Seriously confused....

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sadams977
sadams977 Posts: 27 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Okay, so I have my goals set as lightly active, 3 - 30min workouts a week, and lose 2 pounds a week. My calories right now for my weight is 1,470. I got curious one day, and changed my goal to "maintain" and my calories jumped to 2,470.... What the heck is up with that? So even more curious I changed my life to sedentary, and no workouts and it only went down to 2,200.... wthhhhh. A normal diet is 2,000 isnt it? Does this make sense to anyone?

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  • KristensMom314
    KristensMom314 Posts: 76 Member
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    I believe it's trying to work your way down. If you go from eating (just as an example) 3,000 calories a day to 1,200 calories a day you're going to miserable and VERY hungry. Dropping your calorie intake at all will help you lose some, and as you lose weight you'll gradually eat less. Does that make sense?
  • BrentGetsFit
    BrentGetsFit Posts: 878 Member
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    2000 calories a day is just a random number the FDA put out so they can calculate percentages of nutrients for the Recommended Daily Allowance on food labels. You can safely ignore this number.

    Maintenance is the number of calories you need to eat in order to maintain your current weight. MFP determines this number based on the data you entered for your age/gender/weight/activity level. Eat below this number and you lose weight, eat above it and you gain. Important.

    If you tell MFP you are sedentary with with no workouts it still assumes you want to lose weight so it subtracts a certain number of calories based on how many pounds per week you said you wanted to lose.

    Enter your data as accurately as you can and then trust the system, don't get too far in the weeds :)
  • barbiex3
    barbiex3 Posts: 1,036 Member
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    Okay, so I have my goals set as lightly active, 3 - 30min workouts a week, and lose 2 pounds a week. My calories right now for my weight is 1,470. I got curious one day, and changed my goal to "maintain" and my calories jumped to 2,470.... What the heck is up with that? So even more curious I changed my life to sedentary, and no workouts and it only went down to 2,200.... wthhhhh. A normal diet is 2,000 isnt it? Does this make sense to anyone?


    i have no idea what your weight is, but it takes a lot of food to maintain higher weights. Perhaps you are at a above normal weight and height, so you have to eat more to maintain that weight and height.
    I am at a very low weight and 5'8.5", and I maintain at 1900 on lightly active + eating back my exersice calories..

    It depends on your weight and height.
  • 2youngatheart
    2youngatheart Posts: 338 Member
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    You may have accidently set your goal to gain weight...you have to look carefully at what it says. :)
  • april1lowe
    april1lowe Posts: 202 Member
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    Not sure but I've been wondering if I should change my activity level since I workout 6 days a week now. I am a stay at home mom though so other then my workouts, I'm not really active, unless you count chasing my 21 month old around? LOL But currently, I have my activity level set at low.
  • sadams977
    sadams977 Posts: 27 Member
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    what I dont understand is why there is such a huge difference, if I want to maintain Id have to eat 1,000 calories than I am now? I would think that would make me gain weight...
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,404 MFP Moderator
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    Okay, so I have my goals set as lightly active, 3 - 30min workouts a week, and lose 2 pounds a week. My calories right now for my weight is 1,470. I got curious one day, and changed my goal to "maintain" and my calories jumped to 2,470.... What the heck is up with that? So even more curious I changed my life to sedentary, and no workouts and it only went down to 2,200.... wthhhhh. A normal diet is 2,000 isnt it? Does this make sense to anyone?

    in reality, there is no such thing as an average diet because it should be adapted to your body style, lifestyle and lean body mass. My normal diet is 3000 calories and that is still set to lose. When I maintain, I need to be at 3400 calories or I will start to loss my body mass.

    Also, depending on how your set your lifestyle, the total daily energy expended (TDEE) multiplier will change. The second other major factor is your basal metabolic rate (BMR). TDEE is the amount of energy you expend throughout a day, including workouts. BMR is the amount of calories you burn with normal body function. Below are two links to help you 1) understand your true caloric needs (fat2fit) and 2) explain what all this means (shapefit.com). These two resource should help explain your questions a bit more.



    http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/

    http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,554 Member
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    Okay, so I have my goals set as lightly active, 3 - 30min workouts a week, and lose 2 pounds a week. My calories right now for my weight is 1,470. I got curious one day, and changed my goal to "maintain" and my calories jumped to 2,470.... What the heck is up with that? So even more curious I changed my life to sedentary, and no workouts and it only went down to 2,200.... wthhhhh. A normal diet is 2,000 isnt it? Does this make sense to anyone?

    That's spot on. MFP has calculated that you need 2470 cals to stay the same weight with that level of activity.
    Because you have said you want to lose 2 pounds a week, it subtracts 1000 cals per day to give you a weight loss calorie allowance of 1470.

    The 2470 comes from a calculation of your BMR (roughly speaking this is what your body uses to keep functioning - breathing, heart beating, digesting, that kind of stuff). Then it increases that to allow for your regular daily activities like walking around, cooking, working etc. This would give you the sedentary number.
    You've chosen to include your workouts here instead of adding them each day (which is fine, you just have to chose one way and stick with it) to it adds a bit more to allow for you being "lightly active" so you get 2470 to maintain.

    Does this help?
  • a_stronger_steph
    a_stronger_steph Posts: 434 Member
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    MFP goes on the idea that if you eat 3500 fewer calories per week, you will (ideally) lose 1 lb (hopefully of fat). So if you were on a 1lb/week loss rate, you would need a deficit of 3500 calories/7 days = 500 calories per day. So you would need to eat 500 fewer calories per day than your maintenance calories.

    If you want to lose 2 lbs per week, you would need to eat 1000 calories per day less than your maintenance calories.

    Reverse engineer this, and you'll see that if you are given a certain amount of calories and told that you will lose 2 lbs per week, you must be at a 1000 calorie per day deficit and thus your maintenance calories are 1000 more than what you are at.

    :) Hope that helps!
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,554 Member
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    what I dont understand is why there is such a huge difference, if I want to maintain Id have to eat 1,000 calories than I am now? I would think that would make me gain weight...

    The way they do the maths is that one pound = 3500 calories. If you want to lose 2 pounds a week you have to have a calorie deficit of 7000 cals a week or 1000 cals a day.
    So, if you eat 1000 more cals a day you shoud maintain.
  • Rae6503
    Rae6503 Posts: 6,294 Member
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    what I dont understand is why there is such a huge difference, if I want to maintain Id have to eat 1,000 calories than I am now?

    Yup. You have it set to 2lbs a week. 2lbs = 7000 calories. Which is 1000 calories under your maintenance a day. This is why 2lbs a week is too hard for most people.
  • SergeantSunshine_reused
    SergeantSunshine_reused Posts: 5,382 Member
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    what I dont understand is why there is such a huge difference, if I want to maintain Id have to eat 1,000 calories than I am now? I would think that would make me gain weight...

    takes 3500 cals to lose 1 lb. you are set to lose 2 lbs a week SO you have to eat 1000 less calories a day. eating those 1000 would cause no weight gain or lose so you would be maintaining. Its just some math
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,554 Member
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    Not sure but I've been wondering if I should change my activity level since I workout 6 days a week now. I am a stay at home mom though so other then my workouts, I'm not really active, unless you count chasing my 21 month old around? LOL But currently, I have my activity level set at low.

    You need to account for your exercise, but there are two ways to do it.
    I'm betting you are not sedentary - not with running after, lifting, carrying etc a 21 month old. So, you should probably be set at lightly active. Then you need to add in your workouts - which you do by adding them to your diary each day.
    This means that you have a basic daily calorie allowance for the regular day to day stuff but if you become more active (ie, workout) then you need to eat more.
    Don't forget that MFP has built that 1000 (or 500 or 250 cal) daily defecit in, just like the OP has noticed.
  • llachoix
    llachoix Posts: 10
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    I read an informative blog that got me going on this and so far it worked very well. It would also explain the numbers you are quoting.

    In short and simplistic terms, it mentioned that burning a pound of fat requires roughly 3,500 calories. Losing a pound in a week requires 3,500 calories, or 500 calories per day (reducedfrom the number of calories needed to maintain our weight- no lose no gain).

    As a result, 2 pounds a day would need to decrease the calories intake by 1,000 per day, in line with the difference from your maintenance in take to the minus 2 pounds per week calories intake.

    Of course one then has to look into what kind of calories/food they are eatng, but in simple terms, it seems to work.

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