 lb per week). Most of that was lost in the first 5 weeks, which means I had a long plateau.

I decided to give up on MFPs numbers and do some actual research (should have done at the beginning but... *just slaps own hands*). Found that MFP put me 300-400 cals below my BMR, which is very unhealthy. Upped my cals to just above my BMR and have lost 5 lbs since 03/08/11.

I also eat most, if not all, of my exercise calories back.

mom23nuts

OMG thank you for this post....where do they come up with the base line of 1200 calories anyway....I know I put in height weight and age but 1200 a day on other websites that are health related say that is bare minimum and never go below not a great starting point.
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I found a website that calculates bmr...basal metobolic resting rate of calories need to just survive if comatose and for me plugging in the same #s as plugging into this website is 1579 calories....then that site asks you to multiply that by whatever your fitness level catagory is and that is how much you should take in to function.

To lose weight it says subrtract 500 cal per lb a week you want to lose since 3500 cal makes up a 1lb loss and 3500 divided by 7 is 500 less you would need to see the scale move down.

I too am convinced that this is healthier than the base line of calories they give you here. Even when I tweak my #s here and say I will only lose 1.5 lb a week it only gives me an extra 90 calories go figure....if half a pound is equal to 250 calories then why didn't it give me 250 back?

In any case I workout about 45 min a day intensely and sometimes, most times 2x a day so I am giving myself 1500 cal a day baseline,

Also I went to Ruby Tuesdays and got the bbq grilled chicken and double veg grilled no potatoes and didn't put the bbq sause on my chicken and even split a dessert with the hubby and I still lost weight and went over my calories even on the healthy meal....and that was a day with breakfast, lunch and dinner no snacks at all. and a 3.1 mile run in 32 minutes....go figure.

meggonkgonk

OMG thank you for this post....where do they come up with the base line of 1200 calories anyway....I know I put in height weight and age but 1200 a day on other websites that are health related say that is bare minimum and never go below not a great starting point.
'
I found a website that calculates bmr...basal metobolic resting rate of calories need to just survive if comatose and for me plugging in the same #s as plugging into this website is 1579 calories....then that site asks you to multiply that by whatever your fitness level catagory is and that is how much you should take in to function.

To lose weight it says subrtract 500 cal per lb a week you want to lose since 3500 cal makes up a 1lb loss and 3500 divided by 7 is 500 less you would need to see the scale move down.

I too am convinced that this is healthier than the base line of calories they give you here. Even when I tweak my #s here and say I will only lose 1.5 lb a week it only gives me an extra 90 calories go figure....if half a pound is equal to 250 calories then why didn't it give me 250 back?

1200 is the baseline, not the starting recommendation, on this site. MFP will not let you go below 1200 for the day without giving you a warning about possible malnutrition. But MFP is a tool and will do what you tell it to. So if you say you want to lose a lb per week, it will try to take 500 calories off of what it estimates to be your calories burned from daily activitiy. If you select 2 lbs, it will try to take 1000. But it will never go below 1200- so MFP estimates that I burn 1710 calories a day (my BMR is 1354) So if I selected to lose 2 lbs per week, my goal would need to be 710, but this is too low, so it would auto set me to 1200; If I chose 1lb per week it would set me at 1210. Many people start at 1200 because they select to lose too much too quickly, so 1200 is the goal they get. But in reality, 1200 is kind of the sign that your loss per week should be slowing and you should be getting more calories. Since I reached that 1210 recommendation, I switched my baseline calories to roughly my BMR (some weeks I go 1300, some 1400). But that's net calories, so I eat 1300 + what I burn from exercise.