Help needed with adjusting calories.

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lucilou123
lucilou123 Posts: 9 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Sorry in advance for what I think will be a long post, but I want to put as much detail as possible...

I'm female, 25, 5" 4' and currently weigh 144lb. My ultimate goal is 126lb. I'm currently set to lose 1lb a week and activity level is sedentary. I'm a stay at home mum of 3 under 5s (oldest nearly 5) and according to my pedometer do usually 16000-17000 steps on weekdays usually 8000-12000 weekends. I make sure I log EVERYTHING.

For the past 3 months I've only lost 6lb, I don't lose anything for 3-4 weeks then as soon as my TOM finishes I lose 2lb within a week.

Since the September when the eldest 2 went back to school/nursery I've been feeling a lack of energy, getting cranky and generally pretty down. So I'm thinking I should increase my calories... but I'm unsure of how much to adjust them by.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Replies

  • lsorci919
    lsorci919 Posts: 772 Member
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    What is your calorie intake? Do you get in some exercise, other then regular daily activity?
  • OsricTheKnight
    OsricTheKnight Posts: 340 Member
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    Use a graphing tool so that you can see your progress even when your scale doesn't show it.

    Once you've got a trend line, if the projection is fast enough for you, try adding 50 calories to each day for a week, see how the projection changes, and stop adding calories once you're not happy with the projection toward your goal. (I like trendweight.com, totally free - not even ads.)

    Since you don't have much to lose, I'd guess you can afford to go pretty slowly. If you're losing 6lb in 12 weeks (that's what you said, roughly) you could instead lose 0.25lb per week, which means you could eat 0.25 * 3500 kcals more per week, which works out to 125 kcals more per day, adn at that pace it'll take you about 80 weeks to get to your goal - since that's well over a year, I'd plan for two years.

    As long as you're happy with that rate of progress, you're good to go. If not, then you can't add calories (or at least not as many as 125 per day - which is approximately 1 cup of yoghurt, 1 banana, or something equally tiny.

    Osric

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  • lucilou123
    lucilou123 Posts: 9 Member
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    I tend to eat 1400-1500 calories a day so doing 200-300 calories of excercise most days.

    Osric- thanks I'll have a look at that.

    The reason I say about upping them is a few people have said I should be set to lightly active but I see my walking as normal activity as I've always done it.
  • bwogilvie
    bwogilvie Posts: 2,130 Member
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    The reason I say about upping them is a few people have said I should be set to lightly active but I see my walking as normal activity as I've always done it.

    If you don't log your walking as exercise, then you should set your activity level to lightly active, regardless of whether you've done it. MFP uses your non-logged physical activity level as a basis for setting calories.

    If you log walking, then don't change your activity level. I have my level set to "sedentary," even though I spend 5-10 hours a week cycling, because I log the cycling separately, as well as other physical activity.
  • lucilou123
    lucilou123 Posts: 9 Member
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    I was thinking about logging my walking but then I don't know what counts as extra activity? I walk the "long way" most of the time so go 15-30 mins out of my way so Monday to Friday I'm probably doing an hour and a half "out of my way" a day so should I log that? Sorry to sound like a noob!
  • lucilou123
    lucilou123 Posts: 9 Member
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    Bump
  • Cyclingbonnie
    Cyclingbonnie Posts: 413 Member
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    The reason I say about upping them is a few people have said I should be set to lightly active but I see my walking as normal activity as I've always done it.

    If you don't log your walking as exercise, then you should set your activity level to lightly active, regardless of whether you've done it. MFP uses your non-logged physical activity level as a basis for setting calories.

    If you log walking, then don't change your activity level. I have my level set to "sedentary," even though I spend 5-10 hours a week cycling, because I log the cycling separately, as well as other physical activity.

    I agree with this, I set my level to sedentary and log my activities. I don't eat back all my exercise calories, but I eat some of them. My main reason is that during bad times, and times of stress I won't workout at my normal level. By setting my activity level at sedentary, my calories will be set and I won't be over indulging when my activity is lower than normal.
  • lucilou123
    lucilou123 Posts: 9 Member
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    Ok I've started logging my 30-45 minute morning walk and see how I go with that. Thanks for the advice :)

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