MFP Calorie Projection Confusion-Are they wrong??

Oh4FSake
Oh4FSake Posts: 8
in Health and Weight Loss
Okay, so, I know that MFP is here for weight loss but it always sets me at 1200 calories and I've used two other programs that have given me different calorie settings. I am taking a nutrition class and we were given the formulas to figure out several of our "base rates": heart rate, BMR etc. Per my BMR calculations I need only 1100 calories to exist.

I have also been using a software program (for the same class) that tracks your food and fitness but prints out a comprehensive medical report with nutrition guidelines. It tells you what you did and ate that day, with all the percentages and breakdowns, and there is also percentages and breakdowns with what you SHOULD be eating/doing. Based on what I do, I should (according to this software) be eating up to 1800 calories a day (Keeping the Body Going + Physical Activity). MFP acknowledges that my fitness level should be burning 1800 calories a day. Now, of course, I get that 1800 is my "proposed" fitness level and some days I meet or exceed it, and others I am woefully off, which brings me back to the 1100/1200 BMR issue.

If MFP is giving me a 1200 calorie budget but I actually only need 1100 they are giving me an extra 100 calories PER DAY. I thought that 1200 was the bare minimum a person could go so I have been working to meet this goal for years. At first it was that I needed to eat LESS to make it to 1200 now I have been struggling to eat ENOUGH to make it to 1200. But according to everything I have done in this class I am actually supposed to eat only 1100. Granted as I mentioned some days I'm up some days I'm down as far as fitness so I get the UP TO 1800 calories thing but many days I am sitting around studying and on the computer...If I did nothing every single day all day long and took MFPs advice to eat 1200 calories a day when I only need 1100 that's an extra 10 pounds every single year from doing absolutely nothing....HOW is that helping me??

**I will admit I am new to this class and perhaps my math is off (and oh, do I hope it is!) so if anyone has any input that is why I posted this question BUT PLEASE don't argue with me that 1200 is the minimum baseline a human can go because that's what I thought and apparently that's just not true.**

Replies

  • cmeiron
    cmeiron Posts: 1,599 Member

    If MFP is giving me a 1200 calorie budget but I actually only need 1100 they are giving me an extra 100 calories PER DAY. I thought that 1200 was the bare minimum a person could go so I have been working to meet this goal for years. At first it was that I needed to eat LESS to make it to 1200 now I have been struggling to eat ENOUGH to make it to 1200. But according to everything I have done in this class I am actually supposed to eat only 1100. Granted as I mentioned some days I'm up some days I'm down as far as fitness so I get the UP TO 1800 calories thing but many days I am sitting around studying and on the computer...If I did nothing every single day all day long and took MFPs advice to eat 1200 calories a day when I only need 1100 that's an extra 10 pounds every single year from doing absolutely nothing....HOW is that helping me??


    If your BMR is actually 1100, then that is the bare minimum you need just to exist. As in, if you were lying in bed doing absolutely nothing ever and required only enough energy for your organs for keep functioning. Clearly that is not an accurate description of your daily life. As you say, with daily activities you're using closer to 1800 calories a day.

    If you eat 1800 a day, you will maintain your current weight.

    If you eat less than 1800/day, you will gradually lose weight.

    If you eat 1100 (or, as most people here will probably tell you, less than 1200/day) you may lose weight for a little while but will probably be hungry, weak, and will eventually plateau. When you plateau, a typical response would be to lower your cals a bit, but you'd already be at your bare minimum. Nowhere to go. Why not eat something like 1300-1400/day? That would still leave you with a 400-500 cal/day deficit, which is plenty.
  • sbrownallison
    sbrownallison Posts: 314 Member
    Be prepared for a wide range of opinion on this! From reading other MFP posts on "1200 cal/day", it seems there are a lot of strong feelings about it. I'll be reading them, along with you. (I, too, due to age and gender, am at 1200/day...)
  • tjah32
    tjah32 Posts: 18 Member
    1100 calories a day to exist means if you were comatose, lying in bed, not moving, etc. NOTHING. That's what you body needs to just be able to keep your heart pumping, lungs expanding, digestive system moving, etc, etc,etc. ANYTHING you do in a day needs to be on top of that. Walk from the couch to the bathroom, need extra. Use your arms to turn the steering wheel on your car, need extra. Even studying, YES STUDYING, you need more because your brain is working overtime (of course calories burned from studying are ridiculously hard to calculate) Which is why MFP can recommend you aim for 1200 calories in a day and still expect you to lose weight.

    And that's not even counting the calories burned from workouts.

    So don't worry, if you aim for 1200 calories a day, you won't gain weight.
  • CristinaL1983
    CristinaL1983 Posts: 1,119 Member
    Some people do have a BMR that is less than 1200. Probably quite a few people, actually. MFP will never recommend lower than 1200 calories because it is the lowest "safe" number. It is low but still high enough to assume that people can get the right macro and micro nutrients.

    All calculators are just estimates that can be off by quite a bit. The only way to actually know your BMR (for sure) is to actually have it tested.

    If your BMR is actually 1100 calories and you were in a coma and getting 1200 calories a day, yes you would gain weight. Again, there is no way to actually know that for sure unless you get it tested.

    Not sure if this answers your question or not.
  • Oh4FSake
    Oh4FSake Posts: 8
    Thanks for your responses. I put my disclaimer down there because I didn't want a million responses about how I am starving myself so thank you for taking the time to answer my question seriously because I was really thrown by the numbers I keep getting per this class.

    The issue I had with the numbers is that I used to be on MFP a couple years ago and finally just gave up because I WAS very sedentary (I had a desk job) so most days I was, in fact, sitting around doing nothing and was very careful about what I ate but I never lost any weight. I was eating (what I thought was) the bare minimum to stay functioning and yet I was able to maintain being overweight. Obviously the bigger picture issue is that I was sedentary it was just kind of discouraging to run all the numbers and see how they "matched up".

    I used all my information to customize my profile and set all my own numbers so I'm not boycotting MFP lol-it was just something I noticed and wanted to ask about. Thanks!

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