Confused after reading some posts

forgiven4life
forgiven4life Posts: 451
edited September 23 in Health and Weight Loss
After reading some posts about your settings on MFP, I am wondering if I may have my settings wrong. I have a desk job so I selected sedentary, but I also try to workout at least 3 days/week. Based on my weight, age, and rate of what I want to lose MFP has given me 1200 calories/day to eat. I am thinking this is too low. Should I change my lifestyle to lightly active since I do workout some during the week? I think this is what is confusing me. I was under the impression that I choose that by what kind of job I have. I think by choosing lightly active it will bump up my calories right? I have played around with it a couple of times by changing the frequency of exercise and that doesn't seem to change the calories any.I'm thinking I am not eating enough. I do eat my exercise calories when I earn them, but I am thinking my baseline calories are too low. Any opinions to help me?

Replies

  • meggonkgonk
    meggonkgonk Posts: 2,066 Member
    Working out you should log separately than "life style" The culprit is proly how many lbs you have set to lose- is it 1.5 or 2 lbs a week? It should be 1 (or less as you get closer to your goal).

    When you exercise, enter it under "cardio" and it will add in calories you burned off.
  • tater8589
    tater8589 Posts: 616
    I think you have it right, that way when you workout you log those activities. My job actually is active most of the time but because it can get slow I have mine set to sedentary as well and when I work out and/or do a significant amount of walking/lifting for my job I log it.
  • YoliFit
    YoliFit Posts: 6
    I think you have it set right.. as another poster mentioned you might want/need to modify the amount of pounds you would like to loose per week. BTW I like your Goals :flowerforyou:
  • healthydoseofglitter
    healthydoseofglitter Posts: 532 Member
    I struggle with this same question. I do better when I eat 1300-1350 calories. MFP has me at 1200. I also do not eat back my exercise calories. I think everybody is different. Do you eat your exercise calories?
  • jennylynn84
    jennylynn84 Posts: 659
    You have it set right. I'm on sedentary too, despite my workout regime. Just because on average, non-workout days (which you should have) I don't want to go eating as if I was at the gym busting my butt. This is the reason when you log your exercise MFP gives you those calories back. You should also eat those additional. If you don't have an HRM you might not want to eat them ALL because a lot of folks with HRMs have noticed that MFP provides a kind of high estimate. I usually aim for 1/2 to 2/3 of them.

    Also 1200 is most likely for 2 lbs a week. There's no rule that says you have to aim for that. It's tough, especially at that low intake. And not everyone sees success at so little calories. You can try setting it to 1.5 lbs a week. Or just go in and manually say "I wanna eat 1400 calories a day" and see what it tells you you'll lose.
  • forgiven4life
    forgiven4life Posts: 451
    Okay, that helps. I do have it set at 2/week for now because I have almost 60 lbs to lose. As I get closer to my goal I will change it. I will just trust that MFP has it calculated correctly because I see so many people on here with success.
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