How many calories should I be eating?

Why use the app to promptly ignore it?

@afatgirl2016 - Actually 1200 is the minimum recommended calorie goal for women for safe healthy weight loss. It is not a one size fits all number and it sure isn't the magic number for weight loss for every woman (example: I lose just fine at around 1800 calories, almost 1 lb per week which is safe and maybe a little aggressive since I'm towards the bottom end of a healthy bmi. There would be no reason for me to cut to 1200 calories and I certainly don't want to risk losing the muscle I've worked so hard to maintain).

MFP says based on your stats that you should NET 1290. That means you should lose at your selected rate of loss WITHOUT exercise eating 1290 and that if you exercise you get to eat 1290 + some of your exercise calories (this keeps your deficit the same....too large of a deficit and you risk losing lean body mass)

afatgirl2016 wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm a week old to FitnessPal and while I was setting up my account, I went through the normal questions and it calculated that I should be eating 1,290 a day. But I know that for women the daily calorie intake should be 1,200. What should I do? Shall I re enter all my details? As of today I've been consuming 1,200 just in case.

Thanks

This is not necessarily correct. Take your weight and multiply by 12 and your weight and multiply by 14. That will give you a pretty good target range of calories. Then experiment and see what happens...

afatgirl2016 wrote: »

Thanks @shadow2soul, you've been really helpful while that may be true, I also have an underactive thyroid which means my metabolism is slower and I may not lose the projected weight as calculated by the app. For instance I lost 3lb my first week, but this week I haven't lost anything (even though my official weigh in is tomorrow, fingers crossed) Here's to keep trying!!! X

weight loss isn't linear. Some weeks you will lose and some you won't. Some you might even see a slight gain. It's perfectly normal. It's actually very common for women to have a week of water retention at some point in their cycle. For some women it's around TOM and for others it's the week before.

I recommend using an app to track your trend like:
Happy Scale (iOS)
Libra (android)
My Weight Tracker (android / iOS?)