Am I doing it right?

You will lose a lot more than 300-500 cals playing 90 mins of footy. I burned 700 today playing 50 minutes.

Maryam352 wrote: »

Hi guys,
I'm new to mfp and have a few questions if anyone can help please
The recommended calories intake for me is 1540 per day . I exercise about 3/4 times a day . 3 days I do workouts at the gym which include cardio and weight training so 2 days lose about 350-400 calories a day and then one day I just do cardio and burn about 250 calories and one day a week I play football so I'm burning around 300-500 calories for playing competitive for 90 mins. I want to lose about it 1-2 lb per week so am I doing enough? I haven't gone over my calorie intake as of yet.

Secondly I have been advised to eat about 235 g of carbs per day which just seems too much to me so I am eating max 150g but I'm not sure if I am doing the right thing?

If anyone can answer I will be grateful
Thank you

Did MFP recommend the calories, or did you use a different calculator? If MFP recommended them, then it intends for you to eat them, PLUS those exercise calories back. If you used a different calculator based on TDEE, or you had a professional help you out, then stick to your 1540 as your target, and only add a bit more on training days if you feel you need the boost (don't go working out or playing football while feeling crummy, eat 50-200 more).

Secondly, with only 12 lbs to lose, 1 lb a week is probably the MOST you'd want to aim for. You're risking losing less fat and more muscle mass if you go too aggressive at this point, and that won't look the way you want it to. 0.5 lb would likely be the best.

Third: Carbs. Please do not fear them, there's nothing wrong with them. Personally, I would not set a max of 150, I'd just try to make sure I'm getting adequate protein and fibre and things and let the carbs fall where they fall. It won't hurt you, it won't hurt your weight loss. Plus, they're a great source of energy for workouts!

Maryam352 wrote: »

futuremanda wrote: »

Maryam352 wrote: »

Hi guys,
I'm new to mfp and have a few questions if anyone can help please
The recommended calories intake for me is 1540 per day . I exercise about 3/4 times a day . 3 days I do workouts at the gym which include cardio and weight training so 2 days lose about 350-400 calories a day and then one day I just do cardio and burn about 250 calories and one day a week I play football so I'm burning around 300-500 calories for playing competitive for 90 mins. I want to lose about it 1-2 lb per week so am I doing enough? I haven't gone over my calorie intake as of yet.

Secondly I have been advised to eat about 235 g of carbs per day which just seems too much to me so I am eating max 150g but I'm not sure if I am doing the right thing?

If anyone can answer I will be grateful
Thank you

Did MFP recommend the calories, or did you use a different calculator? If MFP recommended them, then it intends for you to eat them, PLUS those exercise calories back. If you used a different calculator based on TDEE, or you had a professional help you out, then stick to your 1540 as your target, and only add a bit more on training days if you feel you need the boost (don't go working out or playing football while feeling crummy, eat 50-200 more).

Secondly, with only 12 lbs to lose, 1 lb a week is probably the MOST you'd want to aim for. You're risking losing less fat and more muscle mass if you go too aggressive at this point, and that won't look the way you want it to. 0.5 lb would likely be the best.

Third: Carbs. Please do not fear them, there's nothing wrong with them. Personally, I would not set a max of 150, I'd just try to make sure I'm getting adequate protein and fibre and things and let the carbs fall where they fall. It won't hurt you, it won't hurt your weight loss. Plus, they're a great source of energy for workouts!

Hi yes MFP recommended how much I eat and I don't got over my calories. As for carbs well I ate alot more today as I did 2 1/2 hours in total workout today so my target was about 250 but I honestly couldn't reach that target as I'm stuffed lol I think I just get paranoid sometimes lols

Okay! So then with MFP, you eat the exercise calories also. If you trust your burns, then give yourself the full calories, and see after a month or two how that has been working, adjusting if needed. If you're not sure about the burns, plan to eat some (50-75% is a common starting point) and again, adjust if needed after a month or two of monitoring.

Feel free to eat MFP's target, log exercise, and eat back (getting less on some days, more on others) OR to go back into goals and choose Custom and use what you know to set up a flat target you can have every day. You would add up your projected exercise calories (that you plan to burn AND eat) throughout the week and then divide by 7.

So if you had a target of 1540 before exercise, and figured that you burn 1000 extra a week, then do 1000/7 to get 142. Add that to your daily total to get 1682. Go into goals and do a custom (not guided) setup, and put 1682. Then you can have the same target every day for simplicity.

With macros, I'd pay attention to how you feel and make adjustments from there. Like, protein and fat help keep me satiated. A mostly carb meal makes me feel crummy, so I usually try to avoid that. (But I don't limit carbs to any particular number.) I certainly would not try to eat 250 g of carbs (that would not be happening on a normal day) but I would not limit myself to a specific number of carbs either (have no reason to).

Honestly, macros are fairly personal and MFP's default is by no means a law. You can safely ignore them for now if you like, allow it to collect the data, and some day when you want to pay attention to it, you'll have weeks or months of data to look back on. Or maybe you'll start feeling fatigued or stop digesting well, and you can go pawing through your nutrition data to see if there's a connection. Being off on a macro won't affect your weight loss, it could affect your health or how you feel or how well you adhere to your plan though. But just understand that "off" will be personal to you, it may not be at all what MFP has picked for you. So don't sweat it unless you start seeing a reason to.