Just because you CAN have a 2 pound per week goal

Banks, I really appreciate reading your posts. Since you brought up the 2 pound per week....I was hoping you could help me figure out what I should be eating in calories. I am suspecting that I am under-eating (and over-drinking wine!)

I am 42 years old, 5 foot 3 inches, I weigh 141, my BMI is 25.4, fat % is 35.3%. I am trying to lose 19 pounds (120) and I jog/walk for 3 miles 5 to 6 days a week. The treadmill says I burned 400 calories, but I know that is too high. I am currently set with MFP for losing 2 lbs a week (which is why your post caught me eye) and it has given me 1200 calories.

I know you are not a medical doctor, but you sound like you have done your reseach and I would love to benefit from it.

Thank you so much.

I find it difficult to swallow that you have a BMI of 25.4 and a body fat % of 35.3%, something sounds off there. The two don't line up. Granted I know BMI can be pretty far off when you get close to your goal weight, but not by THAT much usually. How did you have your body fat tested? And was it recent?

First, yes, I think 2 lbs a week is a very large goal for someone who only has 20 lbs to go, probably unattainable without some SERIOUS effort. More realistic would probably be about 1 lb per week until you get down to around 12 or 10 lbs, then closer to 1/2 lb per week at that point (roughly). Incidentally, you aren't actually set at 2 lbs per week. Your maintenance is probably (assuming you are lightly active) probably around 1700 calories a week, so you're probably already at 500 a day or 1 lb per week. Just so you know (MFP doesn't allow less than 1200 a day, no matter what you set your goal for). But if you exercise, you should eat those exercise calories, as your body really isn't at a place where it can handle large deficits. This is all prefaced on that body fat # being wrong. I can't think of a reason that your body fat % would be 35% with your total weight being 141 and your height being 5'3" that just seems impossible to me. That would mean you have about 50 lbs of fat on your body, which is way more than is reasonable for someone at your height and weight. Maybe it's a real number, and I'm just not thinking about it the right way, but it's very shocking if that's the case. And if it is, you should immediately forget the idea of losing weight, and focus on losing fat while in more of a maintenance nutrition plan (like more strength and resistance training to gain some muscle mass), because you have some serious muscle mass shortfalls if this is truly the case.

If you really want accurate Body Fat % done, I would use a Bod Pod or do a hydrostatic test. You can get a DEXA test done if you have someplace close by but they tend to get expensive. The tanita professional models are better than the ones you buy for your home (not all that accurate), but still, they rely on certain things being true that aren't always true, like the fact that you are properly hydrated and that you have normal bio-electrical resistance (among other factors). Even getting a very experienced person to do a caliper test would give you accurate (relatively speaking) results to compare to the scale (most good gyms will have or know how to have that done for you for cheap money).

I have no idea how old that scale is, whether it was set up correctly, and/or whether the person using it really knows how to use it (you'd be surprised).

Note that I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm saying I don't know, but it sounds a little high to me. Those scales have about a 6% margin for error anyway, so you may (even if it was done completely accurately) still be 6% high, which would make much more sense to me. If you said your BF% was30, I would have thought that sounded as if it could be true.