Could this be right? Calories to lose weight?

I was surprised too but we usually underestimate how much we eat. The number I started with was still much less than what I'd normally eat.
MFP was a real education!

hdjaime wrote: »

OK...so I did it manually and ended up with 1976 calories to maintain.
It says to lose .5 kg a week I need to have a 500 calorie a day deficit so that brings me to 1476 calories.
I would like to lose 1 kg a week but no way can I do a 1000 calorie deficit and only eat 976.
Guess I'd better start exercising

At 92kg 1kg per week might be too fast for you, anyway. 1kg is about the maximum recommended for anyone looking to lose weight. ~0.5kg per week is plenty! I started at 98kg and only kept up the 1kg/week for the first two to three weeks, after that I've been losing at a rate of 0.1 - 0.5kg a week consistently. (Now 17kg down and counting)

Just a rule of thumb: eat about half your exercise calories while you're losing weight.

In general, a bit under 1500 kcals per day sounds right for you given your stats. However, the only way for you to find out just how much weight loss that will net you is to measure and track your weight, often. Since that number fluctuates a bit, you can't trust single measurements, but instead you have to observe the trend over weeks. This takes some discipline, and the ability to not freak out over single measurements that might not look so good.

But complicated stuff aside: rest assured, sticking to 1500kcal per day will net you a good and healthy weight loss unless you exercise a lot, in which case you should eat a few hundred more. 1500 should also be manageable hunger-wise - consider to eat smarter if it doesn't.

Just for reference: I'm a 187cm tall male and ate 1500 kcal on sedentary days when I lost weight. That usually netted me the maximum recommended deficit of about 1000 kcal. The rule of thumb is to not go lower than 1500 if you're male, and not lower than 1200 if you're female.

Ok not trying to interupt anyone's thread but could someone explain the deficit to me it tells me I need 1430 but I weigh 172 and pretty sedentary at work so is 1430 more than I should be eating? Now I'm confused! Lol

For a bit of background, here is what you need to eat daily to maintain your weight:

* BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate): calories you would burn if you were in a coma and did nothing at all.
* TEF (Thermic Effect of Food): calories that you need to digest and process food (not very much, so ignore it).
* NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis): calories you burn leading your daily life, such as walking around, cleaning, climbing stairs, whatever you do when you're not in bed.
* EAT (Exercise Activity Thermogenesis): calories you burn while deliberately exercising.

The calories you need to lose weight are simply a function of those four elements: if you eat the same as BMR + TEF + NEAT + EAT, you'll maintain. Eat more, and you'll gain. Eat less, and you'll lose. As a fairly active 40something male, I lost over a pound a week eating at a net 1550 calories; since I was exercising, on average, 450 calories per day, I was actually eating about 2000 calories a day. There is no magic number, 1200 or something else, that you need to eat to lose. The only caveat is that our bodies adjust to small differences by warming up or cooling down a bit; a 50-calorie deficit will probably just mean that you feel a bit colder or you don't fidget as much.

MFP calculates your calorie needs without EAT. So it estimates BMR, TEF, and NEAT, and gives you a target. If you exercise, your EAT needs to be eaten (!) to meet the target. The thing is, most estimates of exercise calories are overestimates. I burn 25-30 calories per mile on my bike, depending on speed, wind, and elevation change, but MPF says I burn 45-50. If I believed MFP, I would gain weight while thinking I was in a deficit. So a lot of people record only 50-75% of what MFP or their heart rate monitor estimates. (Yes, heart rate monitors can be off, especially for women.)

A final point: one study found that registered dietitians missed about 200 calories per day when they were asked to record their daily calorie intakes. That's around 10%! And they did well; the untrained control group missed, on average, over 400 calories per day when they recorded what they eat. I bet a lot of people who think they're eating 1200-1300 calories per day are really more like 1500-1800. Even experienced calorie counters can get lax. I put on a couple pounds over my holiday vacation. According to my logs, I should have taken them off over the last four weeks, but I haven't. And I successfully lost 65 pounds earlier. My conclusion: I've slacked off, and I need to step up my game if I want to take those two pounds off again—and, more importantly, avoid slowly getting heavier again without noticing the month-to-month changes, like I did between 1997 and 2008.

chandanista wrote: »

@heathermckaye351 how tall are you? 1430 isn't going to be too much but it may not be as much as you could eat.

I am 5"6"