App says to eat 1430cals...really?

What is your weight loss goal? How much are you trying to lose/week? How active are you?

No, that doesn't seem right. I'm pretty sure MFP has a limiting lower end cap for males that is set to 1500 kcal/day

What are your current settings? as the person above said, what age, height, weight, and gender did you enter when filling it out?

You might want to verify all of those settings.

Two pounds per week with thirty to goal is "optimistic", which is why it feels restrictive. Start with one pound per week and take it from there. Usual guideline is half a pound per week for every 25 pounds you are over goal.

Run your macros over at If It Fits Your Macros (http://www.iifym.com/iifym-calculator/#). I use this over the MFP calculator, then I set my custom nutrition macros from it.

BecomingBane wrote: »

No, that doesn't seem right. I'm pretty sure MFP has a limiting lower end cap for males that is set to 1500 kcal/day

What are your current settings? as the person above said, what age, height, weight, and gender did you enter when filling it out?

You might want to verify all of those settings.

No they don't have a lower end cap specifically for males. I have been pushing for it for years as I constantly encounter males who are eating 1200 a day and not meeting that even.

It seems restrictive because you chose 2 pounds lost per week. Having it set that way means you'll be cutting out 1000 calories a day. It depends on you whether or not you could sustain that until you reach your goals. Personally, I couldn't feel satisfied with only 1400 calories, but you kind of have to try it and see for yourself.

I have a bit more time so I am going to write a longer explanation of why a 2 pound per week goal is excessive, and sometimes even 1 pound per week will be as well.

The reality is that a person's body can only burn a certain maximum amount of fat per day regardless of calorie deficit. The amount an individual can burn is directly related to how much fat they have on their body so he more fat you have, the higher the maximum amount of fat you can burn in a day is. Keep this in mind because it is important to understanding what happens based on your calorie deficit. The more fat you have the more you can burn in a day. The less you have, the less you can burn in a day.

So what does that have to do with calorie deficits and weekly weight loss goals? A great deal if you think about it. If the maximum amount of fat you can burn off in a day is limited, then what happens when you deficit is larger than that amount of fat, or to put it differently, what happens if you weight loss goal per week is greater than the maximum amount of fat you can burn off in in week?

Quite obviously the energy to keep your body functioning needs to come from somewhere. The problem is your body cannot get it all from fat. To make up the difference it goes elsewhere, that is, it starts to burn off lean mass. This would mainly be from muscle mass, but can also come from organ mass as well. Instead of losing two pounds a week of mainly fat, what you achieve by too big a calorie deficit or too aggressive a weekly weight loss goal is a loss of some fat up to the maximum your body can burn off along with a chunk of lean mass. The more fat you lose without reducing your deficit or weight loss goal, the more that ratio swings away from mainly fat toward mainly lean mass.

The take home from this is that the less you have to lose, the lower your weight loss goal per week should be. Unless a person has 80 or more pounds to lose, 2 pounds per week is too aggressive which is why 1 pound per week is the recommended weight loss goal. For people who have under 20 pounds to lose, even 1 pound per week is too aggressive, so half a pound per week would be a much better choice.

It is for this reason based on the information you gave that I suggested that 2 pounds per week is too much. Depending on your body composition you may even want to go to .75 or .5 pound per week which will give you more calories. Also realize when you go to a smaller deficit you need to make sure you food logging is spot on. There is little room for error at that point. A digital kitchen scale measuring in grams for solids including those that are grated and ground, and fluid measures for liquids that you don't have grams amounts for.