Calorie goals

what did MFP recommend to you? go through their goal guidelines, set up a deficit of about .5-1lb a week, eat those calories and then factor eat back about half of your exercise calories

Yeah, use the Goals wizard and the numbers it gives you. Keep good records of your food and activity for 4-6 weeks. Adjust when/if you don't get the results you expect. It's an experiment only you can run - and good data is the most important thing. If you jump around and don't use set numbers for a period of time, it's a guess at best. All the calculators do is get you in the ball park.

If you have the funds, you could invest in a tracker like Fitbit and link the two accounts (Fitbit and MFP). I wear my Fitbit all day, including time spent lifting. Fitbit adjusts your calorie goal within MFP according to your overall activity that day.

julesEMS2016 wrote: »

If you have the funds, you could invest in a tracker like Fitbit and link the two accounts (Fitbit and MFP). I wear my Fitbit all day, including time spent lifting. Fitbit adjusts your calorie goal within MFP according to your overall activity that day.

fitbits are NOT good estimates of weight lifting. they are supposed to be used for steady state cardio. weight lifting burns very little calories compared to other activities.so with a fitbit your weight lifting calories will be inflated and not accurate. but then again activity trackers are only an estimate as well.

Fill out mfp with accurate info. Are you sedentary or lightly active? Or even active? Pick 1 pound to lose until you get to 10-15 pounds to go.

Lift nd track it under cardio. Eat back your exercise calories. After a month if you aren't hitting the 1 pound lost a week, maybe only eat 50-75% of your exercise calories back.

Your calories now are a little on the low side now, you'll need to eat a but more if you want to lift.

1.5 sounds too aggressive. You have around 25 pounds to lose. If you were to do this correctly, you would set it at 0.5 pounds per week. We are suggesting 1 pound per week because you are just starting and it is the recommendation and it's likely you'll make errors in your logging at first.

My guess is that 1400 is too low for a 5'8" 173 pound woman. I eat 1600+ Exercise calories to lose, and I'm in my sixties, retired and living a fairly sedentary lifestyle in a tiny condo. I'm 5'8" 142.

evilpoptart63 wrote: »

So is the 1lb a week recommended because of weight lifting? Or is it just generally better?

1lb/week is generally recommended for people who have less than 40 or 50 pounds left to lose. There are a few reasons for that. One is that there is a limit to how much fat your body can burn in a given period of time (which is why leaner people need smaller deficits). Another is that you want to limit how much muscle you lose when you're losing weight; you want to mostly lose fat. While you can increase your protein to mitigate muscle loss, a conservative rate of weight loss also helps. The third main reason is hormonal; when some people run larger deficits for too long, their hunger hormone levels increase - so overly large deficits can lead to binging and therefore be counterproductive.

I can definitely relate to the "yay!" feeling of seeing the scale weight drop off fast though. These days, I'm within 10 pounds of goal and have slowed further to 0.5 lb/week so I only get that "yay! down 2 pounds!" moment about once a month. Mostly, that happened because I kept my calorie goal the same despite losing weight so my deficit slowly decreased.

Also, worth noting: when you first start weight lifting, you will retain water for several weeks. Do NOT freak out if the scale suddenly jumps up right after you start lifting! It's not fat!

evilpoptart63 wrote: »

Ok. I just thought it was a big jump. Like I said, the most I eat now is 1400 cals and that is probably less than once a week. Most days I stay under 1200 and I'm losing weight quickly so that sounded like a pretty drastic increase. But I came here for advice so I'll try it and adjust if I need to. Thank you.

never eat under 1200 unless you are elderly,really short or sedentary and since you are neither of those you should be eating more.

So, it sounds like you're using some supplement as a meal? What are "fuelings"?

If you're hungry and not able to stick with the "plan" then that should be a sign that it isn't a sustainable thing.

evilpoptart63 wrote: »

Yeah it's a meal replacement program. They send food every month and each fueling is 100-110 cals, I eat one of those every 2-3 hrs and have 1 real meal a day following specific healthy guidelines. It's very effective but I know it won't be enough to sustain weightlifting so I'll start eating 2 real meals a day for the extra calories/nutrition.

eat what MFP gives you and about half of your exercise calories back. if you continue to lose too fast eat more calories back,if not losing or its really slow eat less of them.

ignacioa22 wrote: »

Hello Everyone! Iv been taking my diet serious for a short time now and I'm having trouble putting together a simple meal plan that meets my goals... 1800 calories, 40% protein 40% Carbs and 20% fat. anyone have a good plan?

eat the things you like and make them fit into your calorie goal?