Confused about calorie intake

PhoenixRivers88
PhoenixRivers88 Posts: 11 Member
edited December 3 in Health and Weight Loss
Hi all,
I'm 28, female, 180cm and 125kg. I'm currently 3 weeks in to my weight loss journey and have lost 6.8kg so far.
I just had a question about how many calories I should be consuming each day. I wear my fitbit hr each day and it tells me that I am consistently burning over 3000cals a day, sometimes closer to 4000 on cardio days. I'm working out 4-5 times a week and generally get 8000-10000 steps per day.
MFP is set to sedentary and a loss of 1kg a week and it has me as a 1,570 cal per day goal. Should I be eating more than this? Sometimes I'm left with over 1000-1500 cals remaining for the day. I don't feel like I'm going terribly hungry but I could certainly eat more. I guess it's just the old diet mindset of eating as little as you can is the best way!
Any help or advice would be great :)

Replies

  • sansathome
    sansathome Posts: 6 Member
    Too little food can trick your body into starvation mode.... 500 -1000 cal a day and working that hard might not be good in the long run... check with a nutritionist or your trainer.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    Ignore comments that recommend anything on the basis of "starvation mode". It's not a thing. Now, as to your food and activity, you're eating enough for a person of 125 kg to lose about 1 kg per week with the frequency of your cardio work. I don't see what you're confused about. 3 weeks in, 6.8 kg gone. That's great. You're female, so you'll have time-of-month gains from water retention and that's frustrating but it will be temporary. If you don't feel like you're going terribly hungry, you're doing it right. As your progress to a fitter self continues, you'll experiment with new foods and recipes and you may find new habits of eating and food prep that you haven't yet tried. That's normal for this journey. Weigh your food carefully, pay attention to your protein.
  • Sheks41191
    Sheks41191 Posts: 90 Member
    edited September 2016
    Running your current numbers through a tdee calculator (at sedentary as you have Fitbit linked which will provide you with the burn (additional calories) on a daily basis) gives the calories needed for a 1lb loss as 1989 calories per day. A 2lb loss at 1489 per day.

    What I've found is that doing this as sustainably as possible for the weight you are at gives you more wiggling room if you hit a 3 or 4 week + plateau and is more enjoyable.

    The general consensus on here seems to be that eat as much as you can to lose the weight and adjust when necessary.

    As the other posters have said starvation mode is a myth but you do want to look after your metabolism and ensure that you have somewhere to go when you hit maintenance.

    If I were you with all the activity you are doing and your current weight would stick to around 1750 cals until the scale stopped moving.

    Any easy way to negate activity is to run the numbers (gender, weight, height) through a calculator factoring in your activity and stick to that every day.
  • Mumu190672
    Mumu190672 Posts: 76 Member
    Did you sync Fitbit with mfp?
    You need to eat the 1500 calories mfp gives you as a sedentary person but you also need to eat a part of your exercise calories back.
    In the long run eating under 1200 calories a day can be very harmful for your body.
    6.5 kg the in 3 weeks is a lot.
    You should aim for a maximum of 1kg a week or 1% of your bodyweight.
  • shadowfax_c11
    shadowfax_c11 Posts: 1,942 Member
    I don't allow MFP to count Fitbit steps into my daily exercise so no adjustments. I do keep an eye on my daily TDEE and got for a 500-1000 calorie deficit. Usually my MPF goal is almost exactly 1000 calories less than my TDEE for the day. Seems to be working pretty well for me that way. I get 15-2k steps most days and have a TDEE of around 3500. Activity level on MFP is set to Highly active.

    OP if you are going to not allow Fitbit steps to be tracked as exercise by MFP you do need to up your activity level to slightly active or active.
  • PhoenixRivers88
    PhoenixRivers88 Posts: 11 Member
    Thanks for the replies all.
    Yes my Fitbit I'm synced to MFP.
    Jerome the main thing I was confused about was seeing a lot of posts about not eating too little (only having a 500cal deficit), muscle loss etc, and confusion about eating exercise calories back.
    Obviously as I have so much weight to lose I'm guessing I will lose it more rapidly at the beginning and then it will slow down so I'm not worried too much about the 6.8kg in 3 weeks.
    I might start adding slightly more calories on days when I work out harder, (maybe a protein snack?) and see if it affects my weight loss :)
  • Bob314159
    Bob314159 Posts: 1,178 Member
    sansathome wrote: »
    Too little food can trick your body into starvation mode.... 500 -1000 cal a day and working that hard might not be good in the long run... check with a nutritionist or your trainer.

    INCORRECT for normal people not part of an extreme eating experiment
  • duddysdad
    duddysdad Posts: 403 Member
    We need a sticky just for the starvation mode myth. It seems that in every other post, someone mentions it. It's negatively affecting the quality of information we need to provide for people. Unless your body fat is so low that you are actually starving to death, you are not in starvation mode. EOS!
  • RhapsodyWinters
    RhapsodyWinters Posts: 128 Member
    edited September 2016
    When I tried a fitbit, it was wildly inaccurate on calorie burn. Machine and fitbit matched heartrate. For 30 minutes, elliptical had me at 360 calories. The fitbit had me at 450. It makes sense to trust the machine more because I think it would calculate my stalls, resistance, speed, weight, and heartrate into the equation.
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