Help needed to determine daily calorie goals for a newb

nlabrosse86
nlabrosse86 Posts: 12
in Health and Weight Loss
I need some advice please, as I must be doing something wrong. I cannot seem to determine the number of calories I need to consume to lose 1.5-2 lbs/week. My stats: I am 27, female, 5'4", and 294 lbs. I have a desk job, but I work out 3x's a week- 30 minutes of cardio (3 MPH at 2-4% incline on treadmill) and 30 minutes of strength training.

According to MFP, I need to eat 1650 calories a day to lose 1.8 lbs/week. I've been at it for almost a month now, and have only lost 3 lbs. I feel like I've been doing something wrong. I am going to invest in a digital scale so I can improve my food measurement and see if that helps. I thought that super fat people like me lose weight really quickly at first? I know I have cut WAY back on what I used to eat, and never used to exercise at all. I guess I'm surprised at my results so far, and it's a bit discouraging. I wasn't expecting to lose more than the 1.8 lbs/week, but I'm not even losing that much.

I'm new to trying to improve my physical health, and have been figuring out macros and TDEE and all that fitness jargon, so forgive me if I don't have this all down yet. According to this IIFYM macro calculator, MFP is way off. It says for my gender, age, height, weight and desired results (aggressive fat-loss 20%), I should be at 29.5g carbs, 295g protein, 118 g fat, and 59-74g fibre, for a total of 2360 calories per day. How is that possible? Is there a better site to determine what I should be doing?

http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/

Replies

  • kiwitechgirl
    kiwitechgirl Posts: 145 Member
    MFP doesn't take your exercise into account, whereas TDEE does. If you're using the MFP method, you should be logging your exercise burns and eating at least some of your cardio burns back (depends how you calculate them - if you use a heart rate monitor the numbers will be more accurate than the MFP database numbers). A digital food scale will absolutely help - I reckon you've probably been eating more than you think, it's very easy to do. Log as precisely as you can and keep at it.
  • nlabrosse86
    nlabrosse86 Posts: 12
    I upped my calorie intake to 2000 calories and that seems to be doing the trick :)

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