How to use a BodyBugg with MFP?

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MatthewLewis81
MatthewLewis81 Posts: 59 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
My Fitness Pal gave me a daily goal of 1730 calories to lose a projected 1.5 pounds per week. I did that for two weeks and lost six pounds. A couple of days ago I reduced my weight loss goal to only one pound per week, so my daily calories went up to 1950.

Yesterday, I got a BodyBugg, and put it on just before bed last night. When I got up this morning, it had made a diary entry for me on MFP, increasing my calorie goal for today in keeping with the calories it claimed I'd burned since midnight.

It has continued to add calories throughout the morning as I've worked out and gone about my day, until now, My Fitness Pal is giving me a goal of over 2300 calories remaining - even after the 485 I had for breakfast.

In other words, the BodyBugg is getting My Fitness Pal to think I need about 2800 calories today -- not counting the afternoon workout I'll be doing later on -- in order to make my goal of losing one pound this week.

This seems a bit unbelievable to me, because I can't believe my TDEE is actually high enough for 2800 calories to 20% less than TDEE. Although, I have to wonder if it's accurate after all because of how rapidly I lost weight for my first two weeks on MFP. Is it possible I was cutting calories far below what my metabolism actually required?

I'm 32, male, 5' 11", and about 217 lbs. Body fat percentage varies according to what method I use to calculate it, but is consistently between 13% and 18%. My goal is to get down to 200 lbs and <10% body fat.

My question is this: Do I need to make any changes to my profile or goals in My Fitness Pal in order for my BodyBugg to be relevant? Or do I really need to eat as many calories as the MFP/BodyBugg combination is telling me?

Thanks,

Matthew

Replies

  • RichardFL
    RichardFL Posts: 44
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    You lost 3 pounds (3500 x 3 = 10500 calories) more than expected in the first two weeks, or 750 calories per day. So to lose only 1.5 pounds a week if you were eating 1730 before, you'd have to eat 2480 calories a day. To lose only 1 pound a week, you'd have to eat 2730 calories a day. TDEE would be 3230 calories a day, so TDEE-20 would be 2584. Note that this all seems to basically confirm the information your BodyBugg and MFP are telling you.

    The above analysis does assume your 6 pounds lost in 2 weeks wasn't water weight or such, and there's no real way to know for sure. You'd just need more than 2 weeks of data to know that type of stuff.

    My personal recommendation would be to increase your calories to 2230 this week and see what happens. If you lose 2 pounds eating 2230 calories, you can up it the next week to 2730 (losing 1 pound a week). This will give you time to see if the weight loss is matching up to the expectations, and also will ease you into the higher caloric intake so you aren't increasing your calories by over 50% overnight. If you find it difficult to even eat 2230 calories a day, eat whatever you can and just keep upping the calories however much you're comfortable with each week until you hit your goal.

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