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Calorie goal??

melissa112
melissa112 Posts: 99 Member
edited November 30 in Social Groups
Hi

I am really confused so I was wondering if anybody could help.

I am 28yrs old, female, 5'2, 140.2lbs. Goal weight is 126 lbs.

As I am so small height wise, MFP gives me 1200cals a day for 1lb weight loss, and 2lb weight loss.

Apparently according to another calculator, my TDEE is 1535, so losing 2lb a week would mean I have to eat 535 cals, and a 1lb a week, 1035. Both are too low so MFP is giving me more (1200).

I have set my MFP activity level to sedentary, as my activity is not consistent, some days I will walk my mums dog, some weeks I won't, some days I might do exercise, then none for a few weeks.

I set my fitbit to sync with MFP. Yesterday I walked my mums dog for 75mins at a brisk pace, and did 50 mountain climbers, 50 lunges, 50 star jumps, and 50 squats. This isn't something I'd do every day.

Fitbit said I'd burned 2038 calories over the day, so MFP adjusted my 1200 by 438 to 1638.

Given my TDEE is only 1535, how can I possibly need to eat 1638 to lose weight?

I have a desk job and get up early to leave for work, and home late, so activity time from 7am - 7pm is low anyway.

I'm just not sure why MFP is so low, ie 1200 which is still more than I need to eat to even lose 1lb a week at sedentary, and fitbit is saying I can eat 1638 due to adjustments? It's obviously adjusting on the 1200 and not the actual amount I'd need to eat to lose 1lb a week which would be 1038.

Any guidance would be really appreciated? I've only had the fitbit for 2 days so I could be going wrong somewhere.

Replies

  • d_thomas02
    d_thomas02 Posts: 9,055 Member
    The key to all these numbers is the word "healthy". MFP is about healthy weight lose. That is why it limits women to no less than 1200 calories, period.

    By my calculations, given your stats, your BMR is 1470 and your TDEE at sedentary is 1760. I'd only select sedentary if you are bedridden. Using slightly active, your TDEE is closer to 2000.

    You should not eat less than your BMR on a healthy weight lose diet. This means that, at best, you should only plan on a healthy 1.0 lb lose per week at slightly active or 0.5 lb per week at sedentary.

    You don't mention which FitBit you have. Read the FAQ sticky on how to set up your FitBit to sync with MFP.

    I use the FitBit Charge HR. Both FitBit and MFP are set to slightly active. Negative calorie adjustment is on, At a healthy 1.0 lb per week lose, MFP says I can eat 2030 calories a day. With my Fitbit adjustment and leaving 100-200 calories uneaten at the end of each day, I've averaged closer to 2370 calories a day while still losing a healthy 1 to 1.5 lbs per week since the first of this year. YMMV.

  • melissa112
    melissa112 Posts: 99 Member
    d_thomas02 wrote: »
    The key to all these numbers is the word "healthy". MFP is about healthy weight lose. That is why it limits women to no less than 1200 calories, period.

    By my calculations, given your stats, your BMR is 1470 and your TDEE at sedentary is 1760. I'd only select sedentary if you are bedridden. Using slightly active, your TDEE is closer to 2000.

    You should not eat less than your BMR on a healthy weight lose diet. This means that, at best, you should only plan on a healthy 1.0 lb lose per week at slightly active or 0.5 lb per week at sedentary.

    You don't mention which FitBit you have. Read the FAQ sticky on how to set up your FitBit to sync with MFP.

    I use the FitBit Charge HR. Both FitBit and MFP are set to slightly active. Negative calorie adjustment is on, At a healthy 1.0 lb per week lose, MFP says I can eat 2030 calories a day. With my Fitbit adjustment and leaving 100-200 calories uneaten at the end of each day, I've averaged closer to 2370 calories a day while still losing a healthy 1 to 1.5 lbs per week since the first of this year. YMMV.

    I have the Charge HR. I've read the stickies and synced the two together. I just don't know how to set Fitbit to Sedentary (which I may already have done when I set it up, I can't remember!) so I'll have to double check that.

    I set my MFP to 0.5lbs a week loss, it gave me 1400 calories at sedentary. 1200 calories gives me 0.9lb a week loss at sedentary which is fine for me. I'd rather set both at sedentary and see how many extra I do per day, as most days I don't do much when I get home other than cook tea and watch TV! Bad I know, but true for the moment.

    Would you ignore the fitbit adjustment of 400 then? I did notice times where I washed my hands and picked up about 40 extra steps. I made 10000+ steps yesterday, but this won't be the norm and I guess some of them were from none step movements, ie washing hands.

    I worked out my TDEE on two calculators for sedentary and got approx. 1500.

    Sorry for all the questions, leaving both at sedentary and cals on MFP set at 1200, is it ok to eat any fitbit adjustments? I also have negative calorie adjustment on :)
  • melissa112
    melissa112 Posts: 99 Member
    Ok I definitely can't change the fitbit to sedentary. I don't log my food in there, and apparently this option is under log, then food plan.

    Do I need to tell fitbit what deficit I want per day? I thought MFP did this.
  • NancyN795
    NancyN795 Posts: 1,134 Member
    The key here, is that you shouldn't try to lose more than 1/2 pound a week for every 25 pounds you have to lose. It is just counter-productive in the long run. So, first thing - set MFP to that. That gets you more than 1200 calories to start the day.

    Leave MFP at Sedentary, because you truly are sedentary. You don't have a job or normal daily activity that keeps you on your feet. Any deliberate exercise you do is separate from your activity level, even if you do it every day. And, since your activity is highly variable, make sure you enable negative adjustments so that on days when you're very inactive, that will be reflected in your adjustment.

    Fitbit doesn't have an "activity level" setting the way MFP does. That's not the way it works. However, if you go onto the Food Log page (website, I don't know how to do this using the app, although I suppose it's there somewhere), you can see that you can set the Food Plan to either Personalized or Sedentary. The Sedentary setting makes no assumptions about how much activity you'll do for the rest of the day, but the Personalized setting uses your history to predict future activity and awards you calories to eat based on that. It doesn't matter too much either way if you're using MFP for deciding how much to eat.

    You can tell Fitbit what deficit you want. You do that on the Food Log page when you set up your food plan. Set it to 1/2 pound a week, same as MFP.

    Once you have a reasonable deficit set (250 calories a day), go ahead and trust your Fitbit and eat back your adjustments. Don't worry about the incidental steps you get from miscellaneous activity like washing your hands. That sort of thing won't have a big effect on your overall calorie burn calculation, which is the important thing. However, make sure you set your stride length correctly, because that can be significant if it is way off. When your heart rate isn't high enough for use in computing calorie burn, your stride length is important to the calculation.

    To figure out if your Fitbit is accurate for you - take a month, pretty much trust your Fitbit and carefully log all your food (this is the hardest part for me). Then, you can look at the graph on your Fitbit profile page and see average calories burned vs. average calories eaten and, by comparing expected weight loss to actual weight loss, calculate how accurate it's been.

    Last - work on increasing your activity level. Not just in deliberate exercise, but in finding ways to be more active throughout the day. Let your Fitbit motivate you. That has been key for me.
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