Unrealistic Goal Weights (Long post)

I'm glad to hear some of this because the site set my goal calories at 1800. I was hearing a lot of people talking about how their goal was 1200 and I was beginning to think that I was eating too much and should set my calories lower. I don't want to diet though; I want to eat healthier and make this a lifestyle.

I put all my stats into MFP, and it gave me 1200 a day to lose weight. If that's what it's teaching me...that's what I'm going to do.

Then you have to eat your exercice calories

Sometimes I just can't eat that much. If I do I will feel stuffed and I hate that feeling. FOR EXAMPLE. last night I was 220 under my calories and done eating. not hungry. But I kept reading from people that it's not healthy.. i should eat... and so on. So I had a banana and a few almonds. WASN"T HUNGRY but I ate it. Then I go for my walk. I put typed it in and it gave me another 200 calories. There was no way I was going to eat again. What's a girl to do???

Healthy fats like olive oil or coconut oil on your salad a=is a good way to add calories without over eating. (it this a deja vu??)

I prefer to listen to my body than an equation any day.

If listening to my body worked, I would never have gained weight in the first place.

Ideally, I will get to where I can listen to my body again, like I did when I was young and could eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight, but until then, I'd rather follow a proven equation to get me the results I want.

I should have been a little more clear on what i meant. If you're active and working out like 4-6 times a week...when you feel hungry it's your body telling you that you need to eat. Unless you have some sort of brain malfunction that fires some wrong signal telling your brain that your'e hungry. I dont see how a persons body could be telling them "gain weight" unless they are under weight. And if it's a matter of eating unhealthy foods, that's not your body telling you to do that. Yes, sure, to each their own. Just sayin

To lose weight you need to create a calorie deficit and for a person like me who is on high dose steroids because of SLE, eating over 1200 calories of the wrong kind of food will make you GAIN weight and eating 1200 will only make you maintain your current weight. I don't know this for a fact, i know this from my own personal experience. When i was at college i was eating about 1500 calories a day and do cardio and strength for 2 hours everyday and I gained 12 pounds. A lot of people have a variety of reasons for having their calorie goal be what it is. I have no problem staying at my 1000 calorie goal because i eat almost all my calories in tons and tons of fruits, veggies and chicken.

I also am tired of every one trying for 1200 calories a day. I like "diets" that are easy. I won't stick to it if it's not. Actually I like "diets" that aren't diets. I like "diets" that are eating well, enough, but not too much. This is my normal life. I could easily eat this way forever and probably will.

I've been trying for 1750 net and have lost 8lbs in 3 months, which is great to me.

AMEN, AMEN, A M E N. And for all the good info. on this topic from everyone, THANK YOU. MFP started me out at 1,290/day + exercise calories, and I finally upped it (and my protein %age) with some good advice from more experienced MFPers, and from these kinds of discussions.

I also want to make this my "normal" -- no protein shakes, juice fasts, cleansing whatevers, just NORMAL. I've got 2 kids, a job, a husband -- I need to live in the real world with everyone else, and right now, doing this, I can. Pretty much forever.

I do think it's easy for women to get into this mindset that SKINNY is best. If I'm not 120 lbs. soaking wet, then somehow I'm "fat." I' haven't been 120 lbs. since I went through puberty, and I've always been muscular. Now I just wanna be more fit, more muscular, and healthy. And I wanna look like a woman, not a q-tip. (*sorry, didn't mean that to sound mean*)

I worry about the younger women on MFP who haven't quite learned how skewed this mindset (and the calorie counts) might be and are beating up on themselves all the time about not reaching a size 2 or a size 0.. It's not healthy. And It's easy to slide into some really unhealthy thinking/behavior when you're "starving" your body -- knowingly, or mistakenly.

Personal example? In my mid-20's after a bad breakup, I was eating too little and working out too much. I got too thin for my frame for a few short months. But when I was in that mode, I felt like SUPERWOMAN, had manic energy, thought I was so on top of things and together. As soon as I started getting back to my normal self, and a more normal weight, I crashed and got severely depressed and tired.

It took about 3 months for my body to get back to "normal", to normalize my weight and my psyche. When I looked back on that roller coaster, I realized how quickly your brain chemistry can change by what you're doing to your body. Perceptions are skewed, moods are erratic, any change in your body causes depression and anxiety... That experience made me see how easy it is for people to fall into an eating disorder. Scary.

And that's not to say that everyone eating 1,200 is an eating disorder waiting to happen, but I hate to see girls flogging themselves.

I prefer to listen to my body than an equation any day.

If listening to my body worked, I would never have gained weight in the first place.

Ideally, I will get to where I can listen to my body again, like I did when I was young and could eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight, but until then, I'd rather follow a proven equation to get me the results I want.

I should have been a little more clear on what i meant. If you're active and working out like 4-6 times a week...when you feel hungry it's your body telling you that you need to eat. Unless you have some sort of brain malfunction that fires some wrong signal telling your brain that your'e hungry. I dont see how a persons body could be telling them "gain weight" unless they are under weight. And if it's a matter of eating unhealthy foods, that's not your body telling you to do that. Yes, sure, to each their own. Just sayin

I've been both somewhat overweight, and somewhat underweight, as an adult. That's all I'm saying. At both extremes, I "listened" to what my body wanted... I ate when I was hungry. I wasn't dieting or trying to lose weight when I got down to an unhealthy 103 lbs at 26 years old. I wasn't trying to gain weight when I got to 160 lbs at 38.

SOME people do have an amazing instinct about what to eat. People don't typically join MFP because they have naturally fantastic healthy eating habits.

At this point, I'm counting calories just as much to make sure I eat enough as to make sure I don't eat too much. It's easy for me to forget to eat and skip meals when I'm really active. But my body does not perform at it's best when I do that.

As far as "forcing myself to eat"... yeah, sometimes I feel like I am doing that, because I obviously don't instinctively know what's best for me. I also sometimes "forcing myself" to run five miles when I'd really rather watch tv. And I force myself to floss my teeth and wash behind my ears, too. I don't particularly enjoy either of those activities, either.

My body performs best when I get at least 100g of protein a day. My body doesn't always tell my brain that. My body says, "ICE CREAM!" not "Chicken!"

I was set for 1200 and I worked out. I would eat back at least half my exercise calories every day and on days that I didn't exercise tried to fall within 50 calories of 1200. the first month was tough for me because my normal portion size was one and a half times what it should have been (6 oz instead of 4 oz), but once I got used to actually consuming healthy portions and really started packing on the veggies those 1200 days didn't bother me at all. I'm now up to 1400 as my base for maintenance. I successfully lost about 30 pounds in 4 months and am down to a 13% body fat with a sustainable lifestyle. this isn't something that I suggest for everyone, everyone is different, but this is what worked for me. Yes I lost about 5 or 6 pounds of lean mass along the way, but now I have a healthy starting point from which I can put some of that back on.

So right!!!!

That's why I work out (earn more calories) and I eat back all of my exercise calories.

You know what horks me off? MFP doesn't give you calories back for strength training, and I find that the days where I do weights are my hungriest days!

There's a "Strength training" estimate you can log under cardio. The part where you log your strength training by reps is just to keep track of reps.

From http://www.myfitnesspal.com/faq

Q. Doesn't strength training burn calories? Why don't you show any calories burned for strength training?

A. Estimating the calories burned from strength training is very difficult because it depends on a variety of factors: how much weight you lifted per repetition, how vigorously you performed that exercise, how much rest you took between sets, etc. Because of this, we do not automatically calculate how many calories you burned from strength training exercises.

However, if you'd like, you can add "Strength training" as a cardio exercise to get a rough estimate of how many calories you burned. Please be aware though that this is definitely a rough estimate and can be fairly inaccurate.

Well, I gave this a shot today (net calories, that is). I must say...I feel more energized and less hungry though. I just wish I didn't feel so guilty about eating those extra ones.

I was set for 1200 and I worked out. I would eat back at least half my exercise calories every day and on days that I didn't exercise tried to fall within 50 calories of 1200. the first month was tough for me because my normal portion size was one and a half times what it should have been (6 oz instead of 4 oz), but once I got used to actually consuming healthy portions and really started packing on the veggies those 1200 days didn't bother me at all. I'm now up to 1400 as my base for maintenance. I successfully lost about 30 pounds in 4 months and am down to a 13% body fat with a sustainable lifestyle. this isn't something that I suggest for everyone, everyone is different, but this is what worked for me. Yes I lost about 5 or 6 pounds of lean mass along the way, but now I have a healthy starting point from which I can put some of that back on.

Wow...13% bf is considered pretty much on the border of the lowest safe level/dangerous level for females... You should easily have super visible 6 pack muscles by now. Most females have them show around 17% if they have enough lean muscle

I've been working with my pt and I'm still very safe. I had eating disorders as a teen, so this time I wanted to make sure that I was getting to an optimal weight and bf% for me and my body. I think that I've finally settled into maintenance and am excited to see the scale start going up as I put on a little more lean mass. As it stands I probably would have a cut 6 pack right now, but I like wine and ice cream . . . until I get rid of them I'll just have to settle for "you can tell it's there." I need a new picture for my profile. I'm not really worried about my bf%, I have reserves in my donk.

My BMR is 1749.5/day...So doing the math eating 1200 calories a day puts me at a 549.5 calorie deficit a day. 549.5 X 7 days gives me a weekly deficit of 3846.5. Since one pound equals 3500 calories (give or take) I am set to lose 1 pound a week. Kudos if your BMR is higher but not everyone here is 'just doing 1200" I've done research on alot of other sites and listened to a variety of trainers opinions.

And what matters is results. I'm closing in on 50 pounds right now so this formula is working for me.

Your BMR is you being in a coma. It's the energy it take just to exist. As soon as you get up of bed, you spend more energy. So in fact your deficite is more around 1000 to 1500 calories a day.

You are to take you BMR *1.2 for sedentary (sitting all day job), 1.375 for active jobs (on your feet and/or walking) and 1.55 for physically challenging jobs (construction workers). Like I state previously, I have done my homework and it is working for me.

If what you are doing is working for you, then continue. I don't believe people should judge every persons journey with their own indiviual experiences. Everyone is different and each person need to find what works for them.

I think, also, that people with more substantial weight to lose CAN afford to have a higher deficit. If a person is looking to drop 10 to 15 pounds; I think that doing it slowly with weight training and replenishing burnt calories (within a minor deficit goal) is likely to work for them. I'd be very happy once I was to the point where I could worry about toning. Right now it's just shredding for me.

Rompoc...

What about for someone like myself who can only really do abdominal and arm exercises? I am 2 months post meniscus/ACL
/MCL surgery and am not yet cleared to do cardio (need to knee to straighten first)

I am 5'3 and went from 165 the daycbefore surgery to 140 with clean eating only. I'm finding myself stuck now at 140 eating at 1,200 and am looking for smart ways to try upping the cals... Perhaps calorie cycling for 2 weeks.

Your thoughts?