Under weekly net calories
hismogwai
Posts: 58 Member
So I have been on MFP since March 2014 and have lost 54lbs, I measure and weigh all my food, I use my polar ft7 for my calorie burn when doing insanity and jogging. I also bought a fitbit and aim for 15k steps a day.
I try to get my net calories under my goal the further the better was the way I thought it should be but now I'm wondering if this is unhealthy? I know MFP uses NEAT which means I should stick to my goals even after exercise I should eat 50% of those calories back but I feel like that would be too much food. I don't starve myself I eat about 1500 cals a day but I don't eat exercise calories back. I am 5ft 5inches and 133lbs so should I keep doing what I'm doing? Or is it not too bad doing it this way?
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Replies
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Si non confectus, non reficiat0
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You need to be aiming for your net goal every day, including the calories you burn (not all, though, as even HRMs and activity trackers can overestimate burns). Netting under 1000 calories is not healthy and is potentially causing you to miss valuable nutrients to keep your body in good shape, and some of those days drop dangerously low.0
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No, it's not healthy. You're not properly fueling your body at all.
Don't be surprised if you notice your hair falling out or your nails becoming brittle soon. There's other adverse effects you might be experiencing too, but just don't notice. They tend to creep up on you.
The point of a goal is to reach and/or surpass it. You're doing neither.0 -
No, it's not healthy. You're not properly fueling your body at all.
Don't be surprised if you notice your hair falling out or your nails becoming brittle soon. There's other adverse effects you might be experiencing too, but just don't notice. They tend to creep up on you.
The point of a goal is to reach and/or surpass it. You're doing neither.
thanks, i just changed my goal to be higher (from 1500 to 1900) that way I will try and reach it but if i don't I will still be much higher than I am now, which is at least a step in the right direction.
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Are you not logging everything you eat? It looks like you eat a net of very few calories on some days. That's not good.
Glad you're going to up your calorie goal, but remember it's the net that's important. That means you must eat a portion of your exercise calories so you have a net of at least 1500.
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Congratulations on your weight loss! Your tracker indicates that you're fewer than 10 lbs from your goal weight, have you considered changing your goal in MFP to step down to -.5 lb per week loss to ready for maintenance? Your charts show that you're consistently starving, you definitely require more calories than 1500 per day with your activity level. Sedentary base calories fro you currently should be in the range of 1600 (CWx12). At a .5 loss (deficit 250 per day) is 1350 PLUS 1/2 to 2/3 or your exercise calories eaten back. Earned exercise calories not eaten to some degree rarely can be sustained for long by most people unless they are obese or at the very beginning of their weight loss plan.
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I am also often under weekly net calories. It's only my 3d week into my new diet plan and the first two weeks I lost 3 kg but this week it seems I am not losing any weight even if I am under my calories. I wonder if you are under your calories it will result in your body holding on to all it's fat and slowing down the metabolism ?
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No, it's not healthy. You're not properly fueling your body at all.
Don't be surprised if you notice your hair falling out or your nails becoming brittle soon. There's other adverse effects you might be experiencing too, but just don't notice. They tend to creep up on you.
The point of a goal is to reach and/or surpass it. You're doing neither.
+10 -
SOoo.... to avoid jumping to conclusions that you are about to collapse from poor nutrition.... you *may* not be estimating everything perfectly... can you provide a few more details?
You say you have been here since march and have lost 53 pounds...
Has it been generally consistent? A bit faster at the start, but generally smooth loss over the approximately 43/44 weeks? or has it all been recent?
If you are losing fairly smoothly - around 1.2 Lbs a week for your size and age, doesn't seem to be way over the top agressive, but your approach that the "further under the goal the better" is not healthy.
As you are certainly approaching a goal weight you may really want to set MFP to lose 1/2 Lb a week and adjust your eating... to slowly trim off the last fat while retaining muscle.
If all of the numbers you show are totally accurate (under 1000 avg. a day) and you have been losing weight fairly quickly of late because of the fairly large deficit you have, I'd suggest you eat back a few more of your exercise calories, or reset your desired weekly loss to a little slower so you are not losing so fast. This pace isn't healthy and will deplete your muscle mass - which you obviously want to keep...
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SOoo.... to avoid jumping to conclusions that you are about to collapse from poor nutrition.... you *may* not be estimating everything perfectly... can you provide a few more details?
You say you have been here since march and have lost 53 pounds...
Has it been generally consistent? A bit faster at the start, but generally smooth loss over the approximately 43/44 weeks? or has it all been recent?
If you are losing fairly smoothly - around 1.2 Lbs a week for your size and age, doesn't seem to be way over the top agressive, but your approach that the "further under the goal the better" is not healthy.
As you are certainly approaching a goal weight you may really want to set MFP to lose 1/2 Lb a week and adjust your eating... to slowly trim off the last fat while retaining muscle.
If all of the numbers you show are totally accurate (under 1000 avg. a day) and you have been losing weight fairly quickly of late because of the fairly large deficit you have, I'd suggest you eat back a few more of your exercise calories, or reset your desired weekly loss to a little slower so you are not losing so fast. This pace isn't healthy and will deplete your muscle mass - which you obviously want to keep...
My weight loss has been consistent from the start of my journey about 1.5lbs a week and I log everything accurately I weigh everything
The thing is I don't want to eat all my exercise calories back as about 700 of them come from my fitbit which I feel isn't really accurate as surely my walking about comes into the MFP equation at the start I said I was active so I do eat some of my polar ft7 calories back which are about 350 a day as I'm doing insanity so I eat about 150 of them back
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Your calorie intake is all over the place. You need to be much more consistent.
As for your nutrition, it's an unrealistic amount for someone as active as you. The one Thursday, it looks like you had 200 calories for the day. Or am I reading it wrong?
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SOoo.... to avoid jumping to conclusions that you are about to collapse from poor nutrition.... you *may* not be estimating everything perfectly... can you provide a few more details?
You say you have been here since march and have lost 53 pounds...
Has it been generally consistent? A bit faster at the start, but generally smooth loss over the approximately 43/44 weeks? or has it all been recent?
If you are losing fairly smoothly - around 1.2 Lbs a week for your size and age, doesn't seem to be way over the top agressive, but your approach that the "further under the goal the better" is not healthy.
As you are certainly approaching a goal weight you may really want to set MFP to lose 1/2 Lb a week and adjust your eating... to slowly trim off the last fat while retaining muscle.
If all of the numbers you show are totally accurate (under 1000 avg. a day) and you have been losing weight fairly quickly of late because of the fairly large deficit you have, I'd suggest you eat back a few more of your exercise calories, or reset your desired weekly loss to a little slower so you are not losing so fast. This pace isn't healthy and will deplete your muscle mass - which you obviously want to keep...
My weight loss has been consistent from the start of my journey about 1.5lbs a week and I log everything accurately I weigh everything
The thing is I don't want to eat all my exercise calories back as about 700 of them come from my fitbit which I feel isn't really accurate as surely my walking about comes into the MFP equation at the start I said I was active so I do eat some of my polar ft7 calories back which are about 350 a day as I'm doing insanity so I eat about 150 of them back
enable negative calorie adjustments on MFP for your fitbit and it feeds into the MFP equation for your activity level .. for instance I set mine as sedentary and need to log between 2500-4000 steps dependent on intensity to hit that
I think if you're losing at a rate of 1.5lbs a week and still have over 40lbs to go then you're fine to stick with what you're doing
however the numbers you are netting would worry me - I try to stick as close to my net calorie as I can on a weekly basis and never fall below -1000 across the week .. normally half that - and that works for me
it's what happens to your body that counts
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Your calorie intake is all over the place. You need to be much more consistent.
As for your nutrition, it's an unrealistic amount for someone as active as you. The one Thursday, it looks like you had 200 calories for the day. Or am I reading it wrong?
I reckon it's all over the place because of what she's logging as exercise bringing down her net calories on specific days - however she's losing 1.5lbs a week consistently so it seems she's only cutting from TDEE by 4750 calories a week so I'm sure she's grossing plenty
if you have under 40lbs a week to lose though I'd drop your goal weight loss0 -
I reckon it's all over the place because of what he's logging as exercise bringing down his net calories on specific days - however he's losing 1.5lbs a week consistently so it seems he's only cutting from TDEE by 4750 calories a week so I'm sure he's grossing plenty
Ah, I understand now. I guess if you look at the week average, and the weight is coming off consistently, then keep at it.
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Your calorie intake is all over the place. You need to be much more consistent.
As for your nutrition, it's an unrealistic amount for someone as active as you. The one Thursday, it looks like you had 200 calories for the day. Or am I reading it wrong?
This is today's food so far as you can see I'm above my goal but minus the exercise it takes me to under 1000 net what iv been saying is I can't possably eat much more as I'm not hungry it isn't that I'm not eating0 -
Well done on your progress, great effort. Your graph looks a bit like mine and I haven't keeled over yet. Maybe eat a few hundred more calories a day, worst case, your progress slows a little, but you stay sane0
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That's similar to the amount of steps I get in an average day, I'm relating to your dilemma on net calories.
After starting maintenance I eventually found I had to set MFP to Active to stop getting 450+ calories added to my day from my FitBit which left me with sometimes 1000 calories left to eat at 10 pm!! Since I set it to Active (Sedentary made a difference of only -70 calories for me), It usually only adds 200+ now. I disabled negative adjustments because it's irrelevant depending on your life's timetable. The time you sync will affect when you get your calories adjusted.
I bet you would still benefit from an extra protein snack in your day because you are so active.0 -
No, it's not healthy. You're not properly fueling your body at all.
Don't be surprised if you notice your hair falling out or your nails becoming brittle soon. There's other adverse effects you might be experiencing too, but just don't notice. They tend to creep up on you.
The point of a goal is to reach and/or surpass it. You're doing neither.
thanks, i just changed my goal to be higher (from 1500 to 1900) that way I will try and reach it but if i don't I will still be much higher than I am now, which is at least a step in the right direction.
Where are you getting the new number from (1900)? Are you basing that on any calculations of TDEE or just randomly selecting a number that is higher so that you can trick your body into eating more calories because you think that's the only way you will eat more because you feel you have to be below your net calorie goal?
I agree with others, you are netting FAR too low for your activity level. You also are at an appropriate weight for your height already, so at most you should have your goal set to lose 0.5lb/week or a TDEE-5%.
As far as trusting FitBit, I have one, have had it for 18 months, and find it to be pretty spot on. It doesn't double count calories or inflate my numbers. In fact, after I had mine for a couple of months and I realized how active I was (averaging 12K-14K steps/day), I increased my activity level on MFP to Active and I still eat back the calories and I still lost 0.5 lbs/week predictably. That was at about 1700 net, I eat closer to 1900-2000 cals/day.
If you are having trouble eating more, there are lots of threads with suggestions on how to do this, but some popular ones include:
full fat dairy
cook in butter and/or oil
avocado
nuts
nut butters
or my favorites: wine and gelato.
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I agree with others, you are netting FAR too low for your activity level. You also are at an appropriate weight for your height already, so at most you should have your goal set to lose 0.5lb/week or a TDEE-5%.
As far as trusting FitBit, I have one, have had it for 18 months, and find it to be pretty spot on. It doesn't double count calories or inflate my numbers. In fact, after I had mine for a couple of months and I realized how active I was (averaging 12K-14K steps/day), I increased my activity level on MFP to Active and I still eat back the calories and I still lost 0.5 lbs/week predictably. That was at about 1700 net, I eat closer to 1900-2000 cals/day.
If you are having trouble eating more, there are lots of threads with suggestions on how to do this, but some popular ones include:
full fat dairy
cook in butter and/or oil
avocado
nuts
nut butters
or my favorites: wine and gelato.
[/quote]
Yes, I do find I have plenty of wine calories LOL
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She only has about 7 according to her ticker...SOoo.... to avoid jumping to conclusions that you are about to collapse from poor nutrition.... you *may* not be estimating everything perfectly... can you provide a few more details?
You say you have been here since march and have lost 53 pounds...
Has it been generally consistent? A bit faster at the start, but generally smooth loss over the approximately 43/44 weeks? or has it all been recent?
If you are losing fairly smoothly - around 1.2 Lbs a week for your size and age, doesn't seem to be way over the top agressive, but your approach that the "further under the goal the better" is not healthy.
As you are certainly approaching a goal weight you may really want to set MFP to lose 1/2 Lb a week and adjust your eating... to slowly trim off the last fat while retaining muscle.
If all of the numbers you show are totally accurate (under 1000 avg. a day) and you have been losing weight fairly quickly of late because of the fairly large deficit you have, I'd suggest you eat back a few more of your exercise calories, or reset your desired weekly loss to a little slower so you are not losing so fast. This pace isn't healthy and will deplete your muscle mass - which you obviously want to keep...
My weight loss has been consistent from the start of my journey about 1.5lbs a week and I log everything accurately I weigh everything
The thing is I don't want to eat all my exercise calories back as about 700 of them come from my fitbit which I feel isn't really accurate as surely my walking about comes into the MFP equation at the start I said I was active so I do eat some of my polar ft7 calories back which are about 350 a day as I'm doing insanity so I eat about 150 of them back
enable negative calorie adjustments on MFP for your fitbit and it feeds into the MFP equation for your activity level .. for instance I set mine as sedentary and need to log between 2500-4000 steps dependent on intensity to hit that
I think if you're losing at a rate of 1.5lbs a week and still have over 40lbs to go then you're fine to stick with what you're doing
however the numbers you are netting would worry me - I try to stick as close to my net calorie as I can on a weekly basis and never fall below -1000 across the week .. normally half that - and that works for me
it's what happens to your body that counts
OP you should be netting 1500 at least and raising your calories isn't going to help you net them..eat some food.
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