Should I adjust the calorie goal given to me on MFP? What to eat? What is working for you?

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prettyhappyrunning
prettyhappyrunning Posts: 16 Member
in Getting Started
Just wondered if people follow the calorie adjustment given to you by MFP or do you have to adjust to a new number. Just getting started and I need to lose 70-80 pounds. Any advice is greatly appreciated, low carb is it worth it? eating everything in moderation? What are you having success with? Thanks and Happy New Year!!!

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  • debrakgoogins
    debrakgoogins Posts: 2,034 Member
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    Welcome. Use the calories that MFP has given you and aim to eat back at least half of the calories you burn during exercise. Eat what you want, but in reasonable amounts. Eat less calories than you burn. This link has some great topics that will answer most of the questions you have:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300331/most-helpful-posts-getting-started-must-reads#latest
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    I lost my weight years ago...I just hit MFP's calorie target, including additional calories from exercise. Along the way my nutritional profile got better, but I didn't make a bunch of whole sale changes to start off.

    For my calorie burns I rarely used the MFP database...I used my HRM, which is by know means perfect, but it was good enough for me to get a reasonable estimate for steady state cardio...the further you get from steady state cardio, the less accurate a HRM is going to be. I pretty much ate all of them except I deducted my estimated basal calories for the time spent doing the exercise because I would have burned those anyway just hanging out.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    prettyhappyrunning wrote: »
    Just wondered if people follow the calorie adjustment given to you by MFP or do you have to adjust to a new number. Just getting started and I need to lose 70-80 pounds. Any advice is greatly appreciated, low carb is it worth it? eating everything in moderation? What are you having success with? Thanks and Happy New Year!!!

    Calorie adjustment? Do you have your fitness tracker linked?
  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
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    I say I eat everything in moderation. In practice, there are certain things I don't eat anymore because the calories don't seem worth it to me. But it's not that I CAN'T have them. It's that I can't have X plus the Y and Z that I want more and still expect to lose weight. I don't want to give up Y or Z, and I don't think a smaller portion of X will be enough to make me happy, so I just don't have it.

    So, I guess you could say that there are foods I've cut out of my diet, but I don't feel I'm depriving myself. I feel I'm making better choices. (Or choices period, as opposed to mindlessly stuffing my face with whatever looked good.)
  • prettyhappyrunning
    prettyhappyrunning Posts: 16 Member
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    Yes I have my gaming forerunner hooked up but it seems very high to eat those calories back. I just don’t want to set myself up for failure.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    prettyhappyrunning wrote: »
    Yes I have my gaming forerunner hooked up but it seems very high to eat those calories back. I just don’t want to set myself up for failure.

    My Garmin is pretty accurate I've found. What numbers is it giving you? Running calories are really easy to calculate accurately anyway.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,267 Member
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    prettyhappyrunning wrote: »
    Yes I have my gaming forerunner hooked up but it seems very high to eat those calories back. I just don’t want to set myself up for failure.

    My Garmin is too freakin' low. Hundreds of calories low.

    They're going to be close for most people, under/over for a few, and way under/over for a very, very few. That's the nature of statistical estimates, and a statistical estimate is what the Garmin is giving you.

    I vote for believing it for 4-6 weeks while eating at a reasonable moderate deficit from what it tells you, plus logging that eating, then adjusting intake as needed based on actual weight loss rate experience.

    A lot of people (especially women, it seems) believe they have to eat tiny numbers of calories in order to lose weight. That's rarely so. Unless you're very short, very inactive, already quite lean, and pretty old, it's actually unlikely that you need to eat only tiny numbers of calories. Super fast loss is a bad plan, anyway, because weakness and fatigue (not to mention worse possibilities) are not all that fun.

    Try believing Garmin for a while. Do the experiment. It's likely to be close.
  • vetvicki
    vetvicki Posts: 62 Member
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    MFP recommended 1200 for me but I think that's unrealistic so I changed it to 1400. I'm eating everything but obviously finding I'm avoiding eating some things regularly due to their higher caloric value. Im interested to see how i go based on calories alone. Thankfully i have had no issues trying to lose weight in the past when ive followed a plan properly- its following a plan long term i have an issue with!

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