Does everyone follow the calories given to you?

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CinqueFit
CinqueFit Posts: 19 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi! I was wondering if anyone adjusts their calories according to them or do you go with the calories allotted to you when you input your information? Mine seem a little high. It's somewhere close to 2000 calories and that seems a little high. I'm 37 and weigh 196 lbs. ideally, I'd like to lose around 50lbs. I do workout about three to five times a week.
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Replies

  • cityruss
    cityruss Posts: 2,493 Member
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    I always set a custom value based on real world findings.

    I don't even recall what MFP says I should be eating.

    Pick an educated guess, accurately track and monitor trends, adjust as necessary.
  • MeiannaLee
    MeiannaLee Posts: 338 Member
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    When I first started I did, but after a year and a half, i know my body and how much I need to eat. Turns out mfp is off my about 300 calories :)
  • julieannka
    julieannka Posts: 9 Member
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    I have to eat 300 less calories than MFP recommends. I followed their guidelines for 3 months and I only lost 1 lb in that time, so I reduced it to where I will lose between 1-2 lbs per week.
  • lemonychild
    lemonychild Posts: 654 Member
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    MFP will give u an estimate based on your stats and your activity level. Im assuming that calorie count is for active lifestyle. - just understand that if you chose active based on your workouts u can not input exercise again to eat the cals back
  • CinqueFit
    CinqueFit Posts: 19 Member
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    Okay, thanks for your help everyone! I appreciate it!
  • duddysdad
    duddysdad Posts: 402 Member
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    I find that if I follow MFP's calorie goal, I lose a bit faster. Make sure to weigh your solids on a digital food scale and use cups and spoons for liquids. Your calorie goal also depends on what activity level you set, and what exercise you entered. Exercise calories burned can be very inaccurate so people usually recommend eating 50-75% of them, if any at all. Also it can be recommended to set your activity level to sedentary and then add exercise. Not vacuuming, or making the bed; real exercise. You shouldn't go lower than 1200 net calories in order to properly fuel your body.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 24,914 Member
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    When I started here, I entered my details, selected sedentary as my activity level, and chose to lose 1 kg/week.

    MFP gave me 1250 calories ... plus exercise calories.

    I stuck to 1250 calories + about half my exercise calories.

    After several weeks I had lost quite a bit of weight, and MFP dropped me to 1200. I tried that for a week, couldn't do it, and upped myself to 1250 again.
  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
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    I started out eating what it said, because I had zero experience with calorie counting (not with dieting - I'd done WW before, but I'd never converted their 'points' to calories so I didn't know how they correlated)... then after I was losing WAY too fast eating what MFP told me, I started really keeping detailed records and determined that my personal needs were ridiculously more than MFP assumed. I mean in my first month at eating 1800 calories I lost 28 pounds!!! (SW was 254, height 5'8", age 35 at that time). Found out some time later that I had a hyperactive thyroid helping things a long to a great extent (which, I'll be honest, it boggles my mind to think how much I must have been eating to gain to 254 if I had a hyperactive thyroid making my metabolism so screaming high. I mean, seriously WTF?!?!!???!). Now that my thyroid is medicated and in normal range I still am able to eat more than MFP suggests though - for maintenance now it says I need 1900 (I'm very sedentary due to arthritis) but I still lose about 1/4lb a week at that level.
  • jandsstevenson887
    jandsstevenson887 Posts: 296 Member
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    I do. I eat back some but not all of my exercise calories. I have mine set to lose 1lb/week and lightly active and get 1300.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    I used the suggested calorie level and method (eating back exercise calories) - it was a reasonable start point.
    After a month I just manually adjusted my goal calories based on actual results.

    But hope you understand that the activity setting doesn't include exercise?
    If you don't want to use the MFP method then don't use MFP to set your calorie goal - use a TDEE calculator instead.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,372 Member
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    I used that number, then got tired of having to log exercise (and I had no idea how many calories I burned during said exercise anyway) so I switched to TDEE-20%. Worked great.
  • mrspaws91
    mrspaws91 Posts: 27 Member
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    I found that the MFP number, calculated before I started exercising regularly, plus half my exercise calories is just about equal to TDEE minus 20% (within 50 calories). I average 1.8 lbs a week in weight loss.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
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    I used the number MFP initially gave me and it worked fine. After losing some weight MFP lowered my calories and that was okay. The next time MFP wanted to lower my calories to 1200 and I was not ready to go that low yet so I put it a little higher for awhile. I pretty much maintained for a few months. Then I lowered it to 1200 on my own.
    I would try the number MFP gives you for a month. If you aren't losing then you can always start lowering it.
  • vingogly
    vingogly Posts: 1,785 Member
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    I like to use this site to calculate my calorie goal for a 1.5lb/week weight loss:

    http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html

    I suspect consistency over the long haul is more important than getting the numbers exactly right. And even if you get the calories exactly right, your scale is likely giving you the wrong numbers unless you've spent hundreds of dollars to buy a medical quality scale.
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
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    I manually adjusted my calories from MFPs recommended maintenance level of 1600 to a set value of 2000, generally I average 2,300 but this nets after exercise to about 1800. If I stay at this I'll mostly be in a maintenance, neither gaining or losing except for daily fluctuations. I'm 5ft5, 121-124lb. I prefer doing this otherwise my food intake would be really erratic depending on if it's an exercise day or not, sometimes I think you need calories the morning after a big workout to make up for activity the night before.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    edited April 2016
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    Right now, No. Having technical issues with my normal method so I used IIFYM calculator to come up with a flat calorie goal of 1846 (approx. 0.8 lb per week loss).

    Before this month, yes and no. I let MFP set my NET intake, but I let my fitbit adjust that intake up or down based on how active I actually was. So I was netting 1300-1500 calories, but actually eating a total intake of 1800-2000 calories on average.
    (I'm 5'4.5", 121.5 lbs this morning and only looking to lose a few more vanity pounds. I lost the majority of my weight while eating 1800-2000 calories. At first I lost pretty fast. Things slowed down once I got under 200 lbs, but even then I was still losing an avg of 1.5 lbs per week. It slowed to about 1 lb per week once I got closer to a healthy BMI and now it's 0.3-0.8 lbs per week depending on how well I stick to my calorie goal which actually seems to be harder now than it was before.)
  • ObsidianMist
    ObsidianMist Posts: 519 Member
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    my allotted calories worked out really well at first, the first 15 pounds I lost pretty easily. I've been struggling for quite a while now though and have determined I need to leave about 200 of my allotted calories uneaten in order to even lose a half pound a week. I'd say play around with it and see what kind of results you get.
  • sthome925
    sthome925 Posts: 13 Member
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    I only eat between 1200-1300 that are given to me... I don't eat back the calories that are added because of my exercise. It defeats the purpose when you're trying to lose weight unless you're running a marathon or doing an extreme workout like that when you do need to actually eat more calories.
  • Seffell
    Seffell Posts: 2,222 Member
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    MFP overestimates my maintenance calories by about 150-200cal/day. I think one of the reasons is that it assumes I walk even though I'm sedentary. I almost don't walk at all (health reasons) and sit all day. So I've compensated for this by setting my height to a lower value.
  • ObsidianMist
    ObsidianMist Posts: 519 Member
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    gebeziseva wrote: »
    ... I've compensated for this by setting my height to a lower value.

    genius! I've found recently that my calorie allotment, if I eat all of it, doesn't actually allow me to lose half a pound a week, so I just went in and set my height an inch shorter. we'll see if that helps lol

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