Is this math right? CICO and MFP #s

emilysusana · December 2016

So... If I have my calorie goal set based on losing 1lb a week, set at sedentary and I log my exercise calories very conservatively (I log hardly any for my strength days, and I think I'm using a solid formula for my runs)... then, if I end up eating over my target calories days by a bit, I should still be losing (albeit more slowly) as long as I'm within 500 calories of the target calories. Am I thinking about this right?

emilysusana · December 2016

Okay, I'm starting to think I don't understand after all. I just changed my goal from lose 1lb a week to lose .5lb a week, but my calorie target only went up by 70. I thought it should have been 250?

seska422 · December 2016

emilysusana wrote: »

Okay, I'm starting to think I don't understand after all. I just changed my goal from lose 1lb a week to lose .5lb a week, but my calorie target only went up by 70. I thought it should have been 250?

Did it go from 1200 to 1270? 1200 is the lowest that MFP will give a woman no matter what you set for your weight loss goal.

xmarye · December 2016

emilysusana wrote: »

So... If I have my calorie goal set based on losing 1lb a week, set at sedentary and I log my exercise calories very conservatively (I log hardly any for my strength days, and I think I'm using a solid formula for my runs)... then, if I end up eating over my target calories days by a bit, I should still be losing (albeit more slowly) as long as I'm within 500 calories of the target calories. Am I thinking about this right?

Yes, for as long as you do not overestimate your calories burned. Are you really sure you are sedentary though? I've heard on the forums that most people should at least be ranked in the moderately active category.

The best way to figure it out though is to be consistent with your logging and hitting your calorie goal as well as your weigh ins. That way, you can adjust as needed to have your intake generate the loss you aim for.

You could also use a weight trend app, such as Libra for Android, Happy Scale for IOS or Trend Weight for PC. This will smooth the natural ups and downs of the scale and generate a trend for you to be able to better seize the rate at which you are losing.

Hope this helps, and good luck on your journey ox

emilysusana · December 2016

It did go from 1200 to 1270. I'm only 5'2 and I'm close to my goal. I've been losing about 5 lbs a month though based on the 1200 target, so I figured I was doing the 1 lb a month thing right. Lately I've had more trouble sticking to the 1200 so I just wanted to be sure that if I slowed it down a bit I wouldn't inadvertently stop losing or even gain.

xmarye · December 2016

emilysusana wrote: »

It did go from 1200 to 1270. I'm only 5'2 and I'm close to my goal. I've been losing about 5 lbs a month though based on the 1200 target, so I figured I was doing the 1 lb a month thing right. Lately I've had more trouble sticking to the 1200 so I just wanted to be sure that if I slowed it down a bit I wouldn't inadvertently stop losing or even gain.

If it is that hard to lose, it will probably really hard to maintain too if you already so close to your goal. Are you sure you don't want to do recomposition instead? I am not knowledgeable in that area but a lot of people are in the ''maintaining'' forum. Might be worth a look

lynn_glenmont · December 2016

emilysusana wrote: »

It did go from 1200 to 1270. I'm only 5'2 and I'm close to my goal. I've been losing about 5 lbs a month though based on the 1200 target, so I figured I was doing the 1 lb a month thing right. Lately I've had more trouble sticking to the 1200 so I just wanted to be sure that if I slowed it down a bit I wouldn't inadvertently stop losing or even gain.

If you've been losing 5 lbs a month on 1200-calorie daily net, you should lose a half-pound a week if you increase your daily intake to 1450 net, assuming you stay consistent with your food and exercise logging (consistent with what you were doing when you were losing 5 lbs a month on a 1200-calorie daily net, that is).

Because you told MFP you were sedentary, it thinks your daily burn, absent exercise, is only about 1520 calories (we know this because it thinks you will lose a half pound a week on 1270 net). It won't give you a goal less than 1200 calories, so when you told it you wanted to lose 1 lb a week it set your goal to 1200, rather than the 1020 that the math would suggest for a 1 lb a week loss. So when you told MFP you only wanted to lose a half pound a week, it only raised your daily goal to 1270.

Either you aren't really sedentary (sedentary is really sitting down pretty much all day), or the fact that you are logging your exercise calories "very conservatively" means that you are significantly underestimating your burns, or maybe you do a lot of overestimating of the food you eat, or some combination of all these factors, because your results suggest that on a 1200-calorie daily net, your deficit was roughly 600 calories a day (5 lbs a month), which means a daily burn of 1800 calories before exercise (or at least before the amount of exercise you actually log, although possibly including some excess exercise burns beyond your conservative logging), not the 1520 that MFP thinks based on your telling it that you're sedentary.

Personally, once I had enough data (several months of food and exercise logging plus weight loss numbers), I stopped worrying what MFP's formulas predict and just figured out my maintenance number, and subtracted from there.

nutmegoreo · December 2016

^^^ Agree with this. Use your own data based on your results. The calculators are just an estimate. Good place to start, but once you have your own data, that's going to be much more accurate.

emilysusana · December 2016

I've tried 5 times to reply to this thread but my kids keep interrupting me. That might be part of why I'm not "sedentary" outside of my deliberate exercise.

Thanks so much for the replies. Looking back at my weight trend app, I've been losing at a rate of a pound a week. I realized my 5 lb loss in November is a little higher than my average. So if I've been doing that while sticking most of the time to my net 1200, I should be able to net 1450 and still lose. I just wanted to make sure that was the case, since the rest of December is promising to be busy, busy, busy, which means probably the occasional unplanned meal, missed workout, or holiday treat are likely to prevent me from staying at net 1200.

Is this math right? CICO and MFP #s

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