The Fitnesspal default 1200 kcal recommendation is ridiculous
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Actually the Starvation Experiment is a very apt analogy for a good number of people on MFP. The 1500 Calories were NET calories during the experiment. The labour requirement was so that the participant's TDEE would reach 3000 and make the food they ate no more than 50% of TDEE.
One of the more important points was that the volunteers were of NORMAL weight. Which is why the aggressive goals chosen by people of normal weight who are trying to lose vanity lbs are so problematic.
Which is why MFP would do much better to switch to promoting a deficit limit of 20% of TDEE (25% while obese).
However, blanket recommendations out there that promote 2lbs a week as a safe rate of loss exist in government literature no less.
And MFP in reality does not promote 1200, but has set 1200 as a hard minimum for women, the corresponding hard minimum for men being 1500 when the goal setting scripts work as intended.
So, even though I wish that MFP would do a better job of interviewing new users and helping them set appropriate goals, the reality is that most people are not willing to put in the effort and time to read: they just want a cool app that will magically help them shed weight, fast. By tomorrow morning.
And MFP's business is to sell ads and subscriptions, which means they do not want to lose people to the next app, the one that promises big weight loss in no time.
I don't get what you want. MFP doesn't auto give larger people tiny numbers. Most can lose 2# per week above the min numbers. You want it to calc tdee and bmi then lock someone's loss rate? Sure but guess what....people gonna be people and ignore stuff anyway like they do. People can just use pen and paper.0 -
caitlintooher wrote: »often even at a desired loss of 1 pound, the default offer is to eat 1200 kcal.
[snip rest]
No, that's not the default. It's only 1200 if you're already at a probably non-obese weight.
I was 200 lbs and my limit was 1500 calories at a goal of 2 lbs per week.0 -
I think it verys from person to person. When I would exercise two hours a day and aim for 1200 to 1300 total in calorie consumption, I never lost a single pound. When I hit my senior year in high school, I gave up calorie counting and would exercise for 1 1/2 hours a day and probably eat around 1800 calories and I lost 20lbs in three months. Afterwords, when I graduate and got lazyyyyy and rarely worked out more than 30 minutes a day, I gained back 5lbs but once i gained that 5lbs I maintained on anywhere from 1600 to 2000 calories a day, even though I wasn't even exercising. Every body is different, and depending on age you can adapt very well. But honestly I do think the 1200 calorie is bull crap. Im starving on 1200 even on days I DONT exercise.0
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serenitywsu wrote: »I think it verys from person to person. When I would exercise two hours a day and aim for 1200 to 1300 total in calorie consumption, I never lost a single pound. When I hit my senior year in high school, I gave up calorie counting and would exercise for 1 1/2 hours a day and probably eat around 1800 calories and I lost 20lbs in three months. Afterwords, when I graduate and got lazyyyyy and rarely worked out more than 30 minutes a day, I gained back 5lbs but once i gained that 5lbs I maintained on anywhere from 1600 to 2000 calories a day, even though I wasn't even exercising. Every body is different, and depending on age you can adapt very well. But honestly I do think the 1200 calorie is bull crap. Im starving on 1200 even on days I DONT exercise.
This shows you don't know how your body burns calories. I don't know your stats but if you were working out heavily and only eating 1200-1300 you would have lost weight unless you are very small. There is a better chance you were guessing amount made mistakes and ate at maintenance. Next with the slight to moderate decrease in exercise you could have had less hunger and gotten better ar counting calories and it just seems like you did less and lost weight. Next you gained 5 pounds then maintained it because your metabolic rate increased with weight and your net food between high and low = what your body weight was +5 pounds. The reason we are able to use tools like this is because most people are the same not different. How could MFP calculate anything if we all just randomly burned at differnt rates despite size, age, or activity level?
Also feeling hunger isn't starving.0 -
I'm 5'1 and 110lbs. My BMR is only 1136. I would maintain on slightly under1400 calories per day if I were sedentary. If I wanted to lose weight the maximum rate could lose it at is 0.4lb/week eating the default of 1200 calories day. That is sad.
Well I'm not sedentary. I'm actually pretty active. So I eat a lot more than 1200. I actually lose eating around 1700. And way more than 0.4lb per week.
But on lazy days I could eat 1200 to keep a small deficit.
I'm switching to maintenence soon so hopefully I never see MFP recommend I eat 1200 calories again.0 -
caitlintooher wrote: »Yes, I understand that all of us on myfitnesspal want to loose weight, but one would expect that the site stays clear of ushering people into starvation.
If you want to loose aggressively, at 2 pounds a week (which is anyway only possible because these 2 pounds will NOT be fat but mostly water, muscle and as smallest percentage fat), and often even at a desired loss of 1 pound, the default offer is to eat 1200 kcal. This might work for a utterly sedentary woman who comes up to 5 feet in her stockings, but not for the many women and especially men who find this recommendation.
It will work, no doubt about it. You are guaranteed to loose weight. Because for the vast majority of us our body uses more than 1200 calories just to exist in the course of 24 hours. And that is even without getting out of bed. All those stories about people eating at the 1200 calorie level and not loosing weight are just that. If you are of average height and move your body even a bit, the laws of physics decree that you will loose weight. This idea that the body holds on to weight because it protects itself against starvation is not backed by science. Otherwise nobody who gets at least some sustenance would ever die of starvation.
One thing to keep in mind is that 1200 kcal per day IS starvation. In the Minnesota Starvation Experiment in WWII the participants were fed 1,560 kcal, and they lost about 25% of their body weight in 24 weeks. Because that is what happens when you put people in a famine situation. Famine. And that was with 360 kcal more than myfitnesspal tells you to eat to loose weight at 1 to 2 pounds a week.
In case you consider this a good thing, to the healthy volunteers in the study this caused severe emotional distress and depression, loss of libido, decline in concentration, comprehension and judgment capabilities, and utter preoccupation with food. The last "side effect" stayed with the volunteers until well after the end of the experiment, after they had gotten back to their previous weights.
1000 to 1500 kcal per day was the amount of calories Germans survived on in the hunger winter of 1946/47. Not all of them did.
To tell people wanting to loose weight for good that they should effectively starve themselves despite good evidence that it simply does not work is utterly irresponsible.
Yes, cutting your calories for a shorter time to get a kickstart on loosing weight can work and doesn't seem a problem, but quite simply, telling people to stay on an extremely low calorie diet for months and month is just mad.
Many other people have given excellent, detailed rebuttals to the finer points of your complaint, but I'd just like to re-emphasize to anyone reading who isn't familiar with MFP's functions that the bolded point above is flatly untrue, making all the many, many other points secondary to the silliness of objecting to a supposed feature of this website that doesn't exist. MFP does not default to 1200. 1200 is the default MINIMUM for women- many users select settings that would put them much lower than 1200/day if they did not establish that as a bottom point- and there are users for whom that's an appropriate weight loss goal.
There are those for whom 1200 is maintenance. In my case, if I were to remain sedentary, 1200 would achieve a not-at-all aggressive rate of loss. I'm pretty active and I like to eat, so my target is considerably higher, but if for whatever reason my activity level went down, 1200 would be an appropriate intake for gradual loss. My very short mother, bless her heart, has a BMR well below 1200, and if she were sedentary, would likely see weight *gain* at 1200 (again, she's quite active, so she eats more calories than that, but her net for maintenance is lower than 1200).
There *are* people for whom 1200 calories is an appropriate weight loss target, and none of them fit the profile of the participants in the Minnesota experiment, who were men of average height and weight doing heavy labor. None of those men, if they were alive today and joined MFP, would be given a target of 1200- no men are.
And please drop the hysterics about starvation. Starvation is not simply taking in fewer calories than are needed to maintain body weight- starvation is taking in fewer calories than are needed to sustain life. While that amount varies widely, obese first world women with tens or hundreds of pounds to lose are in no danger of starvation or even malnutrition from eating between 1200 and maintenance, and while I would recommend most women to eat at a lower deficit than 1200 creates because it's more sustainable and heck of a lot more fun, it's certainly not "starvation" and to compare it to real victims of famine is meaningless hyperbole.0 -
Deleted for double post.0
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I don't want the 1200 calorie recommendation from MFP so I have mine set to lose a half pound a week. Simple. Problem solved.0
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For shorter, lighter, or older women, 1200 cals can be a perfectly acceptable number.
And 1200 is not the default - it is the default minimum. Larger/taller people will get calorie goals higher (sometimes much higher) than 1200. And lighter people who choose a too aggressive goal and get the 1,200 calorie goal only have themselves to blame.
And MFP assumes you are manually entering your exercise, and when you do, it will add calories to your day.
And while 1,200 is too aggressive for many people, it is not starvation. For someone who is larger or very active, it could lead to nutritional deficiencies over time, but again, if they got a 1,200 cal goal it is because they chose an overly-aggressive goal or chose an incorrect activity level.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers about people eating 1,500 calories starving to death over the course of a winter, but I'm guessing they were male and doing intense manual labor. I am a 43 yr old 5'4" woman, and every calculator I can find plus my own experience says I maintain my weight at @ 1,700 cals only because I workout every day and get my steps in. If I didn't it would be @ 1,400 cals.0 -
Yes and they were also not overweight to begin with. MFP's recommendations assume you have enough body fat to lose to sustain health over your diet, and will stop dieting when you don't.I'm not sure where you got your numbers about people eating 1,500 calories starving to death over the course of a winter, but I'm guessing they were male and doing intense manual labor.
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(Good stuff from original quote snipped to highlight this part:)
The reason we are able to use tools like this is because most people are the same not different. How could MFP calculate anything if we all just randomly burned at differnt rates despite size, age, or activity level?
Also feeling hunger isn't starving.
I'm quite confident that you (HutchA12) know the things I'm about to type, but am commenting in case newbies are reading. (I've seen some folks take the calculators' estimates as invariant gospel, which they also aren't.)
I completely agree with your main point, and that we don't randomly burn calories at different rates. The calculators (like MFP's) are research-based, and provide good ballpark estimates for people to start with. However, people do need to pay attention to their own experience: There is some individual variation around the averages provided by the calculators.
People may find themselves gaining/losing a little more or a little less than the prediction . . . and if losing too rapidly (say, > 1% of bodyweight weekly, unless quite obese), they probably should eat more, in order to stay strong & healthy while losing weight.
If someone's experience is extremely different from the calculators, and they're logging meticulously, a medical consult would be a Good Plan.
(Basis for this post: I don't have the cite at hand, but have seen scatter plots from the research on average burn, and the individual observations cluster around the averages, but don't all sit right on it - just as you'd expect from samples from a normally-distributed population. Also, there are various n=1 examples. For example, a very meticulous MFP friend failed to lose at the projected level, sought medical advice, had normal test results, and is now losing gradually at a medically-supervised substantially lower calorie level. On the other end of the continuum, I'm currently losing (very slowly, as intended) on net calories a couple hundred above my calculator-estimated maintenance calories, with careful logging.)0 -
I think maybe the OP was angry because he/she couldn't hack it at 1200cals a day. As others have already said the MFP formula works, and when followed is actually pretty healthy.0
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1200 is really not the default recommendation though - when I joined MFP, it never even occurred to me to select 'lose 2 pounds a week', and MFP actually recommended 1 pound a week. That gave me 1690 calories. If people think that it's a good idea to go from stuffing their face to cutting to lose 2 pounds a week though, it's their problem. I'll just shake my head at the numerous 'eating 1200 calories and hungry all the time' posts.
The only thing I'd change about MFP is that it should really be made clearer that those calories don't include exercise. Right now it can be confusing, considering that you have to pick how often you exercise when you select your goals, so people can think that it's already accounted for, when it's not.0 -
My goodness you are being dramatic.
1200 is not a default. 1000 is the daily minimum for women.
I've eaten around 1200/day for the last four years. I am happy, healthy, full and my libido is just FINE.
If you aren't ready and willing to follow a diet and do the work, you might as well just give up now.
A better course might be to make some friends, look at their diaries and get an idea of some workable ways to spend a 1200-calorie diet budget.0 -
azulvioleta6 wrote: »My goodness you are being dramatic.
1200 is not a default. 1000 is the daily minimum for women.
I've eaten around 1200/day for the last four years. I am happy, healthy, full and my libido is just FINE.
If you aren't ready and willing to follow a diet and do the work, you might as well just give up now.
A better course might be to make some friends, look at their diaries and get an idea of some workable ways to spend a 1200-calorie diet budget.
4 years? How much have you lost?
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azulvioleta6 wrote: »My goodness you are being dramatic.
1200 is not a default. 1000 is the daily minimum for women.
I've eaten around 1200/day for the last four years. I am happy, healthy, full and my libido is just FINE.
If you aren't ready and willing to follow a diet and do the work, you might as well just give up now.
A better course might be to make some friends, look at their diaries and get an idea of some workable ways to spend a 1200-calorie diet budget.
4 years? How much have you lost?
92 pounds. I have serious health problems which make weight loss slower/more difficult.0 -
serenitywsu wrote: »I think it verys from person to person. When I would exercise two hours a day and aim for 1200 to 1300 total in calorie consumption, I never lost a single pound. When I hit my senior year in high school, I gave up calorie counting and would exercise for 1 1/2 hours a day and probably eat around 1800 calories and I lost 20lbs in three months. Afterwords, when I graduate and got lazyyyyy and rarely worked out more than 30 minutes a day, I gained back 5lbs but once i gained that 5lbs I maintained on anywhere from 1600 to 2000 calories a day, even though I wasn't even exercising. Every body is different, and depending on age you can adapt very well. But honestly I do think the 1200 calorie is bull crap. Im starving on 1200 even on days I DONT exercise.
This shows you don't know how your body burns calories. I don't know your stats but if you were working out heavily and only eating 1200-1300 you would have lost weight unless you are very small. There is a better chance you were guessing amount made mistakes and ate at maintenance. Next with the slight to moderate decrease in exercise you could have had less hunger and gotten better ar counting calories and it just seems like you did less and lost weight. Next you gained 5 pounds then maintained it because your metabolic rate increased with weight and your net food between high and low = what your body weight was +5 pounds. The reason we are able to use tools like this is because most people are the same not different. How could MFP calculate anything if we all just randomly burned at differnt rates despite size, age, or activity level?
Also feeling hunger isn't starving.
No need to be rude and make assumptions. I was counting calories at the time when I was exercising 2 hours a day, and I was counting everything I ate. No to mention I said in HIGH SCHOOL, children, preteen, and teen bodies AREN'T adult bodies. Some people Just DON'T have metabolism that adapt well to low calories or their bodies don't work the way YOU think is average.0 -
I am the shorter (5'1), lighter (100-105lbs), older (62), fit and healthy woman that a sedentary setting of 1200 cals is suitable for.
My BMR is 975 and when I had the flu in the fall, did barely nothing for 3 weeks, I put on 1/2 lbs eating 1200.
( I counted meticulously as I had the opportunity to find out what burn I would get being so sedentary, and I was bored)
That being said it took a year to go from 130-105 lbs eating 1200+125-170 of my 200 cal burn. (Average, data gathered from MFP for TDEE)
I have been maintaining with a 1200 base for 6 years, but eat 1550-ish to support my activity level at the moment.
I get very upset at people who are trying to lose at 2lbs a week eating 1200 and not eating back exercise calories. Heck if I could eat them back almost anyone could, so I am often trying to be the voice of reason on those threads
Just thought I would chime in as the 1200 cal woman
( I know most posting on this thread are familiar with me)
Cheers, h.0 -
azulvioleta6 wrote: »My goodness you are being dramatic.
1200 is not a default. 1000 is the daily minimum for women.
I've eaten around 1200/day for the last four years. I am happy, healthy, full and my libido is just FINE.
If you aren't ready and willing to follow a diet and do the work, you might as well just give up now.
A better course might be to make some friends, look at their diaries and get an idea of some workable ways to spend a 1200-calorie diet budget.
I am going to hazard a guess that your medical issues may come into play as far as your ability to feel full and satisfied on a 1200 calorie diet for 4 years straight. If I recall correctly, you are at least average in height, if not on the tall side (for some reason I think you're 5'10" but I may be imagining that.) Comfortably keeping a 1200 calorie diet at those stats is extraordinarily unusual.0
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