An easier way to setup goal calories - eating for who you wi

rockerbabyy

thats about my stats (currently 243ish, goal weight possibly 160) and it says to eat 2704 to lose. just for ****s n giggles, i entered my current weight and it says i would need 3336 to maintain @243.

I am in the same boat...I'm sorry but 2700 is way too much for me at my current weight much less my goal weigh of 160. Right now my BMR is around 1800 so I am sticking to that. I have noticed that these calculators really vary...I like this one better:

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

I also like the advance setting where you can add in your body fat (if you know it) to get a more accurate BMR. The more muscle you have, the more calories you get. Don't get me wrong, I am all for eating more food but 2700 calories is not going to do it for me. I put my goal weight in this calculator, put the lightest activity level and estimated my future body fat % (on the high end) and guess what....it was almost exactly my current BMR....I feel like a scientist, LOL!

i actually recalculated and ended up a little lower - 2520 a day. it still seems like a lot, but when looking back through my workouts, i burn 600-800 on carido days (twice a week) which would put me at 2320 if i eat back all my exercise calories. its a big jump for me going from 1520 on rest days, to 2320 on cardio days. when i factor in my weight lifting, walks around the lake, walking kids to school and to the park and playing with them, etc.. it makes sense to me to spread it evenly out over the week. my goal weight BMR is about 7 higher than what MFP has me set at now, so we'll see how it works out.
ive done it for two days and have had some problems eating the exact amount, im short a couple hundred i think...but the hardest part for me right now is finding balance with my macros - being short on food/money at the moment, so everything is red except my calories lol

jenluvsushi

thats about my stats (currently 243ish, goal weight possibly 160) and it says to eat 2704 to lose. just for ****s n giggles, i entered my current weight and it says i would need 3336 to maintain @243.

I am in the same boat...I'm sorry but 2700 is way too much for me at my current weight much less my goal weigh of 160. Right now my BMR is around 1800 so I am sticking to that. I have noticed that these calculators really vary...I like this one better:

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

I also like the advance setting where you can add in your body fat (if you know it) to get a more accurate BMR. The more muscle you have, the more calories you get. Don't get me wrong, I am all for eating more food but 2700 calories is not going to do it for me. I put my goal weight in this calculator, put the lightest activity level and estimated my future body fat % (on the high end) and guess what....it was almost exactly my current BMR....I feel like a scientist, LOL!

i actually recalculated and ended up a little lower - 2520 a day. it still seems like a lot, but when looking back through my workouts, i burn 600-800 on carido days (twice a week) which would put me at 2320 if i eat back all my exercise calories. its a big jump for me going from 1520 on rest days, to 2320 on cardio days. when i factor in my weight lifting, walks around the lake, walking kids to school and to the park and playing with them, etc.. it makes sense to me to spread it evenly out over the week. my goal weight BMR is about 7 higher than what MFP has me set at now, so we'll see how it works out.
ive done it for two days and have had some problems eating the exact amount, im short a couple hundred i think...but the hardest part for me right now is finding balance with my macros - being short on food/money at the moment, so everything is red except my calories lol

That totally makes sense....I note myself as sedentary because I work a desk job and my exercise program is sporadic at best with a full time job and with taking care of a baby by myself while my hubby is off on business. If I exercise, I simply eat back most of the calories so I still net around 1800. Hope it works for you!

heybales

Sorry to keep on but I'm still getting my head around it! What is the difference between doing this and just setting my daily cals to 1600 and adding my exercise? I know it means that I don't have to eat all my exercise cals on the day I've done the exercise but I don't really do that anyway. I usually eat a bit more when I run but not all cals for the day but I do eat more at the weekend and drink wine one night per week. So, in effect I'm really looking at cal consumption for the whole week. I put in my food for the whole week (or just quick add cals eg 500 lunch, 600 dinner etc) so that I can then look at the iphone app and it tells me how many left over for the week so I know I've got some extra if I need them. I wish this website allowed you to look at your weekly cals but it doesn't.

Also, using your method and giving myself 1951 per day (13657 per week) and exercising about 2500-2800 (included in the weekly cals) how much should I expect to lose? I know I will gradually drift down to my goal weight because I will be eating the correct number of calories for that weight, but is it going to take a really long time?

You are correct, if you have no complaints about the MFP total method of exercise calories seperate, and you are indeed correctly eating back, and that means you are staying above your BMR (unless you let your weekly goal be too aggressive and MFP went under by a lot), then you will probably have nothing to benefit from here.
You appeared to have a 750-1000 cal deficit on workout days easy. So in the range of 1.5-2 lbs week. The non-workout days would probably bring that back to 1-1.5 lbs.

This routine does several things.
1 - Keeps daily calories the same. I saw many complaints of folks having difficulty eating exercise calories (or very inaccurate estimates) back the day of exercise. And no desire to do it the next day. Because it looked bad on the diary numbers.
2 - Keeps the rate loss at safe levels. Saw many goals too aggressive for the goal being so close. The more you have to lose, the faster you can do it, but as you get closer, the rate attempted should be less. So this allows bigger deficit the farther from goal weight you are. Smaller deficits as you get close.
3 - Keeps the deficit from constantly going under the BMR by decent sized amounts. This was usually just not understood, until someone stalled, and took advice to eat more. After a potential short gain as BMR recovered. Why not just start with everything burning at full steam.
4 - Causes you to examine daily routine. This is good side effect. Manually adding up TV, games, sleep, compared to gentle walking, specific exercise, ect, can be a real motivator to add in just a bit more.
5 - Weekly balance for extra exercise added but not needing to be recorded. Not as many complaints about this, except back to eating the calories back if that was appreciated.
6 - Calorie cycling. The idea that if you are going to run your net daily calories near or under your BMR, you should have recovery days to keep it up. This does it automatically if you do not exercise and have the exact same activity every single day.
7 - Others I'll add if I remember, within the hour at least.

GytIrDun

bump, awesome post, exploring other opinions/corroboration, etc.

heybales

Hey, I did this, and the recommended calories is about 250 cals lower than my current BMR. BUT, I'm quite overweight. Is this okay, as in, not going to cause a problem with BMR? Thanks!

As long as you were accurate with the daily activity, not holding back because you hoped to make it lower.
Those levels already underestimate activity calories a bit, especially since right now, you will burn more at them compared to thinner you.
So just be honest.

But yes, if you have very little exercise, like avg of just 30 min Moderate for walking each day, and rest is Very light and Resting, you can have future maintenance below current BMR. And for a bigger amount of weight to lose, that is considered safer than when you keep moving down.

What should save the BMR from just totally dropping, is your non-exercise days. Metabolism will be fed, not constant underfeeding.

If you literally do walk everyday, and exact same level of other activities every single day, then your BMR would be constantly underfed, with decent chance it lowers to match.
Hate for you to lose out on 250 free calories being burned every day (if estimate is near real BMR figure).

So longer exercise a few times a week, not the exact same every day. So 3 x 60 min and another 30 min day, not 7 x 30 min.

BeccaSuzanna

THANK YOU. Perfect timing, since I just started and my head was reeling with conflicting information which left me worried about eating too much, eating too little, how exercise fits in, etc. This simple approach makes perfect sense to me and reinforces the idea of doing it for life rather than doing a temporary diet.

heybales

I am in the same boat...I'm sorry but 2700 is way too much for me at my current weight much less my goal weigh of 160. Right now my BMR is around 1800 so I am sticking to that. I have noticed that these calculators really vary...I like this one better:

I also like the advance setting where you can add in your body fat (if you know it) to get a more accurate BMR. The more muscle you have, the more calories you get. Don't get me wrong, I am all for eating more food but 2700 calories is not going to do it for me. I put my goal weight in this calculator, put the lightest activity level and estimated my future body fat % (on the high end) and guess what....it was almost exactly my current BMR....I feel like a scientist, LOL!

The ExRx site also uses the Katch formula for BMR if you know what your current BF% is. Just drop the line that says Height to bodyfat%.

I was contemplating using that, but how many people know what they want their future BF% to be, at least a safe level.
And in reading through the studies on the Harris BMR formula, they were accurate for the avg healthy person already. Which is where we are trying to get to.
So to simplify, just went with Harris process.
But, if you knew what weight and BF% you wanted to be at, could do the same thing.

Oh, the constant reason I'm seeing massive maintenance calories, is incorrect estimate of activity levels and times. You may work out very hard for 4 days a week, 60 min sessions, but that is only 0.57 hrs daily. And if you skip the extra TV time on weekends, which is Resting, again inflated.

So that's probably all that happened.

For 160 lbs @ 22% BF, 11 hrs Resting, 0.5 Light, 12.5 Very Light, I got future BMR of 1595, with future maintenance of 2060 to eat at now.
Of course that is just slow walks 30 min/day for only exercise.
Move .5 from Very Light to Heavy for more serious workout 4 days week - BMR 1595, maintenance 2243.

Not sure how you obtained 2700. Because moving the BF% to 25% causes calories to go down (less muscle), going down to 16% (more muscle) goes up 150 calories.

Something was done wrong.

heybales

I am 5' 1'
Currntly at 154.1 pounds
Goal Weight 115
Age 35

For calculating activity levels (the confusing part for me) I have had a personal trainer for the last 2 weeks and I do intense workouts..and am hoping to continue for at least 2 months!

6 days a week I do 75 mins of cardio (intense) since I burn 8-9 calories a minute = 'Heavy'
3 days a week I do 30 mins of weight training ='Moderate'
6 days a week I do 15 mins of an abs workout = 'Moderate'

Resting 12
Very light 7
Light 2
Moderate 2
Heavy 1

BMR calories 1273
Excercise cals 1087
Total calories 2360

So now I change net calories consumed to '2360' ?
And I eat 2360 calories every day? Am I understanding this right??? Isnt that a lot?

Since you only got into the exercise routine, I'll just comment on those.

Rest - You are a weekend marathon show junkie, aren't you! :happy: Sorry, you may read a lot, that's great.
Heavy - 1.25 x 6 / 7 = 1.1
Moderate - 0.5 x 3 and 0.25 x 6 = 3 / 7 = 0.4 (unless you do some other serious walking/job activity, and you may, to reach 2hrs).
Light - 2 hrs of really walking every single day? Perhaps kids, house chores, store, ect. Really add up weeks total / 7.
Very Light - the rest. I made 9.5 to carry the balance. Swap out to correct if Moderate should have been 2 hrs.

So, I think you probably overestimated some activity times in higher levels.

With above, I show BMR is of course correct at 1273, and maintenance calories at 2119.
And on most days, I'd bet your calorie burn based on HRM for instance for those workouts, easily puts you at or slightly below BMR. Your lighter days gives the recovery.
If you really do another 1.6 hrs of Moderate every single day, then correct my guess, and yes, your goal would be higher. And deficit would still be down around BMR when avg out over the week.

funkycamper

Sorry to keep on but I'm still getting my head around it! What is the difference between doing this and just setting my daily cals to 1600 and adding my exercise? I know it means that I don't have to eat all my exercise cals on the day I've done the exercise but I don't really do that anyway. I usually eat a bit more when I run but not all cals for the day but I do eat more at the weekend and drink wine one night per week. So, in effect I'm really looking at cal consumption for the whole week. I put in my food for the whole week (or just quick add cals eg 500 lunch, 600 dinner etc) so that I can then look at the iphone app and it tells me how many left over for the week so I know I've got some extra if I need them. I wish this website allowed you to look at your weekly cals but it doesn't.

Also, using your method and giving myself 1951 per day (13657 per week) and exercising about 2500-2800 (included in the weekly cals) how much should I expect to lose? I know I will gradually drift down to my goal weight because I will be eating the correct number of calories for that weight, but is it going to take a really long time?

You are correct, if you have no complaints about the MFP total method of exercise calories seperate, and you are indeed correctly eating back, and that means you are staying above your BMR (unless you let your weekly goal be too aggressive and MFP went under by a lot), then you will probably have nothing to benefit from here.
You appeared to have a 750-1000 cal deficit on workout days easy. So in the range of 1.5-2 lbs week. The non-workout days would probably bring that back to 1-1.5 lbs.

This routine does several things.
1 - Keeps daily calories the same. I saw many complaints of folks having difficulty eating exercise calories (or very inaccurate estimates) back the day of exercise. And no desire to do it the next day. Because it looked bad on the diary numbers.
2 - Keeps the rate loss at safe levels. Saw many goals too aggressive for the goal being so close. The more you have to lose, the faster you can do it, but as you get closer, the rate attempted should be less. So this allows bigger deficit the farther from goal weight you are. Smaller deficits as you get close.
3 - Keeps the deficit from constantly going under the BMR by decent sized amounts. This was usually just not understood, until someone stalled, and took advice to eat more. After a potential short gain as BMR recovered. Why not just start with everything burning at full steam.
4 - Causes you to examine daily routine. This is good side effect. Manually adding up TV, games, sleep, compared to gentle walking, specific exercise, ect, can be a real motivator to add in just a bit more.
5 - Weekly balance for extra exercise added but not needing to be recorded. Not as many complaints about this, except back to eating the calories back if that was appreciated.
6 - Calorie cycling. The idea that if you are going to run your net daily calories near or under your BMR, you should have recovery days to keep it up. This does it automatically if you do not exercise and have the exact same activity every single day.
7 - Others I'll add if I remember, within the hour at least.

Thanks for posting this list, Heybales. I've been reading this thread with interest but couldn't grasp why people shouldn't just set for a slower weight loss and eat back exercise calories instead. For me, this is easier and I'll stick to it but I can see where, for some people, your method might work better. Interesting thread.

toffee322

wow i tried the site and it gives me almost 2000 calories, while MFP only allows me 1500 exercise calories included. big difference! but i've been eating over calories on most days anyway.. since i get hungry or i like to snack...

i re-adjusted the exercises since i think i overestimated it.. i'm getting 1811.
stat: age 31
105 lbs (goal)
115 (current)
161cm
resting 7
very light 15
light 2
bmr 1260
activicty 551
total 1811...
i plan to change my weight in mfp to 1811.. (i've been eating that pretty much now)... i'm wondering when will i see the weight drop.. thanks!!!!!

thesarahsundae

Could you take a look at mine? I just wanted to make sure it looks "good".

Female
Age: 36
Weight: 140 pounds
Height 66 inches

12 hours rest (I get at least 8-9 hours of sleep during week), 8 hours very light, 3 hours very light and .50 for moderate and .50 for heavy. I may change my workouts in the future but for now I'm doing an half an hour of cardio and half an hour weights. I also sit at a desk for almost 9 hours a day and don't move around too much. I may be off a little on the 8 hours of light (meaning it may be less), but for now I'll go with that.

It tells me my BMR is 1399 and my calories from activity are 787 so my calories should be 2186. Does that sound right?

funkycamper

Oops. Double post.

heybales

bmr 1260
activicty 551
total 1811...
i plan to change my weight in mfp to 1811.. (i've been eating that pretty much now)... i'm wondering when will i see the weight drop.. thanks!!!!!

Not to throw a curve ball at you, but since you are so close to goal weight, you might benefit from either taking your bodyfat% if you know it and using the same site, but change height to bodyfat% and get more accurate BMR and maintenance calories using the Katch formula.

For getting decent BF%, you can use this site - http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/cbbf/

If you don't want to do that, the BMR calc MFP uses is about 5% more accurate within the healthy range, where you are now.
So you may take MFP's BMR calc and add the activity cal's in for total.

May end up being a meaningless amount less, but figured while you are setting it up and so close already, might as well.

heybales

Female
Age: 36
Weight: 140 pounds
Height 66 inches

12 hours rest (I get at least 8-9 hours of sleep during week), 8 hours very light, 3 hours very light and .50 for moderate and .50 for heavy. I may change my workouts in the future but for now I'm doing an half an hour of cardio and half an hour weights. I also sit at a desk for almost 9 hours a day and don't move around too much. I may be off a little on the 8 hours of light (meaning it may be less), but for now I'll go with that.

It tells me my BMR is 1399 and my calories from activity are 787 so my calories should be 2186. Does that sound right?

Excellent loss already, you've been doing some things right obviously!

To the figures! You did mention Very Light twice for 8 and 3. And then 8 for Light. So not sure what was being intended there.
What I'm seeing:

Rest - sleep and TV 12 daily
Heavy - cardio 0.5 x 5 = 2.5 / 7 = 0.4 daily (unless you really do it 7 days a week, in which case 0.5)
Moderate - weights 0.5 x 5 = 2.5 / 7 = 0.4 daily (same as cardio, if every day, 0.5)
Light - 4.8 daily (this is some good moving around, walk 3mph, chase kids, clean, waitress, ect, really 8 hrs avg daily?)
Very Light - work/commute 9 x 5 = 45 / 7 = 6.4 daily

Some corrections to my figures perhaps, like if you really work out every single day with same routine.
The Light is probably over estimated at 8 hrs, and you may be thinking work there. But not desk work.
Unless you really do some big hours on a lot of moving around, perhaps major on weekend that avgs out daily to that high level.
So after putting work under Very Light, what was left was 4.8, and I put that under Light in case you really do almost 5 hrs of moving around each and every day. But you may want to look at what those level mean, and you'll probably find adjustment on Light to Very Light. Like you didn't even include MFP time!

So with my figures, and I bet Light needs to be shortened to just house chores and store shopping for the week / 7.

BMR indeed 1399.
Future maintenance as current calorie goal - 2238

I could easily see the workout days burning 600-800 cal, which in true net gets you down to 1638-1438, plus the other activity if Light is accurate, would push you down to or slightly below BMR 5 days a week. Weekends for recovery.

mammacano

Bump

becjerami

Ok, so I'm only on my third day of following this method and I've lost 0.4lbs. That may not sound like much but it's on track for the 1lb a week that I'm aiming for, and I've been hovering around the same weight for a while now. Fingers crossed this continues, slow and steady! I can't believe I can eat over 2000 calories a day and still lose weight, I feel like I'm literally stuffing my face!

If this really does work, Heybales, you're my hero!

pickulz76

Im starting today as well! fingers crossed.

Heybales: Any advice on how many gms of protein or carbs I should aim for? Or is it just calories that we have calculated?

Many thanks!

heybales

Im starting today as well! fingers crossed.

Heybales: Any advice on how many gms of protein or carbs I should aim for? Or is it just calories that we have calculated?

Many thanks!

Most in the game awhile recommend .75 to 1 gram per lb of lean body mass depending on activity level, from sedentary to intense training. But while on a diet, and protein can be more filling, towards the 1.
Which means you need to estimate your bodyfat% to get that.
http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/cbbf/

So once you have your grams, you adjust the percentages in the MFP Goals which you already saw, until the number is close, and then adjust carbs/fat % where you want them. Even carbs, higher, lower, or make the fat match.

I personally do better when carbs is slightly below protein, which makes fat higher than some may want to see. I do 30 / 30 / 40 for Carb / Protein / Fat, but aim for more protein than carbs.

When I'm not sick anyway. Don't look at diary lately!

BeautyFromPain

bump

joclougherty

Sorry to keep on but I'm still getting my head around it! What is the difference between doing this and just setting my daily cals to 1600 and adding my exercise? I know it means that I don't have to eat all my exercise cals on the day I've done the exercise but I don't really do that anyway. I usually eat a bit more when I run but not all cals for the day but I do eat more at the weekend and drink wine one night per week. So, in effect I'm really looking at cal consumption for the whole week. I put in my food for the whole week (or just quick add cals eg 500 lunch, 600 dinner etc) so that I can then look at the iphone app and it tells me how many left over for the week so I know I've got some extra if I need them. I wish this website allowed you to look at your weekly cals but it doesn't.

Also, using your method and giving myself 1951 per day (13657 per week) and exercising about 2500-2800 (included in the weekly cals) how much should I expect to lose? I know I will gradually drift down to my goal weight because I will be eating the correct number of calories for that weight, but is it going to take a really long time?

You are correct, if you have no complaints about the MFP total method of exercise calories seperate, and you are indeed correctly eating back, and that means you are staying above your BMR (unless you let your weekly goal be too aggressive and MFP went under by a lot), then you will probably have nothing to benefit from here.
You appeared to have a 750-1000 cal deficit on workout days easy. So in the range of 1.5-2 lbs week. The non-workout days would probably bring that back to 1-1.5 lbs.

This routine does several things.
1 - Keeps daily calories the same. I saw many complaints of folks having difficulty eating exercise calories (or very inaccurate estimates) back the day of exercise. And no desire to do it the next day. Because it looked bad on the diary numbers.
2 - Keeps the rate loss at safe levels. Saw many goals too aggressive for the goal being so close. The more you have to lose, the faster you can do it, but as you get closer, the rate attempted should be less. So this allows bigger deficit the farther from goal weight you are. Smaller deficits as you get close.
3 - Keeps the deficit from constantly going under the BMR by decent sized amounts. This was usually just not understood, until someone stalled, and took advice to eat more. After a potential short gain as BMR recovered. Why not just start with everything burning at full steam.
4 - Causes you to examine daily routine. This is good side effect. Manually adding up TV, games, sleep, compared to gentle walking, specific exercise, ect, can be a real motivator to add in just a bit more.
5 - Weekly balance for extra exercise added but not needing to be recorded. Not as many complaints about this, except back to eating the calories back if that was appreciated.
6 - Calorie cycling. The idea that if you are going to run your net daily calories near or under your BMR, you should have recovery days to keep it up. This does it automatically if you do not exercise and have the exact same activity every single day.
7 - Others I'll add if I remember, within the hour at least.

#

Me again! Right, so I think I worry about not adding exercise cals because for example I was ill on Wednesday so didn't run so that's probably 800 cal burn that is still in my figures for the week but I didn't actually do. That doesn't happen very often but I'm worried about not tracking. So, if I go back to the working out website and put same details but put resting at 10 and very light at 14, it gives me 1766 at my goal weight. Am I right in thinking that's what the goal me should eat every day with no exercise, so if I use that number in MFP and add exercise when I do it, it should still work? Mind you, that's only giving me 185 cals per day less than when I worked it out including running, and yet I probably burn 330ish per day with running so I will end up eating more..... should I reduce my new me cals from my original calculation (including heavy of half an hour per day) of 1951 per day to 1650 maybe and then add exercise as I do it? I just don't feel happy including exercise in my daily calories when I haven't actually done it! What do you think? I really just want you to tell me how many to eat so that I lose 1lb per week without putting it down to 1410 per day which is what MFP gives me at lightly active setting.