Calorie deficit
cxeex
Posts: 121 Member
Seen a lot of posts about this and not 100% I am doing this correctly.
Can someone explain this to me please
Can someone explain this to me please
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Replies
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Find out how many calories your body burns in a day, MFP does this.
Eat less than that.
Profit.
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Your body burns calories every single minute performing bodily functions. Move around some, and your body burns more. The amount of calories you'd burn if you were in a coma (basic life functions) is your BMR, or basal metabolic rate. If you're up and moving around, the amount of calories you burn in a day is your TDEE, or total daily energy expenditure. You need to eat fewer calories than your TDEE to lose fat.
You can use a TDEE calculator to determine about how many calories you burn in an average day (and they're estimates, not exact, but close enough to work), and then eat less than that. Eat 500 calories less than that a day to lose a pound a week.
If you use the MFP method, your calories deficit is already built into the number of calories they give you, so if you burn more calories through deliberate exercise, you would eat those calories back (most say about 50% as the MFP exercise calories tend to overestimate burns). Not eating back exercise calories, if your goal is aggressive, like 2 pounds a week, could result in your body not getting enough nutrients and could cause problems like hair loss down the road.0 -
Substitute energy for calories and maybe it makes more sense?
When you overeat (too many calories which are simply units of energy) you store excess energy as body fat - you gain weight and get fatter.
When you under-eat you have to pull some of the energy you need for all your body's functions from your energy reserve. So you lose weight/lose fat.
From your previous posts I think you didn't see the negative impact of an excessive deficit but please correct me if I'm wrong.
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I eat 1200 calories a day plus always eat after my exercising, normally some sort of protein.
I track exercise and natural calorie burn with my Fitbit, so am on the right track then?0 -
I eat 1200 calories a day plus always eat after my exercising, normally some sort of protein.
I track exercise and natural calorie burn with my Fitbit, so am on the right track then?
Well 1200 a day would be disastrous for me - without context of your weight and rate of loss and how close to goal it's impossible to know if that's appropriate for you or not.
When you say you track exercise and "natural calorie burn" what do you mean?
Are you just watching the numbers but eating 1200 calories whatever amount of exercise you do or do you mean you eat a variable amount per day according to your fitbit and exercise?0 -
No, I eat more when I exercise.
MFP set the 1200 goal for me.0 -
That's good that you are fuelling your exercise.No, I eat more when I exercise.
MFP set the 1200 goal for me.
A big part of that goal though was due to the rate of loss you selected. If you selected 2lbs/week that's a huge calorie deficit of a 1000 calories a day from the amount you would need to stay the same weight.
Now if you are tall and heavy 1000 cal deficit might be reasonable, if you are small and with not much to lose that could well be too much.
A general guideline for a sensible rate of loss if often given as 1% of current body weight per week.2 -
Usually if MFP is setting your goal to 1200, it is because you have MPF setup to lose too much per week. Likely have it set to lose 2lbs per week when your goal should probably only be .5 or 1lb per week.
If you have 75+ lbs to lose 2 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 40-75 lbs to lose 1.5 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 25-40 lbs to lose 1 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 15 -25 lbs to lose 0.5 to 1.0 lbs/week is ideal, and
If you have less than 15 lbs to lose 0.5 lbs/week is ideal.
It would be rare that MFP should ever give you a 1200 calorie goal if you use the guidelines above. Most people end up with 1200 because they set the number of pounds to lose each week to aggressively.3 -
Deleted, Duplicate.0
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I have two more stone to lose0
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Have you read the stickied most helpful forum posts at the top of the different sections? In particular the Getting Started section has a lot of threads with great info about how to use this site to optimize your results.1
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Just wanted to check as I’ve read some conflicting things on here. Google doesn’t help
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Just wanted to check as I’ve read some conflicting things on here. Google doesn’t help
What does help is to try for yourself and see how it works. Calorie calculators are just a starting point so that you can collect your own data and adjust from there. You have collected your own data and are losing at a good rate so no changes are needed at this time except to bump your calorie intake up a bit if you are averaging closer to 2 pounds than 1 lost per week.
Do you have a specific question about the "conflicting things" you've seen?1
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