Suggested calories/day?

jashan8534 · February 2011

Hi, As a health coach I would first look at the foods your eating more in depth. How much fat, carbs, protein are you taking in? How many processed foods verse cooked foods? The calorie intake can also be played with. Try reducing your calories to 1600 instead. It may take a few weeks to figure out where your body wants to be. Remember to listen to your body signals too. Lastly, stop eating at 7pm to give your body a chance to burn the fat of the day.

Hope this helps

dlaplume2 · February 2011

@robin Thanks for trying to bring some sense to this!

But I can confirm that all my details are correct. I weighed myself, checked my height, and am definitely male according to my profile and in real life!

I also have it set to 1lb per week. I'm really not in a crazy rush to look like a model - but I do want to make sure I start on the right foot to gradually getting in better shape. Based on my current settings this is not likely to happen since I know I'm eating too much and not exercising enough to balance it out but the program says I'm doing fine. In fact, it's telling me to eat several hundred calories more!!

There has to be something I'm missing?

I think Robin is right you might need to give it some time and with exercise you will tone up. You have said you do not have a ton of weight to lose. When you get closer to your goal weight you are going to be eating closer to your maintenace calories.

You may also have subconciously eaten better when you were tracking your normal calories, to see where you were. Maybe you didn't count something, like beers with your friends, maybe not eating out like you were, maybe your portions were a little bigger.

Give it a week or two and see how it works for you. I have never lost weight like I have on this site. I have total faith in it. If all your numbers are right and you follow it, I think you will be surprised.

Good luck.

jaybaileys · February 2011

Irish,

I dont think you are gonna get the results you are looking for eating pizza, french fries, soda, sugary snacks, etc. I THINK you now realize this but Im not positive. Dude you need a plan. You need to plan ahead, your excercise and your meals. What are you doing for excercise? How many days do you excercise? And for how long? Diet wise maybe there is an "app" out there to tell you what to eat, maybe not. I eat pretty clean, about 2000 calories a day. If you want to look at what I eat you can message me. I am 5'9" and weigh 140 and have for about 2 years now. It may give you an idea of some of the stuff to eat most of the time. Even i have my pizza nights like last night but they are few and far between. I think you just need a little guidance. Also, eating small meals several times per day works. I eat 3 meals and 3 shakes a day basically. Let me know if you'd like to check it out.

robin52077 · February 2011

Jay, he knows this. He said he logged his NORMAL intake for the first few days to see what he actually had been consuming that caused the gains.
Now that he sees how bad it was, he can make the needed changes.

Irish - I looked at your diary, and though you fixed the pizza error, I still think you are underestimating...
Examples:
Generic Loaded Vegetable Omelet - 231 cals? How many eggs did you use, what did you grease the pan with? Olive oil? butter? is there cheese in this? I would say a 3 egg veggie omelet with cheese made in a lightly butttered pan would be more like 400 cals.
Wheat bread - 69 cals a slice? only if it is a thin cut tiny little slice. My whole grain bread is 110 a slice.
You have a lot of things entered as generics, and are relying on the database and other people's rough estimates.
Use your food's packages and enter exactly what it says, you'll see a huge difference.

If I made a veggie omelet, my diary wouldn't say "veggie omelet". It would say:
Egg beaters egg whites, 3 servings, 75 cals, (whole eggs are 70 each so this would be 210 if you used yolks)
broccoli - 20g, 7 cal
onion - 20g, 8 cal
tomatoes - 29g, 5 cal
spinach - 20g, 5 cal.....etc...

weigh and log all your ingredients instead of using generics. it makes a huge difference because the generics can vary a LOT.

mccgirlie · February 2011

I seem to have the opposite issue with the suggested calories per day. I am new to MFP and am extremely overweight. I've always been told that I need about 1200 calories a day for a good diet. But on here, my suggested intake per day is 2150. Why so much?? I would never be able to diet on that many calories, nor can I even eat that much food to get to it. Please help.

robin52077 · February 2011

I seem to have the opposite issue with the suggested calories per day. I am new to MFP and am extremely overweight. I've always been told that I need about 1200 calories a day for a good diet. But on here, my suggested intake per day is 2150. Why so much?? I would never be able to diet on that many calories, nor can I even eat that much food to get to it. Please help.

1200 is probably too low, it's too low for MOST people.
It's hard to help without more info. 2150 could be correct based on your stats. This is designed around healthy eating and losing weight slowly, not "dieting".
Did you put in your height weight and sex correctly? What did you choose as your goal, 1 lb a week? 2? 1.5?

A lot of the time 2 lbs a week is too much but if you are extremely overweight as you say, then it should be fine for now, and slow it down as you get closer to goal.

And yes, you CAN eat 2000 calories a day of healthy food. There are plenty of calorie dense healthy fats out there. Add olive oil, peanut butter, and other good fats to your diet. Eat lots of lean meats and whole grains. I can eat 2000 a day EASY.

irishpolyglot · February 2011

@Robin Thanks!!

Appreciate you looking at my diary. Yes, I was using the generic amounts - I presumed they'd be accurate enough, since I'm not worried about hitting the mark exactly. As long as I'm +-100 or so from the target I'll presume I'm at least not putting on weight.

But I'll start being more diligent and adding ingredients separately, or reading the nutrition information (harder for the next 2 weeks while I'm still travelling and eating out a lot, but the whole point of this was to get a good set up for starting fresh when I *can* track things better).

@Jay As Robin said, of course I don't think eating pizzas etc. will help me lose weight. But I'm not interested in dramatically changing my diet in one day as these are always too hard to maintain. I tracked my pre-change diet and have seen how unhealthy it is from the numbers, which is what I wanted before implementing changes.

Seeing the pizza take over the entire day was a bit shocking so you can bet I'm only going to treat myself to a pizza once a week for the moment and only with friends rather than alone.

I've already implemented some minor but important changes and will continue to look at the numbers and make SMALL changes every day to make sure I'm going in the right direction and adjusting in such a way that I completely transform my routine piece by piece rather than turning it upside down overnight.

Thanks for all the help! I'm absolutely sure that I'll be successful with this now that I have a better understanding of how the process works! I'll be using the system's suggested default for my situation of 1780 cal/day and monitoring the nutritional details more closely to see less red

robin52077 · February 2011

Sounds like you have the right idea now. Enjoy the next 2 weeks of travelling, and just try to make smart choices even though you know you can't log it all accurately. Start weighing, measuring, and scrutinizing once you get home.:laugh:
And you have the right way of thinking on the pizza. This is a "lifestyle change" not a diet. It's supposed to be something you can do for the rest of your life. I would NOT give up pizza for the rest of my life! But switching it to once a week out with friends is a great change from just whenever you feel like it for any old meal.
I splurged BAD this weekend! Pizza AND chinese! But I am back on my game today and will just drink a ton of water to flush out this bloated sluggish feeling. :happy:

Suggested calories/day?

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