MFP goals vs BMR's

jodik11

I've recently went from 1400 cal a day to 1200 because I had MFP recalculate my goals. I'm nervous because I have heard about people gaining weight when they drop calories. When I recalculated my BMR it said that I should be at 1599 cal. So which do I go by? I'm confused, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

alecta337

If your BMR is 1599, that means that if you laid in bed and didn't move you would burn 1599 calories. If you have more than 20 lbs to lose your daily deficit should be between 500-1000. If you have less than 20 lbs to loose keep your daily deficit to 200-500. Remeber that a 3500 calorie deficit equals one pound of weight loss.

250 calorie deficit per day = .5 lb loss per week
500 calorie deficit per day = 1 lb loss per week

1200 net calories will give you a deficit of ~400 calories per day putting you at .8 lbs lost per week which is healthy weight loss

Hope this helps =]

kadye

.

sarah44254

Alecta you have perfect reasoning except you forgot to include that we do more than lay in bed all day. If we burn too many calories while being alive (walking from chore to chore, taking care of children, exercising) and we only consume the amount you planned, we would in theory be starving ourselves.

It is a tricky situation and requires activity level and intensity of said activities to be taken into account.

schobert101

BMR is not your maintenance calories. BMR is what your body uses if you were to lie in bed in a coma all day. So your maintenance is higher, depending on your activity level. Normally it is 1.2-1.5 times the BMR. So lets say you are sedentary. That would make your maintenance calories around 1900-2000 per day. Depending on what you set your goals as how much weight you want to lose per week is how the allotted calories are calculated. If you set it for one pound per week that would give you around 1400 calories per day (1900-500). If you exercise you can eat more as you eat back the exercise calories to maintain the same deficit. If you are set for 2 pounds per week loss it would be 1900 minus 1000 per day but that would only give you 900 calories and MFP defaults to no lower than 1200 that is why so many people are at 1200..........so in effect it will not let you lose 2 pounds per week. If 1200 is not reasonable for you then you have a couple of options. Set your goals for less than 2 pound per week loss or exercise daily and eat the exercise calories so you net 1200 per day. The fact that you are eating less than your BMR just means that you have to burn fat and muscle to lose weight since you are eating less than what your body needs. That is how weight loss works. But if you have too big a deficit then you burn more muscle and less fat since the body can only burn so much fat per day and that is why as people get closer to their goal, ie if they don't have a lot of weight to lose you need to keep your deficit lower , ie lose it slower so you burn more fat and less muscle.