calories for the day

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kaz1350
kaz1350 Posts: 12 Member
in Introduce Yourself
I am a newbie and am struggling with some things. MFP says that given my body weight and height, I should be eating 1880 calories per day. If I want to lose .5 lbs per week, I need to eat 250 calories less than this per day. Plus, any exercise I do, seems the discussions state to eat half of what MFP says you get to have extra.
My question - 1880 seems high. Is this correct? Thanks

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  • cropaway
    cropaway Posts: 18 Member
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    what if you changed your goal to a pound a week?
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    It's really tough to know whether or not this would be a good calorie level without knowing your stats. Could you post your height/weight/age/activity level?

    For me, generally speaking, MFP's calorie levels have been a really good starting point. I've made some adjustments as I see how my body reacts, but they've been fairly small adjustments from what MFP recommends (mostly increasing my fat and protein recommendations, but that's a personal preference thing).

    You could try this level for a couple of weeks and see how it works out. You might be surprised by how much you can eat to lose weight. So many of us start out thinking we have to cut our calorie to the bare minimum, but most people can eat a fair amount and still lose.

    The only cautionary advice I'd give is that with a 1/2 pound per week goal you'll want to log as accurately as you can. It's really easy to accidentally wipe out a 250 calorie deficit with little mistakes.
  • captainheadkick
    captainheadkick Posts: 27 Member
    edited November 2014
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    I don't think you should eat back your workout calories unless you've busted your butt for more than 1 hour per day.

    If you're carrying a lot of fat you want your body to burn that as extra....if you give it back the calories that's less that needs to be burnt from fat.

    The less fat you have the more you need to fuel with food.

    You really have to figure out what works for you, but the above concepts are what work for me when I'm on that wagon!

    By the way.....male, female, how much to lose and how active? Hard to answer without any context.
  • kaz1350
    kaz1350 Posts: 12 Member
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    female, 5'6" 230lbs. Desk job. I am managing to hit the 10,000 steps per day. Every other day extra time on the treadmill. I don't log the treadmill time as exercise and on those days, my steps are more than 10,000 (my stride is about 2100 steps per mile).
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    kaz1350 wrote: »
    female, 5'6" 230lbs. Desk job. I am managing to hit the 10,000 steps per day. Every other day extra time on the treadmill. I don't log the treadmill time as exercise and on those days, my steps are more than 10,000 (my stride is about 2100 steps per mile).

    Taking your age from your profile and plugging your numbers into a TDEE calculator (I'm using the one over at iifym.com) you burn about 2340 calories a day. So you could definitely lose weight at 1880 calories a day.

    I used the 3x a week workout modifier for that just as a baseline, so you may need to adjust up or down depending on your results.
  • kaz1350
    kaz1350 Posts: 12 Member
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    diannethegeek wrote: »
    kaz1350 wrote: »
    female, 5'6" 230lbs. Desk job. I am managing to hit the 10,000 steps per day. Every other day extra time on the treadmill. I don't log the treadmill time as exercise and on those days, my steps are more than 10,000 (my stride is about 2100 steps per mile).

    Taking your age from your profile and plugging your numbers into a TDEE calculator (I'm using the one over at iifym.com) you burn about 2340 calories a day. So you could definitely lose weight at 1880 calories a day.

    I used the 3x a week workout modifier for that just as a baseline, so you may need to adjust up or down depending on your results.

  • kaz1350
    kaz1350 Posts: 12 Member
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    thank you.
  • SnuggleSmacks
    SnuggleSmacks Posts: 3,731 Member
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    I am only 5' 3 1/2 and my TDEE is right at 2000 more or less, depending on how active I am that day. 1880 should be fine for losing slowly.

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