Daily Calorie Allowance?

I'd say the 1800 figure is assuming you're eating back your exercise calories - possibly?

Regardless, I'd strip it back and enter your information here https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/ to find out what you SHOULD be eating.

TacoTina wrote: »

hello all I am working out 6 days a week eating my caloric intake most days, but I do have 1 question. If I am to eat 1200 calories a day do I add my calories burned then eat up to that many calories or stay at 1200 no matter what? I'm really confused with this, I am trying to loose about 15 lbs. I am 5.2 weighing in now at 136 been working out for almost 6 months and have only lost 4 lbs thats depressing to me any advice?

MFP is set up for you to eat the calories you earn during exercise. So the 1200 is a net eating goal. For example--net goal is 1200. You burn 200 during a run. Enter that on MFP So now you can eat 1400, which is what MFP will show you.


Because you are already relatively small (very similar to me at 5'2" and 132 lbs), this is going to be more difficult and slower for you. 4 lbs is not bad, considering you should be shooting for losing 1/2-1 lb per week. If you are middle aged or older, you may find that as you get lighter (like closer to 125) you will have to manually lower your NET goal a little ( you will still be eating above 1200 when you add in exercise calories!). It is tough for small gals to create a deficit because our bodies don't burn a large amount of calories maintaining such a (relatively) small weight. And a small weight goal is (unfortunately) appropriate for short gals. For a mid size frame at my height, many calculators predict I should weigh between 115 and 125. And some give a much lower number. So I feel your pain!

But overall, whatever you are doing actually seems to be working! Just make sure your expectations are appropriate too!

lemurcat12 wrote: »

kimmym0324 wrote: »

I'm confused, mfp says to eat 1500 calories a day but i'm doing a weight loss competition and was told to eat my weight X 7 and when i do that it comes out to 1883. The first week on i started i lost 10.6 pounds, last week i gained .6 pounds and this week i haven't lost anything. Should I up my calories? Or just give it another week??

The first week it's common to lose a bunch -- water weight -- and then a bit less often as your body loses the fat and replaces some of the water.

Instead of repeating advice, I'll just second this with the evidence of my own experience. With similar stats as yours, I lost a ton in the first week (mostly water), nothing on the second week, and just a tiny fraction on the third. After four or five weeks, I started settling into a normal rate.

My propensity for retaining water still wreaks havoc on my weekly rate of loss, so in the first few months, I also learned to detach myself from the scale (emotionally) and just started looking at the long-term trends instead of the day-to-day data. If the trend is down, and it's not a turtle's pace, I'm happy, even with fluctuations.

From my understanding, this initial fluctuation happens to a lot of people, and the more you have to lose, the more you can jump around on those first few weeks. Keep your deficit going and you'll see results.

I think the most effective way to do this is go online and use a TDEE calculator, Total daily energy expenditure...Then you can figure out who many calories you need to maintain or loose 1lb/week would be 500 less then TDEE a day and 2lbs/week would be 1000 less per day. I really like my fitbit charge, it does an excellent job of calculating my TDEE everyday.

My weightx7 is 1,015. Just looking at that number makes me hungry