Over on calories but nutritionally better.... Advice?

And some other day you eat a few calories less then your goal, at the end of the week as long as your not consistently way over your goal it doesn't matter.

And I assume you're eating at a deficit? Then eating a little over might make you lose weight a little slower, but as long as you stay below your maintain calorie goal then you will lose weight.

Thank you Teresa,

This is just so frustrating because I figured if I eat a green pepper instead of a pop tart then I'm better off...lol... I only did this onetime before the summer before college, and all I did was stop eating out, only ate homemade foods, didn't stop eating anything in particular, just portion control, and worked out for 30 min 4 times a week. Lost twenty pounds in two months.....

You lost because you WERE creating a calorie deficit , you just didn't know it

Yes you are supposed to eat at a deficit. When you set up MFP you plugged in the deficit you wanted (500 calorie deficit to lose 1 pound a week, 1000 calorie deficit to lose 2) MFP gave you a daily calorie goal to consume that would allow you to have this deficit daily with food. By adding exercise you burn more calories. You can either consume those burned and still have your 1000 calorie deficit (if you set up yup goals for 2pounds a week loss) or not eat those and have a bigger deficit and (theoretically) lose faster.

HTH
Teresa

I don't know what your stats are (height, weight) but 1200 might be too low anyway. MFP suggested 1350 for me and after some good advice from people on the boards, I changed it to ~1700 and have lost weight faster. Sounds crazy, but it's true.

Hi,

I'm 5'3 and weigh 178 now! When i plugged in my stats it gave me 1200 cals and then I walk so I have been eating the calories back like everyone has said to do. So I'm eating about 1800 daily, isn't that the way to look at it?

I'm pretty sure the six pounds I've lost these last three days are just water weight, but I'm soooooooo happy. I gained those same six in one weekend for the last five weeks consecutively then I'd lose it during the week, my body is retaining tons of water lately...:-/ Doing the abs diet ( not a diet at all to be honest) has kept my cravings at bay and my hunger pangs down..... The weekend will be the real test.....

First, 20 cals is well within the margin of error for calorie intake and expenditure. We don't know precisely enough how much we burn each day or how much we eat each day for 20 cals to matter.

Second, MFP sets your goal based on how much you tell it you want to lose per week. Many people enter 2 lbs per week when actually that may be too fast for them (if you don't have a lot to lose, you will lose more slowly). How fast did you say you wanted to lose?

The exercise cals are added back and should be eaten per MFP's method. The 1200 cal goal is before any exercise so if you are already at a 1000 cal daily deficit to lose 2 lbs per week and then burn another 500 cals, your deficit is now 1500 which is too high for most people. That is why MFP automatically adds exercise cals back to your goal.

Other programs don't do it this way because they calculate a defcicit that already includes planned exercise, while MFP doesn't give you credit for exercise until you enter it.

Here is a guide for appropriate rates of loss per week depending on how much you have to lose. Telling MFP you want to lose 1.5 lb per week and then eating back a conservative proportion of your exercise cals should give you good results.

75+ to lose = 2lbs 
50-75 to lose = 1.5-2lbs 
25-50 to lose = 1-1.5lbs 
15-25 to lose = 1lbs 
0-15 to lose = 0.5lbs 

Other programs don't do it this way because they calculate a defcicit that already includes planned exercise, while MFP doesn't give you credit for exercise until you enter it.

depends on how you set said other program up- I use TDEE- but set it at sedentary and eat back. It's easier for me since my workouts are REALLY really really not uniform... and I do sit at a desk all day.

you just have to be educated- but yes- other programs do ALLOW to add that exercise input- therefor eliminating that guess work- you just need to know which one you chose to do.

Good point, I don't actually know what "other programs" I was referring to, just that the concept of net calories seems to be specific to MFP.

I do agree that understanding the basics of it is the most important thing as then you can really do it however works best for you. A lot of people don't care about understanding it, they just want the program to tell them how much to eat. If you set yourself up on MFP properly, you don't really need to understand it, you can just eat the green number.