Is 1300 kcal a day too little?

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mds438
mds438 Posts: 18 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
MFP recomments me 1300 kcal a day. Is that not very low?
I have chosen mildly active and loosing 0,5kg a week. OK, I am not that big, 67kg and 163cm, but still?
My BMR is 1440 and my TDEE is 2300.

Replies

  • afatpersonwholikesfood
    afatpersonwholikesfood Posts: 577 Member
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    http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

    I put in your stats with male and 35 (I have no idea if those are right) and lightly active and came up with a TDEE of 2100. 1/2kg is apprx. 1 lb, right? So a 500 cal deficit would be 1,600. Try it out with your proper stats and see. If it's way off, double check your MFP settings.
  • afatpersonwholikesfood
    afatpersonwholikesfood Posts: 577 Member
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    Also, MFP is set up for your day-to-day non-exercise activity. Choose the level of activity you do without purposeful exercise and then log your exercise and eat some or most calories back depending on the results after a few weeks.
  • sbernardo123
    sbernardo123 Posts: 18 Member
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    Seems far too low. that is only 100 calories above the daily recommended calorie intake for maintenance of basic function
  • afatpersonwholikesfood
    afatpersonwholikesfood Posts: 577 Member
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    Looking back at your stated TDEE of 2300, it looks like you may have it set for 2lbs/week. 1,300 would be a 1,000 cal deficit.
  • mds438
    mds438 Posts: 18 Member
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    I just checked it again. 0,5kg a week = 1300 kcal a day
    I alm female and 41 years old.
    I bike 7-10 km every day, run 1-2 times a week and have about 10.000 steps a day.
    I have set the activity to lightly active - if I change that to active it recommends 1570 kcal a day.
  • afatpersonwholikesfood
    afatpersonwholikesfood Posts: 577 Member
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    1,300-1,400 sounds about right for your non-exercise goal going by Scooby's. Log your workouts and you'll earn more. Most people don't recommend eating more than 50%-75% of those exercise calories to make up for logging errors or inflated calorie burns, but it depends on your results.
  • WA_mama2
    WA_mama2 Posts: 140 Member
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    sbernardo123 wrote: »
    Seems far too low. that is only 100 calories above the daily recommended calorie intake for maintenance of basic function

    Which is not universal for 100% of people.
  • capaul42
    capaul42 Posts: 1,390 Member
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    mds438 wrote: »
    I just checked it again. 0,5kg a week = 1300 kcal a day
    I alm female and 41 years old.
    I bike 7-10 km every day, run 1-2 times a week and have about 10.000 steps a day.
    I have set the activity to lightly active - if I change that to active it recommends 1570 kcal a day.

    Sounds pretty similar to mine. I'm set for 1440, which if I remember correctly, is 20 lower than my BMR. And I am set for .5/wk as well (only 10lbs to my goal).
  • mds438
    mds438 Posts: 18 Member
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    Well comming from 5:2 fasting diet with 1900-2300 kcal on non-fasting days I just think 1300 is a very low daily intake.
    Wanted to try calorie-counting, as my body stresses too much from the fasting and I am tired of gaining the lost wheight in the periods of not on 5:2.
  • dykask
    dykask Posts: 800 Member
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    Why lose weight so fast? We don't gain weight as fast as most try to take it off.

    .5kg is nearly .8% of 63 kg. .8% change a week seems to be a bit extreme.
  • mds438
    mds438 Posts: 18 Member
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    dykask wrote: »
    Why lose weight so fast? We don't gain weight as fast as most try to take it off.

    .5kg is nearly .8% of 63 kg. .8% change a week seems to be a bit extreme.

    Thanks. I have put the kcal count to 1600. Its more agreable for me - I just hope, that I loose wheight.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,611 Member
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    With 10K steps a day + and using a TDEE type method you are not mildly active. 10K steps corresponds squarely with (fully) active.

    In other words I would setup myself as active and not add the steps as extra exercise. I WOULD add any exercise additional to the 10000 steps as exercise to be eaten back.

    2300 TDEE means that you should be trying to lose with a deficit of UP TO 20% (by preference 15% even). This means a deficit of no more than 500 Cal (if not just 400 cal).

    Ego. set yourself to 1800 calories and keep going.

    in any case... your previous 5:2 calories broken down over 7 days were about 1642.

    If you eat that every day... you should achieve similar results to what you were achieving before...
  • mds438
    mds438 Posts: 18 Member
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    Thats just it - i did not loose wheight on 5:2 - or I did very little and gained it just as fast again.
    Either becauce I was eating more than I thought, or becauce of the stress of fasting. I take long pauses from fasting because of the stress of the fasting. I dont sleep well, tend to overeat, get dissy and loose concentration during a fast day, if I am on 5:2 for more than a month at the time, and regaining all the lost in the pauses from 5:2.
    This is the reason I would like to try counting kcal. I would really like to eat 1800 kcal a day :-) that would not be a problem at all - even without eating snacks and candy.
    And I am glad, that I am not the only one thinking 1300 i very low.
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
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    How much weight are you trying to lose? I agree that 1300 is far too low for your goals. With a TDEE of 2300, that would be a 1000 cal deficit. Keep in mind though that the MFP approach would have you eating back exercise cals while TDEE would have them already factored in so that would account for some of the mismatch, but often you have to play with the activity settings and the calorie goal to get more consistency.

    For what it's worth I'm 5'2 and lost 30 lbs and am currently maintaining and I ate b/w 1600-1900 cals while losing and am now maintaining with a TDEE of 2200. The MFP goals were too low for me also until I got my activity level set correctly. I initially went with sedentary because I had an office job and wasn't exercising more than a couple times a week. As I started losing I started trying to be more active, when I got a FItBit about 6 months into the process I was averaging 10k steps/day and got the good advice that I was more likely lightly active, so I changed my setting and my calorie goal. Now I average 15k steps/day and am set at active, MFP sets my baseline maintenance cals at 1850. I eat back the exercise adjustments from FitBit and have had good success in both losing and maintaining with that approach.

    Tl/Dr: play with the numbers, 1300 is too low for you.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,611 Member
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    mds438 wrote: »
    Thats just it - i did not loose wheight on 5:2 - or I did very little and gained it just as fast again.

    The issue there is that during your "pauses" you weren't doing 5:2 therefore your average total calories were more than 1642 a day.

    TL;dr: I don't know if your TDEE is 2300... this number comes from you.

    if it IS 2300 and you cut 20% of that... you will lost weight at pretty much the fastest clip you should be losing at.

    Log your weight using a trending weight app. Log as accurately as you can. Pick a number of calories you can STICK to longer term... hey if it is 1800, it is 1800.

    And try to actually average that over a month (cause "breaks" tend to increase those averages)

    And look at your trending weight results and adjust from there... keeping in mind that 10% to 20% deficits are probably the least problem causing ones.

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