MFP Recommended Calories?

jah7700
jah7700 Posts: 276 Member
edited September 28 in Health and Weight Loss
So I've lost 13lbs since I started MFP near the end of April... YEAH! But I have noticed I'm typically eating less than the recommended calories (nearly 2200) and still typically lose only 2lbs a week or so. With the holiday weekend I haven't eaten nearly as well, but stayed within my daily caloric goal (some days I had to consider my exercise as well, which I usually don't eat). With my weekly weigh-in tomorrow, I'm wondering what the scale will show... I've seen were people eat their recommended calories and the extras from exercise and still lose, but I think tomorrow will show that I can't.

Has anyone noticed that they have to routinely eat less than their MFP recommendation to lose?

Replies

  • foxxybrown
    foxxybrown Posts: 838 Member
    Reducing your caloric intake too fast by too much will lead to stalling out quicker. Since you have a lot to lose, you should probably eat more and once you hit a wall then you'll have some room to decrease your calories.
  • jmafte
    jmafte Posts: 46
    My recommended calories are only 1200, so I am usually at that, and eat my exercise calories back as well. I usually have about 700-725 in exercise calories to eat.
  • highland_sky
    highland_sky Posts: 27 Member
    Not for me, b:smile: t I have been such a life-long yo-yo dieter that eating less than won't work. You can do that for a short period and not have an impact to your rate of weight loss, but after a while you will slow down your metabolism - which will cause you to plateu. Go ahead and each - making smart choices - this is what causes a life style change, over a diet.

    Congrats on your progress!
  • sue26
    sue26 Posts: 412
    no point worrying about it until after the weigh in. Then you will know what to do a bit better :smile:
  • aj_rock
    aj_rock Posts: 390 Member
    Remember that weight loss is a complex function of both energy intake and outtake. As such, your recommended calories isn't perfect, and neither is your intake/outtake reporting, no matter how hard you try.

    As such, you're taking the right approach! Follow the guidelines, and if whatever you're doing works, just keep going with it! Don't worry too much about it unless you start to fizzle out.
  • Method2Madness
    Method2Madness Posts: 28
    I've had significant trouble losing weight (at least on the scale) using calorie counts. The logic that every calorie under your daily max equals lost weight isn't completely true. In my case, I actually needed to eat a lot more than my MFP recommendation. That recommendation was based on a desire to lose 2.5 lbs a week. Unfortunately, the recommendation put me under my resting metabolic rate (RMR), which essentially meant that I was putting my body in starvation mode for the first six weeks of weight control.

    There are several factors to understand with the whole calorie calculation. I ended up using the services of my gym to test my resting metabolic rates and my efficiency during exercise (i.e. how much fat vs. sugars I'm burning in all five heart rate zones).

    If you don't have access to the scientific testing aspect, I recommend checking out www.shapeup.org. The RMR calculator on this site was the most accurate I could find (measure of accuracy is based on the web resource that was closest to my RMR test at my gym). The RMR calculator here was accurate to within 3% of my medically calculated metabolism.

    The bottom line for me was that calorie counts designed to drop my weight by 2.0 lbs a week were potentially unhealthy as they would put my body in starvation mode (causing me to lose lean muscle mass potentially). In order to improve my fat burnign and weight loss, I found out that I need a very precise control of calories and heart rate levels that cause my body to burn as much fat as possible while maintaining and even building lean muscle mass.

    Hope this helps.

    PS - I apologize if the web-site recommendation is against MFP rules. I made the assumption that since it is not a commercial recommendation (note the .org... it's part of the current government initiative to promote healthier living) it was okay. I can edit this as needed if contacted by an admin.
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