MFP calorie goal accuracy?

lizm223

I'm new to MFP and am a little puzzled by my calorie goal. I'm a 25 year old woman, 4'11", 141 lbs. I put down that I'm lightly active since while I don't have a super physically demanding job or anything I'm not just sitting all day. I do some form of exercise most days-running, Zumba, barre, elliptical, yoga, etc. My daily calorie goal to lose a pound a week is 1310, which seems pretty low. I've checked out various BMR calculators and have gotten values around 1430, though MFP's BMR calculator gives me 1290, which is significantly lower. 1310 just seems low to me, though most days it's higher after accounting for exercise--but since my goal is to lose weight, I don't want to cancel it all out. I'm not the type to get very strict and nit-picky about counting calories--I want to log more to observe patterns about my eating and weed out bad habits than to count every last calorie-but I would like to be fairly on point since the goal is to lose weight. Is this goal low or am I just not used to counting calories? Should I decrease my weight loss goal to .5 lbs/week?


EDIT: Aaaand I just read the Newbie sticky and the linked post on eating exercise calories and answered my own questions. MFP knows its stuff. I apparently need to read stickys before taking to the keyboard. Ignore me and carry on :-)

lemurcat12

For BMR, MFP uses Mifflin-St Jeor, which is typically somewhat lower than Harris Benedict. Since BMR is lower if your body fat is higher than normal (as for many who want to lose weight) I think mifflin is a good choice to start with.

The bigger difference that you should understand is that MFP doesn't include exercise--your goal is if you do no exercise. So you don't cancel anything out when you eat it (or some of it, since many find exercise burns are high) back. This is different than the usual TDEE calculators you will find online, where "lightly active" will typically include exercise. For MFP it just means you walk around some and are normally active on a daily level. That's probably the difference.

It should come in about the same if you do MFP plus exercise or TDEE minus 20 percent, so it just depends on whether you want to eat more on days you exercise or average it out. Either way it's an estimate so see how it goes and adjust. I'm increasingly thinking about not messing with exercise burns and doing TDEE, but I've generally done MFP and found it pretty accurate.

forkofpower

If what you're eating seems too low, then you could try upping your calories for a while and then seeing how your rate of loss changes. But your calorie goal is probably lower than many others' because you're so short. I'm 5'1/105 lbs and my BMR is slightly below 1200.

lizm223

Thanks! I didn't realize at first that the goal includes a calorie deficit before accounting for exercise--which makes sense, since you're inputting weight loss/gain/maintenance goals--so while it seems low, it's in order to achieve weight loss assuming no exercise. My exercise data syncs with the app so the net calorie calculation is automatically adjusted after exercise, so most days the overall goal is more reasonable looking, if not high on particularly active days. I'm generally under goal, though today was a lazy Sunday and about midway through the day I was like whoaaa, where are all my calories going? :-P

ana3067

While MFP doesn't include your exercise calories, I would NOT recommend using MFP to set your calorie goals for you. Whether you want to base your intake on non-exercise daily activity or daily activity plus exercise, MFP is not the right tool to create this estimate.

Instead, rely on an actual TDEE calculator. If you'd like to log and eat back exercise calories (anywhere from 50% to all of them, your mileage may vary on this) then estimate your "sedentary" needs. If you want to account for your exercise (if you are fairly consistent with things every week) already then estimate your daily living plus exercise needs. Then subtract 15-20% based on how much weight you have to lose or your desired speed of results. 20% is most recommended, although if you are nearing vanity lbs then 10-15% would be much more reasonable.

I like both health-calc and exrx.net for calculating, although I do think exrx.net calculates a bit low. Both have you input averages for different activity levels instead of using a generic drop-down.