REAL caloric intake needs?

Slender1

I googled how many calories I need to eat to go from my current weight to my goal weight, and found it was significantly more (500) than 1200. Why is it that MyFitnessPal suggests 1200? 500 extra calories makes a BIG difference!!! Who do I believe?

naugustyniak

did they ask you about exercise. The calories on MFP are without exercise.

Learning2LoveMe

The best way to do figure out your REAL calorie needs take a BMR test. It will account for your height, weight, sex, activity level. This will tell you how much your body naturally burns in a day. Then you wanna drop about 500 off that number and thats what you need to eat calorie wise to lose a pound a week with no exercise.

My BMR is about 1700 so I need to eat 1200 to lose weight. On the days I exercise I bring it up to about 1600.

Hope this helps.

SHBoss1673

So, MFP's goals calculator is "dumb" in that it doesn't care what your current numbers are, it asks you a goal, and tells you what deficit you need to keep to get to that goal. The only caviat is no matter what your maintenance calories are, it won't tell you to eat below 1200.

That doesn't mean you HAVE to choose that goal, and in reality for many of us, a smaller goal is better and more realistic. It all depends on where your body is in relation to where you want it to be. I.E. if you are a woman in her 20s at 25% body fat (pulling this out of the sky) and only need to lose say 15 or 20 lbs, then you really shouldn't be choosing 2 lbs a week, you should be more like about 1/2 a lb per week.
Course if you are obese, have a body fat % over 35% or so, and need to lose say 75 lbs, then 2 lbs a week should be fine for you.

See where I'm going with this?