MFP was wrong about my caloric recommendation

245

Replies

  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,139 Member
    something tells me this thread is not going as OP intended….
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    edited June 2015
    My 100% plan is to drop 8-10 lbs per month, whatever it takes, and then - 3 months from now when I am at my goal - to gently allow in more calories until I find my maintenance point.
    You know that as your weight gets lower, it becomes increasingly harder to lose at a fast past, right?
    Don't get frustrated when 8-10LBS a month doesn't keep working.

    PS: fuel your body. Always.

  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,581 Member
    Yeah, I think MFP should be closed down. What a complete scam! <eye-rolly>

  • rg1949
    rg1949 Posts: 12 Member
    My 100% plan is to drop 8-10 lbs per month, whatever it takes, and then - 3 months from now when I am at my goal - to gently allow in more calories until I find my maintenance point.
    You know that as your weight gets lower, it becomes increasingly harder to lose at a fast pace, right?
    Don't get frustrated when 8-10LBS a month doesn't keep working.

    PS: fuel your body. Always.

    Best and most useful comment by FAR!
  • Mischievous_Rascal
    Mischievous_Rascal Posts: 1,791 Member
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    something tells me this thread is not going as OP intended….

    Someone has already mentioned that they've given the exact same advice a few times before this thread was even started, and the OP has enough posts to have an inkling of how the forums turn out around here, so who knows what she intended?

    OP: Weigh your food and get a HRM to track your calorie burns. MFP works wonders if you use it properly.
  • leggup
    leggup Posts: 2,942 Member
    You were eating at your maintenance level. That much is true. Since you weren't logging your food accurately, you could have been eating at 2,000 calories net. It also sounds like you were eating all of your exercise calories back, even though you thought it was overestimating them.

    Open your dairy. Let us see what you think you're eating and burning. It's extremely dangerous to suggest to the forums that people should eat under 1,200 and that MFP's numbers are wrong. Already there are hundreds of newbies every month posting how they're eating 1,200 calories and not losing weight. Don't validate them because you're not being accurate.
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,139 Member
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    something tells me this thread is not going as OP intended….

    Someone has already mentioned that they've given the exact same advice a few times before this thread was even started, and the OP has enough posts to have an inkling of how the forums turn out around here, so who knows what she intended?

    OP: Weigh your food and get a HRM to track your calorie burns. MFP works wonders if you use it properly.

    Yes, I recall ops previous posts...
  • CaliforniaRower
    CaliforniaRower Posts: 187 Member
    edited June 2015
    Wow! You guys sure do get vicious around here! I wasn't "blaming" the computer system known as MFP for anything. Blaming an inanimate object? Really? I was making the point that I didn't chart anything more than what seemed normal, e.g., "a 6" banana." No, I didn't get out a ruler. It might have been 5.5 or 7. (There are men on this planet who are glad I'm not gifted at estimating length in inches.) And further, I DID carefully log only my "real" exercise - quite precisely, in fact. And I never ate back my entire allotment of exercise calories. But other online sources seem to indicate my preferred exercise causes far less caloric expenditure than MFP credited me for.

    The POINT of my original post was not to unleash this insane retribution but to say, "Hey, that didn't work for me, so I made some fixes and now it's working. Maybe this would work for you, too?"

    Geesh! Breathe a little, folks!
  • CaliforniaRower
    CaliforniaRower Posts: 187 Member
    Machka9 wrote: »
    The system assigned me 1350 calories a day. I was NEVER hungry. I felt fantastic. It felt like I was eating tons of food. I cut way back on sugar, chocolate and breads. However, over +6 weeks, I didn't drop another ounce.

    I got pretty sad about that permanent plateau. I figured I'd try to address the matter when I got back from vacation.

    Well, I decided to do 2 things differently: NOT log my exercise, since I think it was being overly generous with how many calories it thinks I'm burning AND to voluntarily cut (for a while, probably not forever) at least 250-350 calories off their recommendation.

    I know there are plenty of people out there who will say, "under 1200 calories per day is dangerous..." and I get that. But so far, I feel fine. And I'm not going to do it forever. And I AM losing weight - finally!

    Just a hint for anyone else who thinks, "Plateau?!? Fahgeddaboutit!"

    My 100% plan is to drop 8-10 lbs per month, whatever it takes, and then - 3 months from now when I am at my goal - to gently allow in more calories until I find my maintenance point.

    (P.S. - I totally acknowledge that because I don't literally weigh everything I eat, I could have been eating more calories than I think I am all along.)

    This ^^ the exercise bit.

    MFP overestimates the amount of calories burned when you exercise AND I've seen people here record every little thing they do. They get up and spend 15 min vacuuming, and it gets recorded as exercise. That might work for some, but I find what works better for me is to record only my actual exercise, not every little thing I do in a day, and to ensure that the calorie count is low.

    And also ... it is really easy to eat more calories than you might think when you don't track accurately. I was floored by things like cereal. What I consider 1 serving of cereal is more like 4 servings. Also cashews. What I consider 1 serving of cashews is about 5 servings. And with certain foods (like cashews) that's a difference between 100 cal and 500 cal.

    Thank you for this polite and helpful response. Although I am familiar with how much an ounce is, and I suspect I was fairly accurate, it is true that I will not use a food scale - if it got to that level and I had massive weight to lose, I'd opt for bariatric surgery, I suspect. I cannot imagine the inhumanity nor obsessive behavior (it would be that if I did it) of using a scale.

    Thank you again. I'm surprised I stirred up such a swarm of hornets. I've learned to stay off the forums from now on!

  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,953 Member
    edited June 2015
    So it's inhuman and/or obsessed using a food scale? you know, god forbid you go for accuracy right off the bat rather than wasting weeks not losing because you're just guestimating...

    jennifer-lawrence-10.gif
  • Indigoblu1
    Indigoblu1 Posts: 127 Member
    mwebster11 wrote: »
    8 to 10 pounds is too much to lose in a month,you'll go into starvation mode and you'll gain it back.1-2 lbs is a safe way to lose weight,and you'll keep it off.

    LOL ... please make it stop already!
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,752 Member
    "MFP was wrong about my caloric recommendation" sounds like blame to me...
  • Merkavar
    Merkavar Posts: 3,081 Member
    Wow! You guys sure do get vicious around here! I wasn't "blaming" the computer system known as MFP for anything. Blaming an inanimate object? Really? I was making the point that I didn't chart anything more than what seemed normal, e.g., "a 6" banana." No, I didn't get out a ruler. It might have been 5.5 or 7. (There are men on this planet who are glad I'm not gifted at estimating length in inches.) And further, I DID carefully log only my "real" exercise - quite precisely, in fact. But other online sources seem to indicate my preferred exercise causes far less caloric expenditure than MFP credited me for.

    The POINT of my original post was not to unleash this insane retribution but to say, "Hey, that didn't work for me, so I made some fixes and now it's working. Maybe this would work for you, too?"

    Geesh! Breathe a little, folks!

    I'm not sure how mean this thread got. Not going to read the whole thing.

    But the title is mfp was wrong, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that people thought the op blamed mfp.

    Also like you just said you don't use the product as intended so your adjustments to fix the problem were more likely an adjustment to correct your user errors.

    For example 6" banana, is that a thick banana or a thin banana? Plus you didn't measure it with a ruler. That's why like every 2nd post that I saw suggested you weigh your food to be accurate.

    Just sounds like you purposefully added as many variables as you could and then when things didn't work out you blamed the software.

    Weigh your food and log it as grams, don't eat back 100% of your exercise because your likely overestimating.
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
    The jig is up! Cheese it!
  • Indigoblu1
    Indigoblu1 Posts: 127 Member
    (There are men on this planet who are glad I'm not gifted at estimating length in inches.)

    LOL ... gosh, I wonder what she's referring to?
  • Merkavar
    Merkavar Posts: 3,081 Member
    Just looking at your banana example. If all your food had that large a variable 5.5-7 inches I could easily see you over eating by 400 calories a day.
  • Merkavar
    Merkavar Posts: 3,081 Member
    Machka9 wrote: »
    The system assigned me 1350 calories a day. I was NEVER hungry. I felt fantastic. It felt like I was eating tons of food. I cut way back on sugar, chocolate and breads. However, over +6 weeks, I didn't drop another ounce.

    I got pretty sad about that permanent plateau. I figured I'd try to address the matter when I got back from vacation.

    Well, I decided to do 2 things differently: NOT log my exercise, since I think it was being overly generous with how many calories it thinks I'm burning AND to voluntarily cut (for a while, probably not forever) at least 250-350 calories off their recommendation.

    I know there are plenty of people out there who will say, "under 1200 calories per day is dangerous..." and I get that. But so far, I feel fine. And I'm not going to do it forever. And I AM losing weight - finally!

    Just a hint for anyone else who thinks, "Plateau?!? Fahgeddaboutit!"

    My 100% plan is to drop 8-10 lbs per month, whatever it takes, and then - 3 months from now when I am at my goal - to gently allow in more calories until I find my maintenance point.

    (P.S. - I totally acknowledge that because I don't literally weigh everything I eat, I could have been eating more calories than I think I am all along.)

    This ^^ the exercise bit.

    MFP overestimates the amount of calories burned when you exercise AND I've seen people here record every little thing they do. They get up and spend 15 min vacuuming, and it gets recorded as exercise. That might work for some, but I find what works better for me is to record only my actual exercise, not every little thing I do in a day, and to ensure that the calorie count is low.

    And also ... it is really easy to eat more calories than you might think when you don't track accurately. I was floored by things like cereal. What I consider 1 serving of cereal is more like 4 servings. Also cashews. What I consider 1 serving of cashews is about 5 servings. And with certain foods (like cashews) that's a difference between 100 cal and 500 cal.

    Thank you for this polite and helpful response. Although I am familiar with how much an ounce is, and I suspect I was fairly accurate, it is true that I will not use a food scale - if it got to that level and I had massive weight to lose, I'd opt for bariatric surgery, I suspect. I cannot imagine the inhumanity nor obsessive behavior (it would be that if I did it) of using a scale.

    Thank you again. I'm surprised I stirred up such a swarm of hornets. I've learned to stay off the forums from now on!

    Are you just trying to provoke people :neutral:

    Am I misunderstanding or are you saying people who use scales are inhuman? Takes a few seconds to weigh something, not that much of an obsessive behaviour. What is so wrong with use a scale?

    Also scales are more important closer to a healthy weight. You seem to be saying that scales are for obese people.

  • senecarr
    senecarr Posts: 5,377 Member
    Wanted to see if poster had genuine issue. Nope.
    g36Oc.gif
  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
    <<<brought popcorn with me...sits down and offers the others..some popcorn too... i logged them dont eat it all.
  • Kst76
    Kst76 Posts: 935 Member
    mwebster11 wrote: »
    8 to 10 pounds is too much to lose in a month,you'll go into starvation mode and you'll gain it back.1-2 lbs is a safe way to lose weight,and you'll keep it off.

    Starvation mode is sooo 2013/13.