1200 calories a day! You have to be *kitten* me MFP (*dramatic rant warning)

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AmyOutOfControl
AmyOutOfControl Posts: 1,425 Member
edited June 2017 in Motivation and Support
Okay, a little background --- I have been using MFP on and off for 2 years now. I've lost 40 pounds so far. However, my weight has been stationary at 144 pounds for the past three months. I have 14 more pounds to go to reach my goal weight of 130 pounds. At 5'3", this is a very healthy and attainable goal weight (according to my doctor).

Until today, my activity setting was set to 'lightly active" and I have been eating all my exercise calories back. I am very active so MFP gives me an average calorie allotment of 2000-2500 calories daily on my running days and between 1400-1800 on my yoga/rest/strength training days (2 a week). This has worked up until now.

*end history - start of rant*

I went back into the settings today and put my goal as "loose 1 pound a week" and "sedentary". MFP gave me a base calorie amount of 1200 to loose 0.8 pounds a week! This is no big thing on my running days -- I run 40-45 miles a week. However, what I am supposed to do on rest days! I am going to end up killing someone in a hangry rage brought on by 1200 calories a day and acute runger!

I figure I have three choices:

1) Suck it up and suffer a ravenous pit in my stomach on my rest days. FYI - One of my rest days is after my Sunday long runs. These long runs are between 10-13 miles at this point in my training. I get VERY hungry the day after a long run. You have NO IDEA.

2) Don't take rest days and take a risk of getting injured. Injury potentially means I can't run the two (expensive) half-marathons I signed-up for and have been killing myself training for.

3) Forget about loosing the last 14 pounds and resign myself to never meeting my goal of a healthy weight.


I see all kinds of people posting on here about eating 1200 calories - sometimes LESS. I can't even imagine. HOW!?!

Replies

  • fitforeternity493
    fitforeternity493 Posts: 37 Member
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    I'm 5'9 and weigh 175 pounds... I've lost over 42 pounds eating at 1200 calories a day sometimes more depending on my activity level. Also the quality of food matters.. I eat a lot of veggies and eat proteins like turkey or chicken.. Eating three big meals on my rest days that have quality veggies and carbs plus a protein help with me not being hungry. Don't limit your intake of low glycemic veggies on your rest days is my best advice.
  • Geocitiesuser
    Geocitiesuser Posts: 1,429 Member
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    The numbers MFP gives me are crazy low too. I'm 6' ~180lbs and it tells me 1500 cals + exercise for 1.5lbs a week. I'm learning to be forgiving about going over 1500 because I'm still technically in a deficit until I hit the early 2000s even without exercise.

    On non exercise days it's.... I wouldn't say hard, but I'd say disappointing. I enjoy eating. So I find a lot of high volume low calorie foods I like... shiratiki noodles, cauliflour rice, etc.
  • ladyflash20
    ladyflash20 Posts: 4 Member
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    I can't eat 1200/day either. I'd change your settings to reflect your activity, 40-45 mpw is NOT sedentary and change it to .5 lb a week loss. You should get a much more reasonable number. So what if it takes twice as long, it'll be doable.
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
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    4. Set your goal to half a pound a week, which will likely be more than 1200
  • AmyOutOfControl
    AmyOutOfControl Posts: 1,425 Member
    edited June 2017
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    malibu927 wrote: »
    4. Set your goal to half a pound a week, which will likely be more than 1200

    Yes, I went back and changed it to 0.5 pounds a week. I gave me 1360 calories which will a least give me an extra snack. I have my activity set to sedentary because I eat back all my exercise calories. I have a desk job when I am not exercising.

    I am not concerned about the weight loss taking longer. I went on enough stupid crash diets to learn that slow and steady weight loss is only effective way to keep it off sanely and long term. I am just so frustrated because half-marathon training is making me SO HUNGRY.
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
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    Agree with @cmriverside about spreading those calories out. Either the method they mentioned, or just by changing your activity setting to active. I can't imagine those vast swings in calories when you are training.
  • Keladelphia
    Keladelphia Posts: 820 Member
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    So to me it sounds like you might respond better to looking at your weekly calorie allotment instead of daily. This definitely worked better for me as I came down to the last few pounds and was training intensely.


    My maintenance calories are 2500 calories on average. On days I don't train my maintenance calories are about 1500 and days I do train they are about 2900. I would pretty much die of hunger on those 1500 calorie days if that's all I was eating. I train for three hours a day five days a week so instead of eating back exercise calories I eat about 2500 a day seven days a week when i'm trying to maintain. ((2*1500 + 5*2900)/7) If I decide to cut and want to lose a pound a week I just eat 2000 a day. The MFP model works really well but is pretty simplistic; once you start training for something like a marathon sometimes you need to adjust it to fit your own training.

  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    edited June 2017
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    Well, MFP is just a calculator. It spits out a number based on your inputs, so ranting about it is kind of like typing in 2+2 and getting mad when the calculator gives you 4.

    If what you were doing before was working, why change it?

    Editing because you answered my question ("why did you change your activity level?" above and I didn't see it)...if you were losing at a slower-than-expected rate before, changing your activity level might be appropriate.

  • Elise4270
    Elise4270 Posts: 8,375 Member
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    I think the way mfp works is to eat back the calories you burn. So if you run off 600 calories, you get to eat back 600 calories. So thats 1800/ day.

    Also I don't know about setting your activity level to sedentary since you are active. If you want a more conservative direction, just eat back half your calories and leave the setting at active.

    Loosing weight and running is a delicate balance. I've been trying for 2+ years now and I can't say the scale has moved much, but things are changing dynamically. I have notice that adding resistance training spurs some weight loss too. It's like you body says "ok, let's build some muscle and move that fat outta the way".

    My suggestion is to find a reasonable calorie goal, and tighten up your​ foods. If you find your runs suffer then you might, as was suggested to me and it has helped, sip/swollow or sip/spit some G2 (or the like) on your runs.

    Good luck!
  • French_Peasant
    French_Peasant Posts: 1,639 Member
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    You are probably, like me, at the point where you will have to stop eating *all* your exercise calories back. The rule of thumb generally given out is to eat 75% or so back. I am currently in successful maintenance at the middle of the healthy BMI range, but if I want to get lean with BMI < 22, I will have to get really serious. That would mean, for me, really cutting the carbs, perfectly measuring, and not eating back what a machine tells me I can eat. I'm not ready to do that right now, if ever.

    If I did have to do that, I know I could be successful and relatively hunger-free by getting well over 100g of protein a day, and eating over 800g of fruits and veg a day. I would just really, really super miss my bread.

    As other have suggested, you can carry over your calories, or adjust to .5 lb loss, or just have the mentality that on your rest days, you will eat at maintenance or have a smaller deficit.

    Or you can engage in activities that are fairly restful but will still provide a nice calorie burn: walking, hiking, riding your bike, gardening, swimming, etc.
  • suzievv
    suzievv Posts: 410 Member
    edited June 2017
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    I'm also 5'3". 1200 = hangry, especially if you are active. With running as much as you do, couldn't you set it back to lightly active, but just eat half of your calories back? Would that give you more calories? If you are hangry, you probably need more calories....
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
    edited June 2017
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    Couple of things you can do:
    1. Reduce your rate of expected loss as others have suggested
    2. Walk (or do some other non-impact exercise) more on your non-running days and earn some more cals that way
    3. Calculate how many calories you're going to burn with your expected runs that week and distribute them more evenly. No reason you have to eat them all on the day you run and stick to 1200 on days you don't. If you're hungriest on rest days, then that's a good time to plan to be able to eat more
  • JenHuedy
    JenHuedy Posts: 611 Member
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    I'm 5'4", 144 and a lifter & runner. I go by average TDEE and ignore MFP calorie recommendations.

    As a side note, it's really not too hard to get by on 1200-1400 if I keep my mileage under 20 miles per week and keep my long runs under 90 minutes. But once I hit that threshold the runger gets out of control.
  • runningforthetrain
    runningforthetrain Posts: 1,037 Member
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    Great suggestions here OP. Read and consider them closely and I think you will see that there are many options other than the 3 you resigned yourself too. I feel ya'---- I have had many a rant about 1200. It is only in the last two years that I don't get mad anymore that 2+2=4 which Alicedark pointed out. It might take a lot of trial and error to find out what works for those last pounds. I have recently found that eating later in the day is better for me. Everybody is different--- try and try again.
  • fiddletime
    fiddletime Posts: 1,862 Member
    edited June 2017
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    I'm at 1200 a day and eat back half my exercise calories. If I eat them all back I do a great job of maintenance. It does suck.
  • DamieBird
    DamieBird Posts: 651 Member
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    Keladelphia wrote: »
    So to me it sounds like you might respond better to looking at your weekly calorie allotment instead of daily. This definitely worked better for me as I came down to the last few pounds and was training intensely.


    My maintenance calories are 2500 calories on average. On days I don't train my maintenance calories are about 1500 and days I do train they are about 2900. I would pretty much die of hunger on those 1500 calorie days if that's all I was eating. I train for three hours a day five days a week so instead of eating back exercise calories I eat about 2500 a day seven days a week when i'm trying to maintain. ((2*1500 + 5*2900)/7) If I decide to cut and want to lose a pound a week I just eat 2000 a day. The MFP model works really well but is pretty simplistic; once you start training for something like a marathon sometimes you need to adjust it to fit your own training.

    x2
    Considering that you're putting in so many miles on your run days, this seems like a much better solution that killing someone in a hangry rage ;). Do you need all of those extra cals on your active days to feel not hungry? (I'm not training for anything other than being less fat) but I use the same TDEE/weekly approach. MFP wanted me to exist on 1380 on rest days for a 1.5 loss. Uhm - no. Leveling out my intake over the course of a week keeps me much more sane and less likely to bite the heads off of innocent passers-by. Plus, it makes meal planning a million times easier since I know that I'm fitting the same size meals in every day instead of bigger one day and smaller the next.
  • mrssie1223
    mrssie1223 Posts: 146 Member
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    @amymoreorless I had the same issue after losing 86 lbs. I started yoyoing non-stop. You may want to look into the Keto diet for those last lbs. I started mine on 6/2/2017, and by 6/7/2017, I was down 12.4 lbs! :smiley: I am going to weigh myself again tomorrow. I can hardly wait to see those numbers drop on the scale! :wink: Good luck! :smiley: Michelle

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