What's the wiggle room re: my target?

karen5689

So generally speaking, if I eat 50 or fewer calories above my target goal, am I hurting my weightloss? This is happening to me frequently. Now, I should add that a lot -- really, about 90% of my calories -- come from fruit, vegetables and unprocessed meats. So it's not like I'm noshing on 50 calories of candy or anything. I'm curious as to what you guys might all know or think about what an extra 50 calories a day will do to projected weight loss of between 1 and 2 lbs a week.

The thing that's putting me over the edge each day is trying to eat a serving of nuts. I don't get a ton of fat in my high-veggie, low-crap diet because I don't eat a lot of meat -- I eat chicken and tofu, but no lunchmeat at lunchtime, no bacon with breakfast, etc. So my fat macro has been low -- trying to boost it with healthy fats! But those little buggers are 160 calories per ounce -- hard to fit them in if I also am hoping to eat an apple and some blueberries at some point in my day unless I wanna accept the 50 calorie overage.

Help help!

(If anyone needs more information about me before commenting: I'm 25, training for a half marathon (I'm in the late stages of training now -- long runs are at 9 miles), have lost 30 lbs since January and am looking to lose 30 more. Not prone to dramatization, risky behavior or fad diets. Equally not prone to attention seeking or self-pity. Willing to do this weight loss business right! Knowledgable about BMR and calorie targets, etc. Just not sure just how much a 50 calorie overage impacts my attempt to eat at/below my BMR.)

JTick

Calorie counts are estimates. I think the general rule of thumb is staying within =/- 75 calories of your goal.

Branstin

My advice is to plan ahead of time by populating your food diary for a few days or a week ahead of time. This way you could make sure you hit your macros (fat, carb, protein) without going over your target. Even though the numbers are estimates and 50 calories over once in a while will not hurt, however, we have a tendency to overestimate the amount of calories we eat as well.

likitisplit

I do jumping jacks when I'm in the 50 range. Not because it really affects my weight loss goals, because I look at my average per week. 1 minute is 11 calories. 5 mins of jumping jacks and you'd be under again.

vismal

Even if calorie counts were 100% accurate (which they aren't even close), 50 calories would make little difference. 50 calories over a day works out to 350 calories over per week. At the end of 10 weeks, you'd lose 1 less lb of fat then you would have by hitting your target on the nose. Again this is all in a perfect world where you weigh 100% of everything you eat. prepare 100% of your own food, never eat out, never forget to log, and a world where the fda doesn't allow a 20% margin of error on nutritional information. So in short, in the perfect world the 50 calories is 1 lb every 10 weeks, in the real world, the 50 calories is basically meaningless.

karen5689

Whew! This makes good sense. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal -- of course, as my BMR drops I'll have to be sure to keep dropping cals but it's good to know that for now, polishing off an apple and some honey roasted peanuts in the evening isn't shooting me down. Thank you so much for the input! It is much appreciated. :-)

dopeysmelly

There's only one way to find out if those 50cals are important, and that's to see what happens over a relatively long period of time. If you're losing at the desired rate, then I think you can safely say they don't matter for you.