Totally confused!!!

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tusher2011
tusher2011 Posts: 201 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I posted this on the excersie board, but I think I should have asked it over here...so here is what I posted over there...

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http://weight-loss.fitness.com/nutrition/40273-how-many-calories-should-i-eat.html

According to these calculations(the link above) ...I should be consuming 2100 calories in order to lose weight. MFP has me at 1200 cals. Can someone do their's using these calculations and tell me if your's is accurate?

It's been 2 1/2 weeks and I've only lost 1 lb. I have changed my eating habits drastically (I was eating WAY worse prior) and I have been working out. So I am clearly doing something wrong. This is so frustrating.:(

Replies

  • azlady7
    azlady7 Posts: 471 Member
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    are you male or female? and how much weight do you need to lose?
  • tusher2011
    tusher2011 Posts: 201 Member
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    Female. And I need to lose 60 lbs. I'm 192 now and am 5'2".
  • patti303
    patti303 Posts: 1 Member
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    Dear Totally Confused,

    I find age is a significant factor. How old are you, if you don't mind my asking?
  • azlady7
    azlady7 Posts: 471 Member
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    yeah that is probably way too much. go with mfp says. my cals are set to 1700. I am 5ft 3in with about 100 lbs to lose. with my exercises included into it i get about 2000 cals a day. but the cals just set to regular....2000 is way too much. I looked at that site and its VERY generic.
  • Gv6pac
    Gv6pac Posts: 1
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    Hang in there! I know exactly how you feel. I've been struggling forever to drop past a certain point. I feel like I am stuck at 147, even though I'm on track with calories and exercise. My food choices have improved, but I just can't drop lbs! On the bright side, I feel soooo much better! And my other measurements are slowly dropping. I just keep telling myself it won't happen overnight. Good luck!!! You can do it!!
  • tinkerbell1964
    tinkerbell1964 Posts: 152
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    Hi Tusher , i've just looked back to my reports from when i first started , I'm 5'3 with only 16lbs to lose , it took me just over 10 days to lose my first pound , i didn't exercise much in my first few weeks , but i did stick rigidly to my calories allowed, and after a few weeks of reading other folks progress and comments i started to do regular exercise and drink loads more water, finally results but very slowly which isn't a bad thing if you want the weight to stay off, i was very disheartened in the first few weeks , but it didn't last long.

    I have weeks where i plateau and nothing comes off, but i don't beat myself up about it , because it just isn't worth it ........... I weigh when i feel like it usually fortnightly or when i can be bothered as that was getting me down when the scales weren't showing a loss.

    Good luck and give it time , it's taken me 5 months to lose 13 lbs
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,121 Member
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    Is that 2100 calories with or without exercise? Myfitnesspal does NOT add in your exercise automatically.

    by Ladyhawk00
    MFP chose to use the Mifflin-St Jeor formula because it is generally considered more accurate. They created this site to be different from other sites for a specific reason. Most sites use Harris-Benedict and use exercise to create the deficit for weight loss, keeping the daily cal goal static.

    MFP recognizes that many people cannot exercise regularly, or maybe at all, due to physical limitations or time. And many people set up an exercise plan, but as we know, that's not necessarily what actually happens every day. So they wanted to create a site that allows for weight loss, regardless of exercise. So, they set it up to use BMR + activity level. The activity level is not intended to include any purposeful exercise.


    That way, if you do no exercise, you still have a built in deficit for weight loss. When you do log exercise, cals are added back in to keep that deficit stable.

    The other site you used may have figured your calorie needs based on an activity level that INCLUDED exercise.


    1500-1700 sounds about right. Start with that and try it for a month. If you haven't lost weight, drop down by 200 calories. Add in your extra exercise daily and also eat those calories.
  • littlemisschunky
    littlemisschunky Posts: 14 Member
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    HI,

    I'm new to this but im 5ft 4, and did need to loose about 3.5 stone, I've been put on a plan of 1200 calories a day including 40 fat grams a day. I am not an active person (i'm a music teacher so am pretty much confined to my room all day). This week (first week) I have lost 6lbs. I've found that i've exercised every day so far for just 20 minutes (dog walking) and i've pretty much stuck to my calories too. I don't know what week two is going to be like but from looking at what im eating now I must've been eating about 1800-2000 cals a day !

    Hope that helps,

    Little Miss Chunky.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,121 Member
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    http://weight-loss.fitness.com/nutrition/40273-how-many-calories-should-i-eat.html

    Okay, I just went to the site you linked.

    That site is figuring your BMR. That is what you need to eat to do your daily activity. Your maintenance calories are calculated by using a formula based on your activity level. You must have done your final calculations based on a projected exercise plan, which would have ADDED 300-500 MORE calories to offset the additional calories needed by your body to function after all that exercise.

    Myfitnesspal counts on you to manually ADD your exercise. That's the difference. See that "QUOTED" blue box in my previous post.
  • tusher2011
    tusher2011 Posts: 201 Member
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    Is that 2100 calories with or without exercise? Myfitnesspal does NOT add in your exercise automatically.

    by Ladyhawk00
    MFP chose to use the Mifflin-St Jeor formula because it is generally considered more accurate. They created this site to be different from other sites for a specific reason. Most sites use Harris-Benedict and use exercise to create the deficit for weight loss, keeping the daily cal goal static.

    MFP recognizes that many people cannot exercise regularly, or maybe at all, due to physical limitations or time. And many people set up an exercise plan, but as we know, that's not necessarily what actually happens every day. So they wanted to create a site that allows for weight loss, regardless of exercise. So, they set it up to use BMR + activity level. The activity level is not intended to include any purposeful exercise.


    That way, if you do no exercise, you still have a built in deficit for weight loss. When you do log exercise, cals are added back in to keep that deficit stable.

    The other site you used may have figured your calorie needs based on an activity level that INCLUDED exercise.


    1500-1700 sounds about right. Start with that and try it for a month. If you haven't lost weight, drop down by 200 calories. Add in your extra exercise daily and also eat those calories.

    Thank You for including this info!!! Makes sense!! I will just stick with where I'm at calorie wise then. :) Thanks again.
  • Terriberry
    Terriberry Posts: 100
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    Hi,
    I went to the site and did the calculations for myself and they matched what MFP has already set for me. Only off by 5 calories. I see a lot of people on MFP with 1200 cals a day and it really makes me nervous for them. That just seems like way too low for anybody regardless of height and weight. I started this program in October of 2010 and have consistently lost weight. I've lost about a pound a week and I've lost almost 36 pounds. And that's with some REALLY bad eating days mixed in. I exercise almost everyday, usually just walking. I try to eat my exercise calories back or most of then anyway. The daily goal that MFP sets for you ALREADY has a deficit in case you dont exercise at all. So let's say you have 1200 a day and you exercise 400 cals. Subtract 400 from 1200 and you are only eating 800 cals a day. That's not enough for your body to sustain itself. You might lose weight in the beginning but eventually your body will start to go into starvation mode to protect itself. I know a lot of people here dont eat back their exercise cals but I firmly believe that they are wrong. I hope this helps you.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,121 Member
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    Thank You for including this info!!! Makes sense!! I will just stick with where I'm at calorie wise then. :) Thanks again.

    You're welcome. It is a bit confusing. This question is asked 50 times a day, so you're not alone.

    If you set your daily activity level correctly (like, are you sedentary, lightly active, very active) in your daily life, and you add in AND eat your exercise calories, you should be fine. The two sites figure the calories with the same basic idea, just the exercsie is added separately here. The other formula adds in the exercise for you - which means you darn well better exercise on a really regular basis.

    Use the MFP formula if you are going to log calories here. It's much simpler. I'm all about keeping it simple.

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