Calorie intake confusion

berdoochick
berdoochick Posts: 25 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
i dont know what to follow. i got my body fat % done (I have roughly 25.7% which is healthy range) and then had my BMR calculated (1440) to find out how much i should eat to get to my goal weight (SW: 147 GW:135) and it says i should eat around 1700 cals. but when i try this on MFP it says 1270 cals. which do i follow? help plz

Replies

  • veganbaum
    veganbaum Posts: 1,865 Member
    If you're going to use MFP, set up your goal for a .5lb loss/week. Then, if you exercise, eat back anywhere from 50-100% of your exercise calories. A lot of people have to adjust their exercise cals because MFP can be very off for some, while fairly accurate for others. If you do that, you *should* find your MFP goal to be pretty close to what you will get from other calculators, which include your exercise in the initial calculation while MFP doesn't add it in until after you do it. If for some reason it's not close, I would go with the numbers you had professionally calculated.
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    The tested numbers sound pretty reasonably. MFP can only make calculations based on what you tell it. It can't think for you or tell you your goals are unrealistic or unhealthy.

    I'd go with 1700 daily.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,343 Member
    Go to the first post in this thread:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12

    Plug your stats in and run the numbers. The method outlined there by Helloitsdan has worked well for many people here.
  • elorawood
    elorawood Posts: 68 Member
    It depends on your setting - what did you set as a goal? MFP will calculate what you intake should be to reach your goal.
    Also how did you describe your daily activity?

    What helped me a lot (I set my activity to ¨sedentary¨ and log my activities separate, leaves a little playroom if listed calories are off):

    1) Find out how many calories your body is burning if you would just be resting all day long (the calories burned for keeping you body running & digesting food): Here is a good calculator: http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/resting-metabolic-rate-calculator.aspx

    2) Add your exercises - if you do not want to go by MFP, or just double check, here is a good calculator (I like this one because it considers your age, height, weight etc, so you can personalize it): http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/activity-based-calorie-burn-calculator.aspx#

    Now, this calculator (or the ones that you have on the machines at the gym) will give you your GROSS calories burned, that includes the ones you burn to keep your body running normal. So what I do is take that number and calculate my NET calories burned, so what it burns just for that exercise : http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/net-versus-gross-calorie-burn-conversion-calculator.aspx

    (You can customize your own exercises here on MFP to keep it for later so you don´t have to research it again, just make sure to have a name that is easy for you to find/recognize)

    Log them too.

    3) I recommend eating back you NET calories burned - specially because you don´t log everything (walking a little, shower, sitting, talking, all of that burns a little extra) - MFP already shows you how many calories you can eat to still make your goal - or, if you want to double check or calculate it yourself, just add everything up and then do minus 15%

    I hope this helps a little (and I didn´t make it too complicated) - I know I had a really difficult time with this at first too before reading through tons of pages and articles :)
  • berdoochick
    berdoochick Posts: 25 Member
    I set it up to 1520 cals to eat which is up from where i had it at 1200. i did the stuff from the site listed above and got that i should eat between 1700-2000. so im going to give it a couple weeks and see where i end up. thank you all for your help :)
  • elorawood
    elorawood Posts: 68 Member
    If it told you to eat between 1700-2000, 1520 cal is a good goal I think (much better than just 1200, I know, some people here don´t believe in starvation mode, but my body went through it and it was very frustrating on many levels - it still is hard to get used to it for me, that you can eat more and lose weight better than eating so little). If you can, also try to eat back your net calories from exercises.

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