Unrealistic Goal Weights (Long post)

littlemili

So explain this.

I was eating 1300 plus exercise calories, until I plateaued. Tried eating more (net 1400), nothing happened. Stopped eating back exercise calories (netting anything from 500-1200), weight started coming off at a normal rate again.

Then went away for 5 weeks and ate whatever I wanted with no idea of calories, macros or my weight. Lost 2lbs in that time despite eating a ton - much slower than normal loss but still losing. So clearly my metabolism is fine and not damaged by netting under 1200 every day, or I would gain it straight back.

babyblake11

No, it is not setting 1,200 as our BMR, the 1,200 is creating a deficit so we can lose weight!
BMR is what your body will burn if you don't do anything.. so obviously you need to eat less than that to lose weight!
for example my BMR is around 1,700 so eating 1,200 means I have a deficit of 500 a day = 3500 a week = 1lb loss a week

this is way off. you burn 1200 a day laying in bed. if you get up and do daily things you burn ALOT more. and thats not including exercise.

Crystalchaos72

No, it is not setting 1,200 as our BMR, the 1,200 is creating a deficit so we can lose weight!
BMR is what your body will burn if you don't do anything.. so obviously you need to eat less than that to lose weight!
for example my BMR is around 1,700 so eating 1,200 means I have a deficit of 500 a day = 3500 a week = 1lb loss a week

BMR is what your body needs if you were in bed all day or in a coma......that is not correct. I am not a medical professional but it is a fact........if you google it and calculate it , it will tell you the same thing.

As a sidenote, I would starve if I only ate 1200 a day, sometimes am hungry even after eating 2000.....I eat all my exercise cals back......and am currently the smallest I have been in my adult life

lcarter25

What about me

I did the weight i want to be (short goal) 150lbs so 68kg it said i should eat1795?

currently im eating 1200 and my exercise

VolatileChocolate

MFP does work out your cal deficit based on BMR its on your Goal page, there are also other sites that have the calc on it. It all depends how much you want to lose each week and will calc what deficit you need to eat. Which is why they also tell you to eat the exercise cals as its based on you doing nothing.

I'm around 248 lbs and my BMR is about 2100-2200 so for me to burn off 2lbs a week my cals are set at 1280cals, if I want to lose 1.5lbs a week than its 1560cals etc etc. I'm happy with 1280cals, sometimes I eat more sometimes less. I'm sorry but at nearly 18st its unlikely I'm going to go into stavation mode just because now n again I don't eat all my exercise cals - Yes maybe if I was doing it constantly but also I'd have to do this over a period of time before this happened.

As long as I'm drinking plenty of water, eating healthy and listening to my bodies needs - eat something if I'm actually starting to feel hungry rather than either mindless grazing or ignoring the hunger.

Yesterday i burned 1000 cals off with exercise - it wld be impossible for me to eat that many extra cals - its would have had to been junk with high cal and not healthy, which is then defeating the object.

AlsDonkBoxSquat

[I only express concern because my background is in sport and nutrition Psychology and basically the scientific literature reports that for females somewhere between 10-13% body fat is the essential fat levels for females. Basically when you start going into or below this level it will start affecting your hormonal responses, damage your vital organs etc. So while you are just on the safe side border now make sure you do not lose any more bf

Thanks! Yeah, we've discussed that I'm boarder line essential, that's one of the reasons that I went into maintenance. Knowing that I'm denser than most of the people I know, I decided to base my weight loss on bf% instead of weight, it's a more sensible measurement for me. With 109 pounds of lean mass a goal of 115 for me is incredibly unreasonable. Now at 15% lean mass loss per pound that would take me to 107.5 and 115 which is just crazy, but for many 5'3" women 115 isn't an unreasonable goal.

Back to topic though, I understand what you're saying, however I sort of feel like my metabolism was stagnant for so long it really needed that boost in the first few weeks. I was set at 1200, ate back at least half my exercise calories, and worked out like a crazy person trying to get at least 400/day.
On the other hand my mother and I sat down and discovered that she probably wasn't eating enough calories, and she's pretty inactive. We set her up at a higher caloric intake because I think that's what will help her metabolism grab hold. I don't have any science behind it, I'm certainly not a professional, I was just thinking "okay, my tatter tots are killing me, so lets get that calorie count down. If she's been eating like that for a long time she's in starvation mode, lets get that calorie count up."