Do you trust MFP?
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I trust MFP. I don't trust a lot of the people here who insist their way is the right way. The only right way for you is what works for you and that means experimenting. Going up to 1400 or 1600 calories really isn't that much. Your body may truly need more than 1200 calories a day to function properly. Try it for a few weeks and see if it works. Or try experimenting with your macros. I do better with high protein, low carbs. That may work for you, it may not. Good luck!0
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When I started here, MFP gave me 1250 cal. I stuck with that ... lost some weight ... and then MFP dropped my calories to 1200. For some reason, I found that unmanageable. Those extra 50 cal aren't much but gave me a small evening snack. So I manually upped it again to 1250 and stuck with that for the rest of my first 16 weeks. And I lost 15 kg in that time.
Took a break for a month, and when I returned, I manually set it at 1350 to slow the loss a bit and make things a little more comfortable. At that, I lost another 11 kg in the next 16 weeks.
Right now I'm at 1400 ... manually set again.
So yeah, start with what MFP gives you, and then if that's not working, make small adjustments.
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I have been using MFP to keep a food diary in addition to watching my calories. I mostly use it to track my cholesterol, sodium and vitamin levels. I find the nutrition diary the most beneficial and my heart doctor and nutritionist really appreciate a detailed printout of everything I've been ingesting. It even has allowances for the medications I'm on and the supplements I take. Being on a very restrictive diet, this helps me gauge if I'm getting the amount of nutrients I need. By far my most used app!0
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rileybreed wrote: »I have been using MFP to keep a food diary in addition to watching my calories. I mostly use it to track my cholesterol, sodium and vitamin levels. I find the nutrition diary the most beneficial and my heart doctor and nutritionist really appreciate a detailed printout of everything I've been ingesting. It even has allowances for the medications I'm on and the supplements I take. Being on a very restrictive diet, this helps me gauge if I'm getting the amount of nutrients I need. By far my most used app!
I am T2Dm, and used to be anemic, and I would print out the carbs eaten and daily iron report each time I went to my doctor at the beginning of treatment. She LOVED seeing the reports and it really helped me see the correlation between my carb consumption and blood glucose (I kept a separate Excel spreadsheet of my daily fasting readings). I don't do it any more because I am totally managed by diet and exercise so I only see her 2X a year.0 -
I've been having alot of trouble eating 1200-1300 calories a day, with low impact exercise. I used to do intense workouts and was fine cause I could always eat back my calories and still lose! However, I have a foot injury and had to switch to swimming. I only burn about 250 calories for 30 min and it's super hard for me to get through that! So I'm always still hungry and don't feel like I can eat my calories back cause I didn't burn much. (Still learning)
I decided to see what MFP suggests if I switch to lose .5 lb a week instead of 1 lb. They gave me 1460 calories for sedentary and 1660 for lightly active!! That sounds like ALOT .
Any suggestions here on your experience with this? Can I trust these numbers and still lose weight? I'm willing to lose it slower if I could eat more...
Please help! And yes I know about BMI and TDEE numbers and all that, but I'm asking about MFP system here.
Thanks for any help, Nicole
The beauty of MFP and calorie counting in general is you don't have to trust the numbers, just trust the process.
If you eat how much MFP says you should eat over a meaningful period of time (say 4-6 weeks) and you are losing at a rate less than what MFP predicted, then you know their estimate was a little high and you adjust down manually. And vice versa if the estimate is high.
And if you are losing at the rate predicted then keep doing what you are doing.
ETA: As far as my personal experience. The base sedentary calculation is pretty darn close for me. It's a little low on weekends where I'm out and about a lot. For calorie burns, it depends on the excercise but my main gripe is the methodology is flawed.0 -
I trust MFP (and have lost weight while doing so).
I don't 100% trust the database. I base my mealtime insulin dose based off how many carbohydrates I consume, and I calculate the carbohydrate information using MFP's database. Many of MFP's entries are user-inputted, which means that there's always the potential for something to be inaccurate (whether unintentional, like if there's changes in a food's formula that causes a change in the nutrition information and causes the entry to become outdated, or intentional like somebody being too lazy to input the macros for a food). When as little as one unit too much of insulin (roughly 20g of carbs for me) can kill me very quickly, and too little insulin increases my risks of developing diabetes-related complications in the future, it's my responsibility to make sure that the entries I am using are 100% accurate. This typically means that I double check MFP's entries with the food label's info, or I use something like the USDA database or CalorieKing to get an estimation for something that doesn't have a label (fruits, vegetables, foods from restaurants that don't post nutrition info). Not having these verifications in place could kill me, especially if I trust every single entry in MFP as being the carb counts for that food component (even the so-called "verified" entries are often inaccurate).0 -
Yes.
I lost 35 pounds in 10 months and have kept my weight +/- 3 pounds of my goal since reaching it in 2011.
I am annoyed by those who say, "Oh, you have to calculate your TDEE," or jump through all kinds of mathematical hoops to do it right.
Poppycock. I have no idea what my TDEE is, & don't want (or need) to know.
Just follow MFP's recommendations & you'll be fine.
Bottom line is that, used correctly, MFP works just fine. I like knowing my TDEE so I don't have to bother eating exercise calories, but to each their own.
You don't NEED to know TDEE to use MFP properly and get results. That was the point.
I know. It's just actually much easier and less math to use TDEE, lol.0 -
Yes.
I lost 35 pounds in 10 months and have kept my weight +/- 3 pounds of my goal since reaching it in 2011.
I am annoyed by those who say, "Oh, you have to calculate your TDEE," or jump through all kinds of mathematical hoops to do it right.
Poppycock. I have no idea what my TDEE is, & don't want (or need) to know.
Just follow MFP's recommendations & you'll be fine.
Bottom line is that, used correctly, MFP works just fine. I like knowing my TDEE so I don't have to bother eating exercise calories, but to each their own.
You don't NEED to know TDEE to use MFP properly and get results. That was the point.
I know. It's just actually much easier and less math to use TDEE, lol.
If you trust MFP, there is no math involved so it is even easier.0 -
I'm 5'6, and initially wanted to lose 1 lb a week, but I was starving and couldn't hack the 1200-1300 calorie diet. I dropped my goal to .5lb a week, and MFP gave me the same numbers as you 1460-1660. When I log correctly and aim for 1460 I do lose about .5lb a week. I eat closer to 1600 on the two days a week that I lift weights.
Similar. I'm down 12lbs over 14 weeks. I dropped off MFP for a while, but back on since the start of the year and it's going well.
MFP gives me 1520 which I usually stay under.
I tend to not eat back more than 50% of my exercise calories - depends on my hunger.
I've also been off the cigarettes for over 100 days, so I'm pretty satisfied with a slow and steady weight loss at the same time.
I'm never going to be an obsessive, and that's fine. If I keep following MFP's guidelines generally, and acknowledge good days and bad days, keep a balanced enough diet, keep active and moving, then I'll get there.
You will too if you keep doing your thing.
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I've been here for 3 years. I lost the weight I set out to lose and am currently maintaining. I trust MFP and had that trust validated when I got my FitBit about 6 months into the process. I did have to adjust my activity level in the system from sedentary - lightly active - active as I worked up to a much higher step count now than when I first started. I've also played with custom goals in MFP and spent WAY too much time in trying to analyze why the numbers were always slightly different between the two systems. What I eventually figured out was what everyone here is saying - trust the systems, but also validate them for yourself as I initially fell victim to the "you are a petite female therefore you must set yourself at 1200 in order to lose weight". I lost most of my weight eating between 1600-1900 cals.
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perkymommy wrote: »I have mine set at the lowest for everything. I have sedentary as my activity level and put 0.5 as what I would like to try and lose per week (the lowest possible on both). I only get 1200 calories per day and find it hard to stick within that amount. I've only been doing this for a couple of weeks and weight isn't coming off like it was when I was on Weight Watchers but I've committed to doing MFP for at least one month.
Perkymommy, this seems off to me. At .5 it gives you only 1200 calories???0 -
I trust MFP. I don't trust a lot of the people here who insist their way is the right way. The only right way for you is what works for you and that means experimenting. Going up to 1400 or 1600 calories really isn't that much. Your body may truly need more than 1200 calories a day to function properly. Try it for a few weeks and see if it works. Or try experimenting with your macros. I do better with high protein, low carbs. That may work for you, it may not. Good luck!
Thanks!1 -
When I started here, MFP gave me 1250 cal. I stuck with that ... lost some weight ... and then MFP dropped my calories to 1200. For some reason, I found that unmanageable. Those extra 50 cal aren't much but gave me a small evening snack. So I manually upped it again to 1250 and stuck with that for the rest of my first 16 weeks. And I lost 15 kg in that time.
Took a break for a month, and when I returned, I manually set it at 1350 to slow the loss a bit and make things a little more comfortable. At that, I lost another 11 kg in the next 16 weeks.
Right now I'm at 1400 ... manually set again.
So yeah, start with what MFP gives you, and then if that's not working, make small adjustments.
Thanks and congrats on the loss! Good advice. I will have to be patient and learn through trial & error I guess!0 -
I've been having alot of trouble eating 1200-1300 calories a day, with low impact exercise. I used to do intense workouts and was fine cause I could always eat back my calories and still lose! However, I have a foot injury and had to switch to swimming. I only burn about 250 calories for 30 min and it's super hard for me to get through that! So I'm always still hungry and don't feel like I can eat my calories back cause I didn't burn much. (Still learning)
I decided to see what MFP suggests if I switch to lose .5 lb a week instead of 1 lb. They gave me 1460 calories for sedentary and 1660 for lightly active!! That sounds like ALOT .
Any suggestions here on your experience with this? Can I trust these numbers and still lose weight? I'm willing to lose it slower if I could eat more...
Please help! And yes I know about BMI and TDEE numbers and all that, but I'm asking about MFP system here.
Thanks for any help, Nicole
How tall are you and how much more weight do you want to lose? I'm 5'6" and would be hangry on 1460 calories.0 -
Yes.
I lost 35 pounds in 10 months and have kept my weight +/- 3 pounds of my goal since reaching it in 2011.
I am annoyed by those who say, "Oh, you have to calculate your TDEE," or jump through all kinds of mathematical hoops to do it right.
Poppycock. I have no idea what my TDEE is, & don't want (or need) to know.
Just follow MFP's recommendations & you'll be fine.
Agreed. I don't know why people recommend TDEE to new posters who are already confused.
They should just plug their stats into MFP, chose a reasonable weekly weight loss goal based on how much weight they have to lose, don't underestimate their food or overestimate their exercise burn, and trust the process.0 -
I don't trust the calories estimates for some of the exercises.
Like, it said I would burn something like 700 calories from jogging IN PLACE for an hour. This seems insane, since jogging in place doesn't feel very exerting at all.
I just don't log my exercises, that way I am not tempted to eat back more calories than I have actually burned.
As far as the daily goals though, it seems pretty accurate because it is math you can do yourself. All of the TDEE calculators I have seen online are very consistent with each other, and after that, knowing that 3500 kcal = 1 lb, it's not hard to calculate what your daily deficit needs to be for your goal.0 -
I don't trust the calories estimates for some of the exercises.
Like, it said I would burn something like 700 calories from jogging IN PLACE for an hour. This seems insane, since jogging in place doesn't feel very exerting at all.
I just don't log my exercises, that way I am not tempted to eat back more calories than I have actually burned.
As far as the daily goals though, it seems pretty accurate because it is math you can do yourself. All of the TDEE calculators I have seen online are very consistent with each other, and after that, knowing that 3500 kcal = 1 lb, it's not hard to calculate what your daily deficit needs to be for your goal.
I bet jogging in place would feel really exerting if you did for an hour.0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »I've been having alot of trouble eating 1200-1300 calories a day, with low impact exercise. I used to do intense workouts and was fine cause I could always eat back my calories and still lose! However, I have a foot injury and had to switch to swimming. I only burn about 250 calories for 30 min and it's super hard for me to get through that! So I'm always still hungry and don't feel like I can eat my calories back cause I didn't burn much. (Still learning)
I decided to see what MFP suggests if I switch to lose .5 lb a week instead of 1 lb. They gave me 1460 calories for sedentary and 1660 for lightly active!! That sounds like ALOT .
Any suggestions here on your experience with this? Can I trust these numbers and still lose weight? I'm willing to lose it slower if I could eat more...
Please help! And yes I know about BMI and TDEE numbers and all that, but I'm asking about MFP system here.
Thanks for any help, Nicole
How tall are you and how much more weight do you want to lose? I'm 5'6" and would be hangry on 1460 calories.
lol yeah, seriously! Well when I was working out harder, I ate like 1500...but with swimming, I don't burn alot so it sucks. I'm 5'4 and need to lose like 10-15 lbs to be in a healthy weight range. I lost it a few years ago and then gained it back.
Playing catch up now.. 0 -
jandsstevenson887 wrote: »I don't trust the calories estimates for some of the exercises.
Like, it said I would burn something like 700 calories from jogging IN PLACE for an hour. This seems insane, since jogging in place doesn't feel very exerting at all.
I just don't log my exercises, that way I am not tempted to eat back more calories than I have actually burned.
As far as the daily goals though, it seems pretty accurate because it is math you can do yourself. All of the TDEE calculators I have seen online are very consistent with each other, and after that, knowing that 3500 kcal = 1 lb, it's not hard to calculate what your daily deficit needs to be for your goal.
I bet jogging in place would feel really exerting if you did for an hour.
I have, it doesn't. At least not nearly as much as jogging outside for even half an hour. I do it while watching TV, since it's usually raining or sweltering hot and muggy where I live. 0 -
When I started here, MFP gave me 1250 cal. I stuck with that ... lost some weight ... and then MFP dropped my calories to 1200. For some reason, I found that unmanageable. Those extra 50 cal aren't much but gave me a small evening snack. So I manually upped it again to 1250 and stuck with that for the rest of my first 16 weeks. And I lost 15 kg in that time.
Took a break for a month, and when I returned, I manually set it at 1350 to slow the loss a bit and make things a little more comfortable. At that, I lost another 11 kg in the next 16 weeks.
Right now I'm at 1400 ... manually set again.
So yeah, start with what MFP gives you, and then if that's not working, make small adjustments.
Thanks and congrats on the loss! Good advice. I will have to be patient and learn through trial & error I guess!
There's nothing wrong with trial and error. Nowhere does it say that we have to stick to one calorie amount for the rest of our lives. Try something for 3 or 4 weeks ... stick with it, give it a good honest go ... and if you're not getting results, make a small adjustment.
I was going to drop back to 1350 at the beginning of this week, but I'm currently losing weight on 1400, so I'll stick with it for now. If it happens that I go a couple weeks without losing weight, then I'll drop it back to 1350.
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I trust the concept and I know that if I stick more or less to what MFP recommends I will lose weight - I've done it before.
I don't trust every entry in the database (no, garlic doesn't have 400 cals per clove), but I temper my trust with common sense and knowledge that I've picked up along the way, and that works out OK.
My issue is not with MFP, it's with my own ability to maintain sensible eating habits over the long term, that's what I'd like an app for!0 -
I don't fully trust MFP as at the 1200 it stated I was creeping up after an initial 2 lb loss after weeks. Another app said I should be eating 1400-1600 a day. I tend to eat around 13-1400 and have started to lose again and tone up.
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Yes the numbers given worked for me and I ate back all my exercise calories.
I fine tuned the number based on results over a period of time but the initial estimate and method worked fine.
Maybe a lot for one meal - not for a day!They gave me 1460 calories for sedentary and 1660 for lightly active!! That sounds like ALOT .0 -
Yes the numbers given worked for me and I ate back all my exercise calories.
I fine tuned the number based on results over a period of time but the initial estimate and method worked fine.
Maybe a lot for one meal - not for a day!They gave me 1460 calories for sedentary and 1660 for lightly active!! That sounds like ALOT .
haha true!0 -
cryptobrit wrote: »I don't fully trust MFP as at the 1200 it stated I was creeping up after an initial 2 lb loss after weeks. Another app said I should be eating 1400-1600 a day. I tend to eat around 13-1400 and have started to lose again and tone up.
good for you! just curious...what other App?0 -
pebble4321 wrote: »My issue is not with MFP, it's with my own ability to maintain sensible eating habits over the long term, that's what I'd like an app for!
Same. I use MFP to log and the math generally adds up. Usually what all the numbers predict my loss will be is what I lose. Unfortunately, I tend to eat a lot more than MFP recommends. So my actual average is higher. Still working on that.
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Christine_72 wrote: »Has anyone found that MFP has underestimated their calories??
I think mine could be slightly underestimated. I am 5'6". Started at 189 beginning of July, started for real at 185 mid-November. I have my goal set to lose 0.5lb/week and sedentary. I actually have averaged 0.7-0.8lb/week lost since really starting in November. This is with me eating right on target at 1650 calories per day or over during the week, and usually eating about a thousand calories over twice during each weekend. I usually eat back all of my exercise calories, but my exercise is mostly walking.1 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »I've been having alot of trouble eating 1200-1300 calories a day, with low impact exercise. I used to do intense workouts and was fine cause I could always eat back my calories and still lose! However, I have a foot injury and had to switch to swimming. I only burn about 250 calories for 30 min and it's super hard for me to get through that! So I'm always still hungry and don't feel like I can eat my calories back cause I didn't burn much. (Still learning)
I decided to see what MFP suggests if I switch to lose .5 lb a week instead of 1 lb. They gave me 1460 calories for sedentary and 1660 for lightly active!! That sounds like ALOT .
Any suggestions here on your experience with this? Can I trust these numbers and still lose weight? I'm willing to lose it slower if I could eat more...
Please help! And yes I know about BMI and TDEE numbers and all that, but I'm asking about MFP system here.
Thanks for any help, Nicole
I don't understand what you want. You say 1200-1300 is too little and you're always hungry but 1460 "sounds like ALOT." Split the difference and try 1380??
1460 doesn't sound like a lot to me. It's about what MFP recommended I start with for 1 lb. a week, and I ended up losing two pounds a week for months.
Are you losing on 1200-1300 calories a day? Would you be OK losing a little more slowly if you could have a few more calories?Christine_72 wrote: »Has anyone found that MFP has underestimated their calories??
If you mean "underestimated the calories that a user needs for maintenance," then yes. I have a desk job, but I had to kick my activity level up to active (not lightly active) to get a net calorie maintenance estimate that was close to what my actual results indicated.
Yeah, me too - I'm retired, sedentary outside of the things I explicitly log as exercise, and had to set my activity level to "active" in order to get MFP to give me a calorie goal that would match up with the loss rate I set.
To answer OP, and echo some others: The overall MFP process has certainly worked well for me. I'm down around 65 pounds (roughly 1/3 of my bodyweight) and heading into maintenance.
For calories to eat for a given loss rate, MFP (and any other calculator) is giving you estimates based on population averages. Statistically, there's not a huge variation around the mean in healthy adults, but there is a bit. Start from the MFP (or other calculator) estimate, be consistent and accurate for a month or two, watch your loss rate, and you'll figure out whether you need to adjust your calorie target.
Slower loss rate may be better, if it means you can be consistent over the long haul.
There are other aspects of MFP you could trust/not trust, too:- Food database - largely crowdsourced, so uneven. At first, check your entries against USDA, Self Nutrition DB, or something more authoritative like that, or use the verified entries (green check mark). This seems time-consuming, but you'll build up a recent/frequent foods list and it gets quicker fairly soon.
- Exercise database - Many people find that it overestimates. If you have a Fitbit, or a heart rate monitor (for cardio use, not all day), and you tell it your correct statistics, it should be more accurate.
- Default macro allocations - Meh. It's fairly consistent with mainstream sources, but opinions vary. At very low calories, I think the default for protein is low, for women who are working out, and in a calorie deficit, but that's just my opinion.
- Bug-free software - MFP? HaHaHAA! I spent 30 years in IT; this is not the most error-free software in the world. Haven't mostly had problems with the core weight-loss code, but the social-networking pieces are flakier, IME.
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