What's your calorie goal and how do you distribute them throughout the day?
Replies
-
I'm flexible on calories and how to allocate my calorie allowance but nominally my goal is six days 2000 + exercise calories and one day only 650 cals (a maintenance varient of 5:2 fasting).
As my exercise is a bit extreme in reality my days vary from 650 to 5000+ cals.
On the six "normal eating" days I will mostly have three main meals + snacks. Guess the calorie amounts per meal vary from 300 - 2000? Not really concerned about individual meals just the day as a whole.
But if my weight drifts upwards towards my intervention point I may skip breakfast as that's a very easy way for me to drop about 400 - 500 cals.
My main meal tends to be in the evening but really the choices through the day centre on what I feel like eating, hunger, social eating and overall hitting my calorie and other nutrition goals.
Also happy to transfer calories from one day to the next and take more of a weekly view.
0 -
Main meal is my evening meal.. But it is always fish or chicken, veggies and starch.. This being said, all other calories fall where they may...
If I happen to go out for lunch (rarely) then that is my biggest meal..
But right now, I do not plan to stop logging.. Perhaps when the "calorie database memory chip" in my head has enough data, I will know how to calculate calories before I eat them..0 -
My maintenance is around 1400
Breakfast: 50-100
Lunch: 450-500
Snack: 250
Dinner: 450-500
0 -
@ Op, good luck to you if you can get to the point where you don't have to log. I found in the past for me, when I didn't log, and I thought I knew how to distribute my calories, it would always creep back up.
But to answer your question, I do 1600 calories for the day (sometimes I dip into the exercise calories). Breakfast is my major calorie hit. 600 - 700. Lunch is usually a protein shake (200 ish). Dinner is 500-600 and I usually end with some chips and hummus if I can.0 -
TimothyFish wrote: »TimothyFish wrote: »
Thank G-D. I thought maybe my recent 300 calorie estimates were wrong!
As for the original question, I'm not that strict with how I divide up my calories. I usually try to get around 500 calories at breakfast only because in my experience if I eat less than that I tend to be hungry again by 10:00. I shoot for around 600 calories for lunch/dinner. I cook dinner at night and usually eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. That leaves me room for snacks or desserts. I generally eat anywhere from 1800-2100 calories per day. While I still have my goal set to lose weight, lately I've just been eating around maintenance.
0 -
Different things work for different people, but my maintenance goal is 1,600 calories a day and this has been the most helpful for me personally (ever since I adapted it I've never felt the need to cheat or go over!):
Breakfast, usually 1 hour after I wake up since I like to get ready first: 400 calories (30% fat, 30% carbs, 30% protein)
Snack, I'm not a big lunch person as you'll notice: 160 calories (usually around 1 cup of cereal high in iron, which is also mostly carbs so it evens out the ratios from breakfast and brings me close to 50% carbs, 30% fat and 20% protein for the day)
Snack #2: 140 calories
Dinner: 500-550 calories
Night time snack, which is when I have that chocolate bar or ice cream I've been wanting to treat myself to: 350-400 calories.
In the end when it's all said and done, I usually end up with about 50% carbs, 20-25% protein, and 25-30% fat.
I try to make healthier options throughout the day, and then that 350-400 calories at night gives me room to still indulge myself in something satisfying while also keeping me motivated to stay on track during the day so I can earn it. Some people say not to reward yourself with food, but I always do with this small snack. It works for me, so I see nothing wrong with using food as motivation!0 -
It's up to your personal eating preference & your particular lifestyle really.
The general meal caloric guidelines is that each meal should range 500 - 700 calories (I can't remember the source of this info - sry).
However, personally I have a small breakfast, moderate lunch, and my dinner is my biggest meal of the day.
But honestly as others have mentioned, I don't break the calories down by the meal - that would drive me completely mad! lol
In maintenance I glance at my daily calorie intake but I focus on the macros. I don't really put a lot of emphasis on the specific number of calories anymore because I practice a variation of the 80/20 Rule so about once a week or so I will go over my daily allotted calories & I'm A-OK with that.
For me in maintenance is more of a weekly pulse-check on the calories & paying more attention to the macros.
Best of luck to you!0
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 392.9K Introduce Yourself
- 43.7K Getting Started
- 260.1K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.8K Food and Nutrition
- 47.4K Recipes
- 232.5K Fitness and Exercise
- 415 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.5K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.9K Motivation and Support
- 8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.6K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 1.1K Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.5K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions