Need your help on calculations

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  • gintaready
    gintaready Posts: 19 Member
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    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    gintaready wrote: »
    Tacklewasher wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok thank you everyone, so please assure me: if i counted maintenance - 20% = calories to lose weight, then I DO NOT eat back excercise calories. Right?

    Depends. How are you coming to your maintenance number?

    Give us your stats and we can give you better advice.
    Sex
    Height
    weight
    activity level
    goal loss per week
    goal weight

    Yes I gave them all in the first post, just scroll all the way up and you will see :smile:

    Feel free to call me an idiot.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
    edited August 2017
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    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Yes, and that would have you lose about 0.75lbs/week If you want to lose one lb/week, you would go 500 under maintenace for 1348 (1848-500)
  • gintaready
    gintaready Posts: 19 Member
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    DX2JX2 wrote: »
    Theoretically, 1200 calories should get you something very close to 2 pounds loss per week (slightly less) which is very doable if you can adhere to the calorie limit. At 1650, you would lose something like 1 pound per week (slightly less). Both figures are before exercise.

    Re: exercise, it's up to you but conventional wisdom on this site is to start with eating back half of your exercise calories. This is mainly to stay conservative - most people drastically overestimate their exercise calories.

    To answer your question, you theoretically can eat 1650 plus your exercise calories and lose weight. To be really safe with your loss goals, start by eating back half of your exercise calories, track your losses for a few weeks, and then adjust up or down as needed (down if you find yourself not losing as fast as you'd like and have energy to spare, up if you find yourself chronically fatigued and low energy).

    Personally, my preference is to start by not eating back any exercise calories and then to adjust slowly upwards until I find the minimum amount of calories that gives me enough energy to fuel my day to day. This goes against the prevailing winds on the site but by starting lower and adjusting up, you can figure out the right target within a week or two (you'll know if you're eating too few calories within days and can fix your energy levels immediately just by eating something) and you'll be losing weight at a decent pace the entire time.

    By starting at a point where you're potentially eating more than you need to, it could take a good 3-6 weeks to zero in on the right numbers and during that time you might not be losing anything at all. That's a good month to month and a half wasted.

    I especially prefer the 'low then up' approach when your baseline calorie target is 1650 - that's actually quite a bit of food and since you'll only be targeting 1 pound a week you won't run much of a risk of cutting too close to the bone energy-wise. In reality, with a target of 1 pound per week and a base target of 1650 your real enemy will be willpower, regardless of whether you eat back your exercise calories or not.

    Wow thank you for taking your time and writing all of this. I really apreciate this, very useful insughts. I recounted my calorie goal after reading this discussion and think that 1478 calories would be better approach. Exact counting is in a comment before. I hope I got this right now, cause I want to lose on a quite moderate pace but don't want to feel starved..
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    So, BMR of 1590. For sedentary (before exercise), add 20% so a NEAT of ~1900. To lose 1 lb per week gives you 1400. (I forget, does MFP use 20% or 25% for sedentary?). Now you say you are "lightly active 3X a week". Does that mean you are exercising 3 times a week, or you normal non-exercise activity is lightly active? For MFP to work you need to separate exercise from activity. Otherwise, you are in the TDEE calculations.
  • gintaready
    gintaready Posts: 19 Member
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    erickirb wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Yes, and that would have you lose about 0.75lbs/week If you want to lose one lb/week, you would go 500 under maintenace for 1348 (1848-500)

    Thank you so much. Thank you!
  • gintaready
    gintaready Posts: 19 Member
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    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Can someone else confirm ? :blush:
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
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    gintaready wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Can someone else confirm ? :blush:

    The 1.2 multiplier is for someone who is sedentary, right? It doesn't take into account your exercise?

    FWIW, why not just use the MFP setup? It'll guide you through all of the calculations.

    Whatever method you choose, you'll need to follow it for 4-6 weeks and then reevaluate. Every calculator is just an estimation, and you'll need to adjust as necessary using your real-world results.
  • gintaready
    gintaready Posts: 19 Member
    Options
    AliceDark wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Can someone else confirm ? :blush:

    The 1.2 multiplier is for someone who is sedentary, right? It doesn't take into account your exercise?

    FWIW, why not just use the MFP setup? It'll guide you through all of the calculations.

    Whatever method you choose, you'll need to follow it for 4-6 weeks and then reevaluate. Every calculator is just an estimation, and you'll need to adjust as necessary using your real-world results.

    Hi, thank you for your answer. The reason why i dont trust mpf is that if i set 0.5 kg loss a week it gives me 1200 calories. If i set 0.25 kg loss it gives me 1620. I mean, doesn't this look like very abstract, rough calculations? There are a few hundreds of diferrence between these number. And if I can lose weight more comfortably, by eating 1350 instead of 1200 - I want to know it :smile:
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    gintaready wrote: »
    AliceDark wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Can someone else confirm ? :blush:

    The 1.2 multiplier is for someone who is sedentary, right? It doesn't take into account your exercise?

    FWIW, why not just use the MFP setup? It'll guide you through all of the calculations.

    Whatever method you choose, you'll need to follow it for 4-6 weeks and then reevaluate. Every calculator is just an estimation, and you'll need to adjust as necessary using your real-world results.

    Hi, thank you for your answer. The reason why i dont trust mpf is that if i set 0.5 kg loss a week it gives me 1200 calories. If i set 0.25 kg loss it gives me 1620. I mean, doesn't this look like very abstract, rough calculations? There are a few hundreds of diferrence between these number. And if I can lose weight more comfortably, by eating 1350 instead of 1200 - I want to know it :smile:

    You can lose at 1350, just slower (which is not a bad thing).
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    edited August 2017
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    gintaready wrote: »
    AliceDark wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Can someone else confirm ? :blush:

    The 1.2 multiplier is for someone who is sedentary, right? It doesn't take into account your exercise?

    FWIW, why not just use the MFP setup? It'll guide you through all of the calculations.

    Whatever method you choose, you'll need to follow it for 4-6 weeks and then reevaluate. Every calculator is just an estimation, and you'll need to adjust as necessary using your real-world results.

    Hi, thank you for your answer. The reason why i dont trust mpf is that if i set 0.5 kg loss a week it gives me 1200 calories. If i set 0.25 kg loss it gives me 1620. I mean, doesn't this look like very abstract, rough calculations? There are a few hundreds of diferrence between these number. And if I can lose weight more comfortably, by eating 1350 instead of 1200 - I want to know it :smile:
    No, that just looks like an error. If you can lose .25kg at 1620 calories, you would lose 0.5kg at about 1350 calories. For every .25kg additional you want to lose, you'd need to create an additional deficit of 275 calories per day. If I were you I would re-run MFP's calculations, making sure I didn't change anything else, just to double-check.

    (Edit: *crosses fingers that my metric system math is accurate!*)
  • gintaready
    gintaready Posts: 19 Member
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    AliceDark wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    AliceDark wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Can someone else confirm ? :blush:

    The 1.2 multiplier is for someone who is sedentary, right? It doesn't take into account your exercise?

    FWIW, why not just use the MFP setup? It'll guide you through all of the calculations.

    Whatever method you choose, you'll need to follow it for 4-6 weeks and then reevaluate. Every calculator is just an estimation, and you'll need to adjust as necessary using your real-world results.

    Hi, thank you for your answer. The reason why i dont trust mpf is that if i set 0.5 kg loss a week it gives me 1200 calories. If i set 0.25 kg loss it gives me 1620. I mean, doesn't this look like very abstract, rough calculations? There are a few hundreds of diferrence between these number. And if I can lose weight more comfortably, by eating 1350 instead of 1200 - I want to know it :smile:
    No, that just looks like an error. If you can lose .25kg at 1620 calories, you would lose 0.5kg at about 1350 calories. For every .25kg additional you want to lose, you'd need to create an additional deficit of 275 calories per day. If I were you I would re-run MFP's calculations, making sure I didn't change anything else, just to double-check.

    (Edit: *crosses fingers that my metric system math is accurate!*)

    Exactly! I will test and let you know
  • nowine4me
    nowine4me Posts: 3,985 Member
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    Or you could just use this app exactly as designed and set to 1# per week as do as it says.
  • gintaready
    gintaready Posts: 19 Member
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    AliceDark wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    AliceDark wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    gintaready wrote: »
    Ok I think I finally found the right numbers.
    Based on this discussion, I count now like this:
    1540 (just BMR) x 1.2 = 1848 (Maintenance)
    1848 - 20% = 1478 (Eat this to lose)
    With THIS method, If I workout I should eat back workout calories.
    Right? :smiley:

    Can someone else confirm ? :blush:

    The 1.2 multiplier is for someone who is sedentary, right? It doesn't take into account your exercise?

    FWIW, why not just use the MFP setup? It'll guide you through all of the calculations.

    Whatever method you choose, you'll need to follow it for 4-6 weeks and then reevaluate. Every calculator is just an estimation, and you'll need to adjust as necessary using your real-world results.

    Hi, thank you for your answer. The reason why i dont trust mpf is that if i set 0.5 kg loss a week it gives me 1200 calories. If i set 0.25 kg loss it gives me 1620. I mean, doesn't this look like very abstract, rough calculations? There are a few hundreds of diferrence between these number. And if I can lose weight more comfortably, by eating 1350 instead of 1200 - I want to know it :smile:
    No, that just looks like an error. If you can lose .25kg at 1620 calories, you would lose 0.5kg at about 1350 calories. For every .25kg additional you want to lose, you'd need to create an additional deficit of 275 calories per day. If I were you I would re-run MFP's calculations, making sure I didn't change anything else, just to double-check.

    (Edit: *crosses fingers that my metric system math is accurate!*)

    You were right!!! It was an app error! I switched several times and now it gives mes 1370 for 0.5kg!! I can't believe I've wasted so much time calculating some error loool :smiley:

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