Calorie count & working out to lose weight

1,200 sounds super low. I have used this website and it's helped better understand how much I should eat. I just set MFP to what this told me and its been working.

http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html

MoMotivated24 wrote: »

Hey guys! So I am new to calorie counting while trying to lose weight. An I need some help on understanding how it works. My calorie count is set for 1,200 a day to lose 2 pounds a week. I workout and lose around 400- 600 calories a day- 5X a week. When i put my workout into the app it gives me back the calories for the day. So do I need to eat those calories I lost or will I just be under my count for the day? I don't want to under nourish my body but I want to lose weight. PLEASE HELP!

MFPs calculates your daily calorie goal for your intended weight loss assuming no exercise. When you exercise, that changes the amount of energy your body needs, which was not accounted for when MFP gave you your calorie goal. Thus, it gives you those calories back. Basically, it's trying to maintain the same overall calorie deficit regardless of how much you do or don't exercise. The oversimplified intent is to keep your deficit the same while adjusting how much fuel you give your body based on how active you are (the more active you are, the more fuel you need).

MoMotivated24 wrote: »

I take a boot camp class at my YMCA and it is cardio & strengthing together. It is a high burn but it helps me stay motivated. I take that class 3x a week and then water aerobics or bike the other 2 days. So your saying whatever i burn i need to eat back for the nutrients?

And the calories.

At 186 and 5'5" tall, you probably were consuming somewhere in the ballpark of 2,500 calories a day given your gym activities and I'm making an assumption that you have a fairly low activity job. If you go to 1,200 calories a day plus exercise calories you'll lose the weight... but will you be better off? A drop of 1,300 calories a day is going to mess with your mind. I know it's short term in the grand scheme of things and I know we are all different, just some food for thought if you want it...

In 5 months, to put yourself at 141 (-45 pounds), you will have to maintain a burn of a little bit more than 2 pounds a week. MFP limits you there as it won't recommend lower than 1,200 calories. Mathematically that 1,200 should be something more like 1,100. So... simply, mathematically, there is no room for error. More than 2 pounds a week is a challenge because it's not possible to lose weight linearly and as you get closer to your goal, it isn't going to be healthy for you to lose 2 pounds a week, that loss will drop to more like 0.5 pounds, maybe less... you'll be eating closer to maintenance. Also, keep in mind that as you build muscle, you're going to have to feed that muscle if you want to maintain it. Your real loss will have to be much higher in the first few weeks to allow for the slow down toward the end.

I don't want you to think I'm a naysayer or that it can't be done. I started around 220 in mid-June and lost 47 pounds by the end of 2017. Like you, I was very motivated. For reference, I'm 5'4" tall, 34 years old, and I go to the gym 3 times a week, have a sedentary day job, but also two little boys that I'm chasing around. I started my journey at 1,200 calories a day and after the first month I hated life. I had dropped 12 pounds (some of which I'm certain was water weight), but I was not pleasant - limiting calories that severely made me a bear to be around. I increased it to 1,400 and still dropped weight steadily and my mood improved dramatically... somewhere around December, I started playing around again and I'm sitting at 1,600 calories a day now and I aim to eat back 75% of my exercise calories.

I'm still losing weight, but much more slowly. I've recently shifted my focus to body fat percentage because even though I'm still 172 pounds (as of this morning) and I would say that I'm 20 pounds from my goal, I'm at a smaller waist size than I've ever been. This was a chief complaint for me as I carry weight in the middle. Even when I was 140 pounds in high school, I was a size 12. I wear a 10 right now and I don't feel done, I think I've got one more size to lose. I'm more fit and more strong now than I've ever been and I never would have thought it could happen at 172 pounds. I have no idea what I will weigh when I get to a size 8. So I can say 20 more pounds all day long, but who knows? The hardest part, after all this work, is that I still see a fat girl in the mirror - waiting for my brain to catch up to my body is torturous.

All that said, the calorie predictions in mfp have been pretty accurate and as I lose weight, I update to reflect my changing calorie needs which has worked very well up to this point. I would only encourage you to be flexible at this stage, don't just stick to the number for the sake of the number. And don't compromise creating healthy habits to achieve a timeline. It will make long term maintenance a bigger challenge. Who wants to gain and lose the same 40 pounds over and over every few years? If you work towards 2 pounds a week now, I think that's a great place to start, but listen to your body. When it gets really hard and you don't feel good, you need to step back and re-assess. If it is hard and feels unmanageable, you're doing it wrong. Truly.