Calorie intake/outhoing please so confused

Take in less than you burn and you will lose weight.

Log everything, make sure you weigh your food, if you guess the food weights, you could be hundreds of calories out, that will scupper your weightloss attempts.

Do your exercise, stick to your calorie intake. If you get hungry, eat lots of protein (unless you have kidney problems).

Weight and measure yourself once per week.

Hi Maggie. 1200 is very standard for a female wanting to lose weight. Yep, you will feel very hungry!! Aim to split your day into three main meals of about 300 calories each and then 2 snacks of no more than 150 calories each. The reality is that most of us eat much more than we need. Generally speaking, if you burn more 3500 calories more than you consume you will lose 1 pound. So if you can stick to 1200 calories (and I mean really stick to it ....weighing and measuring everything that goes into your mouth) you will lose weight. If you can do some exercise as well, even if it is only walking, you will speed up your weight loss.

I know it seems hard and feeling hungry is not a nice feeling, but if you can stick with it you will see the results. I hope this helps somehow.

I'm not sure why MFP has set you so low, given your starting weight, unless you've said you want to lose 2lb per week. Try resetting to 1lb a week and see if that gives you a fwe more calories to play with.

While you shouldn't have to give everything up, make sure you log everything and reduce your portion size of things like potatoes and pasta while upping the leafy green veg - that will fill you up for longer. Wieghing is very important - its easy to over-estimate how much pasta is a 75g portion (it looks so tiny you can't believe its really 75g!!) Also try to choose "good value" calories (by which I mean things like 25g mixed nuts instead of 3-4 biscuits - calories might be the same but pick the ones which are better for you).

Because MFP sets a deficit from the start, the more exercise you do the more calories you will be able to eat. So an hour of zumba (for example) gives you approx 600 calories to use on food.

If you log everything and keep to your calorie goals (eating back exercise calories) you will lose weight.:happy:

Hi there

there is a lot of information on here about both eating to MFP's formula and TDEE -x%

With the MFP scheme, you enter your statistics plus the amount of weight you want to lose per week and MFP gives you a calorie budget which includes the deficit. You can then also do exercise over and above what you have set on MFP. For example MFP might reckon you need 2000 cals a day to maintain your weight. You want to lose 1lb a week. MFP will give you a calorie budget of 1500. You go to the gym and work off 250 by fast walking on the treadmill for 30 mins. You enter that exercise in MFP and those 250 cals appear in your allowance. This works very well for a lot of people.

The other school of thought is that you calculate how much energy that you use each day and cut that by 10-30%. Here is a website with such a calculator: http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/
At 220lb, you are quite overweight (I hope you don't mind me saying that but actually initially the more you have to lose the easier it is to start with). Anyway this means that you can take off the full 30%. Once you get nearer your goals you will need to cut that down a bit, meaning your weight loss will be slower.

You should choose one of these methods and stick to it if it works for you.

If your BMR is around 1795, you should really eat above that but below the full amount of energy you use in one day. BMR is what you would burn while lying in a coma. Being up and about means you will burn more than that. There is evidence that eating below BMR for a long period will stress your body and cause weight loss to slow down. Keep your body happy by feeding it good food and enjoy exercising it as much as you can.