Help

You lose weight by eating at a calorie deficit. Exercise is for fitness. It CAN help you get a calorie deficit but it is not required to lose weight.

It depends how long your speed walking for and biking for and what myfitnesspal says you need to eat for that day. For example I'm 20 stone 2 pounds and I'm 6 foot 3. My goal is to lose 2 pounds per week and I said my activity level is sedentary. I'm allowed 1900 calories a day with no exercise to lose two pounds a week but I only eat 1200 calories a day and I walk 4 miles a day in about an hour and a half. So i'm 700 calories under per day which is 4900 calories per week and if I'm burning let's say 300 calories with my 4 mile walk then I'm probably 1000 calories under per day which in 7 days equates to 7000 calories which is 2 pounds on the dot. So I'm losing 4 pounds a week. I weighed myself last night after 10 days on this site and I had lost 11 pounds (5kg) in 10 days. So it definitely works. It's just basic maths really. If you tell me what your daily intake is supposed to be and what your weekly weight loss goal is I'll try work out how much you'd roughly lose if you want.

To answer the original question: there's only one way to lose weight and that's to eat less calories than your body burns on an average basis and over a long enough period of time. There are no tricks, pills or other ways to lose weight, it all comes down to calories in being less than calories out. How you choose to accomplish that is irrelevant.

Rivera1988 wrote: »

Okay so I have my calories at 1200 a day plus the speed walking and biking is that good?

That depends a bit on how much you have to lose, how large you are and how much walking and biking you do. Let me explain a bit.

I've been in these boards for over 5 years. I've seen a lot and I've experienced a lot of attempts at weight loss throughout my life, too. 1200 calories and a lot of exercise over a period of time isn't sustainable. Now, if you're significantly overweight you might be able to stretch that period out a bit but not if you don't have a lot to lose. You'll eventually reach the point where you are irritable and tired all of the time because you aren't getting the calories needed to sustain your activity. At this point, your body starts breaking down lean muscle tissue rather than fat because it thinks you've entered a starvation situation. Sure, you're still losing weight but at what expense? Your metabolism will be lower than it should have been and it'll be even harder to maintain the weight you want to be and you'll be more flabby once you get there with a higher body fat percentage. Completely not worth it.

1200 calories is the bare minimum MFP will suggest for a female, going off the theory that it's the minimum amount the average woman should eat to not only get adequate nutrition but to support the bare minimum of energy needed to keep you breathing and thinking properly. Usually, if MFP has given a calorie goal of 1200 after personal information has been entered, it's a good indicator that the rate of loss the person is striving for is too aggressive. This might not be the case if the person in question is a very small female with very little weight to lose but for everyone else, it usually is. A good set of guidelines are:

Pound per week goals
More than 75 lbs: lose 2 pounds per week (-1000 calories per day)
Between 40-75 lbs: lose 1.5 pounds per week (-750 calories per day)
Between 25-40 lbs: lose 1 pound per week (-500 calories per day)
Between 15-25 lbs: lose 1-0.5 pound per week (-500 to -250 calories per day)
Less than 15 lbs: lose 0.5 pound per week (-250 calories per day)

If you fall outside of the guidelines, you'll get 1200 calories. You can pretend that you'll lose at the rate you picked but unless you can make that deficit that goes along with it each day, it won't happen. It's very, very difficult for a 125 pound female, as an example, to create a 1000 calorie per day deficit without starving herself and being extremely active every day. As I mentioned earlier, it wouldn't last long, either.

I tell you this because trying to lose weight faster than this puts you in an unhealthy place and by your original post it sounds like that's what you're trying to do. Going into weight loss with the mindset that you want to lose as much weight as possible, as quickly as possible, is usually a recipe for failure. Either you get burnt out because you're overly restricting what you're eating and exercising excessively or you reach your goal weight but didn't learn how to keep from gaining the weight back again. I'd rethink your strategy if I were you but it's your mistake to live and learn from if you don't.

1. Eat 1200 calories + 1/2 of the calories that MFP says you burn on your walks and bike rides, for starters.
2. If you feel weak or tired or dizzy, eat 1200 calories + all of the calories MFP says you burn on your walks and bike rides.
3. If you still feel weak or tired or dizzy, reduce your weight loss goal to 1.5 or 1 lb/week and go back to Step 1, substituting your new daily calories for the 1200.