"You will weigh x in 5 weeks" a q
cldmolly
Posts: 66 Member
Hi! I am currently using a calorie goal of 1550 to lose about 1 lb a week (147 lbs currently). With my exercise level, my tdee is 2050 so this goal is in line with losing 1lb a week. Today I went over by 190 cal (Mother's Day!) and after I completed the entry it said "if every day bla bla bla , in 5 weeks you will weight 148." How would I gain weight at a deficit? Is the tool messed up?
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Replies
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Did you do any exercise? Just a guess, but if no exercise was entered on this particular day, your tdee would be calculated as lower for that day.0
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To be honest, I ignore it. I eat at a deficit, and I exercise a lot, and don't eat back exercise calories. Sometimes it tells me I'll lose 15lbs+ in 5 weeks. Rubbish. I'm lucky if I lose 2lbs in 5 weeks!0
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Last week the app said I had over 2 million calories left for the day! It was funny. I would bet it's just something funky with the tool.0
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Today you were over your calories ? So if every day was like today.... you wouldn't be in a deficit.
Ignoring the message seems best0 -
Today you were over your calories ? So if every day was like today.... you wouldn't be in a deficit.
Ignoring the message seems best
But you can be over your calories, and still in a deficit. If you're at a 500 cal a day deficit and you're over by 190, you're still 310 under your maintenance. You would still lose on that deficit, just not as fast.0 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »Today you were over your calories ? So if every day was like today.... you wouldn't be in a deficit.
Ignoring the message seems best
But you can be over your calories, and still in a deficit. If you're at a 500 cal a day deficit and you're over by 190, you're still 310 under your maintenance. You would still lose on that deficit, just not as fast.
Wouldn't mfp be calculated on neat not tdee so you might be in a deficit for tdee but if no exercise was entered could you be over according to mfp and neat?
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Alatariel75 wrote: »Today you were over your calories ? So if every day was like today.... you wouldn't be in a deficit.
Ignoring the message seems best
But you can be over your calories, and still in a deficit. If you're at a 500 cal a day deficit and you're over by 190, you're still 310 under your maintenance. You would still lose on that deficit, just not as fast.
Wouldn't mfp be calculated on neat not tdee so you might be in a deficit for tdee but if no exercise was entered could you be over according to mfp and neat?
Yeah that would be my guess, but then who knows with this buggy critter sometimes!!
OP, that 5 week prediction thing is about as reliable as a Magic 8 Ball at the best of times. Just ignore it.0 -
Hi! I am currently using a calorie goal of 1550 to lose about 1 lb a week (147 lbs currently). With my exercise level, my tdee is 2050 so this goal is in line with losing 1lb a week. Today I went over by 190 cal (Mother's Day!) and after I completed the entry it said "if every day bla bla bla , in 5 weeks you will weight 148." How would I gain weight at a deficit? Is the tool messed up?
MFP is based on NEAT, if you didn't add your purposeful exercise on that day that gives you your TDEE of 2050 then you could easily have been over your NEAT target for that specific day
best to ignore the message - if you want to track it, jot the numbers in your diary 5 weeks in the future then when you get there compare on average against where you actually are0 -
I have found that if I stay on target every day then the estimate is usually pretty close! I haven't dared to test the over-days target lol
Maybe its a scare tactic like when our mothers used to tell us handling toads would give us warts or certain activities would make us go blind lok0 -
Thanks everyone... I didn't do any exercise yesterday so that must be what it means. I don't get though how it's not picking up the info I inputted originally, even if I go by tdee. 1550 by mfp standards still is a deficit. They need to get rid of that!0
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I thought that message was cool the first week, now it ticks me off- gets your hopes up one day, dashes them the next! Very fickle! It's the general trend that counts. A better message would be "if every week/month were like this one".0
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Here's something that I didn't realise for the first month or so
You don't need to complete
The only thing it does is give you that pop up and post on your feed, makes no difference to anything else
So if you don't want to see it don't complete0 -
I complete and ignore it. Silly app!0
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Alatariel75 wrote: »Today you were over your calories ? So if every day was like today.... you wouldn't be in a deficit.
Ignoring the message seems best
But you can be over your calories, and still in a deficit. If you're at a 500 cal a day deficit and you're over by 190, you're still 310 under your maintenance. You would still lose on that deficit, just not as fast.
Wouldn't mfp be calculated on neat not tdee so you might be in a deficit for tdee but if no exercise was entered could you be over according to mfp and neat?
Glad you know all about this. It's been quite an education. Thanks, Merkavar!0 -
Ignore it. I find the MFP calorie "suggestions" for weight loss to be totally crazy. When I've looked at what MFP suggests versus many other TDEE and BMR online, the MFP suggested calories are way low. A year ago I started at 235 lbs and lost 25 lbs over the course of a few months eating at 2,000 calories a day, with modest (not vigorous) exercise thrown in a few days a week. Had I followed MFP they told me I would gain at that amount of calories. Now I have gained some back, am currently at 220, and MFP is still telling me I need 1200-ish cals a day to see decent loss. I know this isn't true. I set my own custom targets and ignore their little messages.
My other secret that I use? At the end of the day I do NOT hit the "finished logging" button....if I don't hit the "finished" button no message comes up telling me that I'll be a hippo by the end of the week LOL, and I go about my slow and steady weight loss free of that annoyance.
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Aresnouveau wrote: »Ignore it. I find the MFP calorie "suggestions" for weight loss to be totally crazy. When I've looked at what MFP suggests versus many other TDEE and BMR online, the MFP suggested calories are way low. A year ago I started at 235 lbs and lost 25 lbs over the course of a few months eating at 2,000 calories a day, with modest (not vigorous) exercise thrown in a few days a week. Had I followed MFP they told me I would gain at that amount of calories. Now I have gained some back, am currently at 220, and MFP is still telling me I need 1200-ish cals a day to see decent loss. I know this isn't true. I set my own custom targets and ignore their little messages.
My other secret that I use? At the end of the day I do NOT hit the "finished logging" button....if I don't hit the "finished" button no message comes up telling me that I'll be a hippo by the end of the week LOL, and I go about my slow and steady weight loss free of that annoyance.
MFP is NEAT not TDEE, of course it's lower
You're supposed to add and eat exercise calories on top0 -
I ignore that message. No day is ever exactly the same as any other day, which renders that 'If every day was like today..." totally meaningless.0
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Last year, when I was first being really good about logging and was trying to be super good/drinking a lot more MFP Kool aid, I started writing down my weight and what MFP claimed I would weigh in five weeks. After eight weeks I stopped hitting the complete button because there was no point. Since weight loss isn't linear, their number was really just a random, ballpark number being thrown out there that just confused things.0
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I don't trust MFP for that. It's fun to think about (like horoscopes), but nothing I take as fact. Especially when I have my FitBit set to lose 1lb/week and I make that calorie goal and MFP tells me that I'll only lose 2.5lbs in 5 weeks.
I've "beat" the 5 week average and "failed" it eating the same amounts last summer. It isn't something I would take too seriously.0 -
Aresnouveau wrote: »Ignore it. I find the MFP calorie "suggestions" for weight loss to be totally crazy. When I've looked at what MFP suggests versus many other TDEE and BMR online, the MFP suggested calories are way low. A year ago I started at 235 lbs and lost 25 lbs over the course of a few months eating at 2,000 calories a day, with modest (not vigorous) exercise thrown in a few days a week. Had I followed MFP they told me I would gain at that amount of calories. Now I have gained some back, am currently at 220, and MFP is still telling me I need 1200-ish cals a day to see decent loss. I know this isn't true. I set my own custom targets and ignore their little messages.
My other secret that I use? At the end of the day I do NOT hit the "finished logging" button....if I don't hit the "finished" button no message comes up telling me that I'll be a hippo by the end of the week LOL, and I go about my slow and steady weight loss free of that annoyance.
The MFP calculation if you set it at sedentary assumes you will be adding exercise calories on top of it.
When I did my calculations based on TDEE with light exercise included, I come out to roughly the same amount of calories on MFP when I include my 1200 base calories plus my exercise calories.
That said I set my daily goal to 1350 cause I wanna.
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I'm setup to maintain and it tells me in 5 weeks if today were like to today I would weigh some crazy number that is way below where I would ever need to be...
They should throw that feature out the window..it is annoying.0 -
I'm setup to maintain and it tells me in 5 weeks if today were like to today I would weigh some crazy number that is way below where I would ever need to be...
They should throw that feature out the window..it is annoying.
I undereat my calories most days so I don't get the message but a warning that I'm not eating enough.0 -
Just ignore it.0
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I never understood the confusion with this feature.
It clearly says if every day was like today then this is your weight in 5 weeks. It's an estimate based on one day, of coarse it's not going to be accurate. Less accurate if your net calories change a lot day to day.
It seems on par with getting mad at a weather man because his forecast for next week was slightly off.
I don't know why they picked 5 weeks and not 4. I'm not sure why they didn't base the estimate on the previous 7 completed days.
But it is what it is. A simple estimate that might highlight if your on the right or wrong path.
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I never understood the confusion with this feature.
It clearly says if every day was like today then this is your weight in 5 weeks. It's an estimate based on one day, of coarse it's not going to be accurate. Less accurate if your net calories change a lot day to day.
It seems on par with getting mad at a weather man because his forecast for next week was slightly off.
I don't know why they picked 5 weeks and not 4. I'm not sure why they didn't base the estimate on the previous 7 completed days.
But it is what it is. A simple estimate that might highlight if your on the right or wrong path.
Yup, it's a really meaningless stat, especially since it makes a prediction for over a month away based solely on that one day, and without the whole picture. If you happened to do the grocery shopping that day and didn't track that as exercise, the stats are off. If you forgot to grab your purse and jogged back to the house, the stats are off. And then there are the poential minor changes in intake that may stuff it up.
It's a novelty, no more.0 -
I always thought it was just a motivator. Sometimes it's close, sometimes not, I don't think it matters. It's helped to motivate me in the past, and it's not something that people are going to rely on.0
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