Trying to wrap my head around...

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mscote12
mscote12 Posts: 220 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hello. I am new to MFP, and today was day 1 with logging my food. I have always kept a food journal-just not online. I am participating in a weight-loss challenge and one of the requirements is an online journal, this site came highly recommended. I figured out (with the help of the calorie calculator) if I want to loose 1.5lbs a week, I need to eat 1200 calories a day and workout 4x a week for an hour. No problem, I'm pretty sure I do that now-however this site gives you required carbs, fats and proteins. Here is where I am apparently struggling. I logged all the food I ate today-and at first I came up 38 calories UNDER my required amount but 11g OVER for my protein and still had 7g of fat I needed to eat but hit the carbs dead on. So I thought, well I have a granola bar in my purse that I keep handy-if I eat that I will go OVER my calories for the day by 96 but then everything else is off, and I would still NEED 2g of fat. Is it possible to get the EXACT requirements everyday? I am starting to wonder how I can pull it off if thats the case...and if not, whats better to be off on--calories, fats, carbs or protein??...I am trying to understand but to be honest, its all a little frustrating lol I eat healthy but looking at this, I feel like I should maybe be doing something differently. Any thoughts/suggestions??

Replies

  • LittleMissDover
    LittleMissDover Posts: 820 Member
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    I'm only interested in calories as my diet is generally pretty balanced, others aren't. Depends if you want to track the other stuff or not, you don't have to, just untick it in the settings if you're not interested and it will bother you seeing it.
  • toddis
    toddis Posts: 941 Member
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    You want to be around your calories. It's always safe to be over on protein and under on fat and carbs. You can adjust the percentages if you wish.
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
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    Work on getting your calorie budget right then start to worry about your macro's if you want to. I pay no attention to anything but calories in and calories out. I lost weight that way and have been maintaining for almost 2 years now.

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