Looking smaller than I am, and if I should decrease calories for it.

If you eat too much, it'll take a bit longer to lose weight, and (as long as you log) you'll learn along the way.

If you eat too little, you'll lose weight quickly, some of it will be muscle, done will be hair, etc.

Unless you're "morbidly" obese such that it's an immediate and compelling health situation - and from what you said it's not - it's better to play it safe. Eat a little more than you think you absolutely need. Log your calories and your weight for a month, and then reassess.

You have the rest of your life for this, no need to rush. You'll be eating the rest of your life too, so the less painful you make this, the easier will be your transition to the next step, maintaining your new weight.

cassidymorland8492 wrote: »

I am currently 5’8 and 230 pounds but I comfortable and easily wear a size 10 jean, by stomach doesn’t bulge out over top of my pants and my arms are average size. Asking any personal trainer, friend, nutritionist, or family member they would all suggest that I weighed around 180. I want to lose weight and the app has put me as needing 1900 calories a day when I know that I should not be eating that much if I’m looking for results. I eat 1100 typically and am slightly hungry later at night but don’t find I have any difficulty other then that and I work out for about 40 min a day. I’m just curious as to weather this is a normal thing or what others might do.

1900 correctly logged calories would give you results. 1100 correctly logged calories is too little food. How long have you been eating 1100 calories, how much have you lost, and are you weighing solids, measuring liquids, and verifying the nutrition info when logging?

Why would a personal trainer or nutritionist be attempting to guess your weight?

amy19355 wrote: »

There are online calculators to help determine the amount of calories you need each day.

Use them instead of taking advice from friends or personal trainers.

Suggestion: Google “tdee” and fill out a couple of them because some are a little different in their calculating. I take the average of all, and then I checked it against what MyFitness Pal suggested when I filled out the Goals section in the app.

I think it is dangerous to long term success if your plans are based on other people’s subjective opinions of your appearance. It’s your body, not theirs

Good luck.

A TDEE calculator estimates your calorie needs including your intentional exercise.

MFP (using a NEAT calculator) estimates your calorie needs before/without intentional exercise, if you follow its instructions.

Unless you do zero intentional exercise, the results are not comparable, because they're estimating different things.

The TDEE calculator assumes you'll do your exercise religiously on schedule, and averages the estimated exercise calories over the week as part of your TDEE.

MFP expects you to log your exercise as you do it, adds the exercise calories to your daily goal at that point, and expects you to eat them back to stay at your same target weight loss rate. (Some people worry that exercise is overestimated, and start by eating back only part.)

If you followed MFP's setup instructions, your weight loss is built into the daily calorie goal it gives you. Eat that, plus your exercise calories (at least a reasonable fraction). Monitor results for 4-6 weeks before adjusting.

MFP is correct for most people. It can be off for a few, because it's just a statistical estimate, but any error could be in either direction, high or low. (It estimated too low for me; I lost too fast at first: That was a really bad thing).

Losing too slowly is frustrating. Losing too fast is a danger to your health.

Start by eating what MFP tells you, and stick with that for 4-6 weeks, no matter what the scale does . . . unless you experience unexplained weakness or fatigue alongside weight loss, in which case you should eat a little more, because - trust me -those are danger signs.

Best wishes!

lin_be wrote: »

I don’t understand the correlation you’re making between what people perceive your weight is and how many calories you should consume to lose weight.

If you consume too low of calories, like you say you are, you’re going to lose a lot of muscle. You may not think that’s important right now but it will be when your unable to pick up moving boxes or even carry in groceries. I want to start a family and could barely hold my 20lb niece on my hip for longer than 5 minutes. You also can damage your body including losing hair. I lost a fair amount of hair when I was losing. I don’t contribute the loss directly to losing weight (big stress event + copper IUD + new medication + non-aggressive calorie deficit) but trust me when I tell you that losing your hair is not a great experience.

For a very long time people would say that I don’t look overweight for my height (5’7”). I am athletic, play many sports, very active, I had a decent shape. But I still had a 33+ inch waist (jean sizes vary wildly from shop to shop for vanity purposes), I was 230lbs, and I was obese. A lot of times people don’t know what a normal weight looks like.

To summarize: eat the calories MFP tells you. I hope you consider my personal experience being someone who is an inch shorter but the same weight.

This is so, so true! I get called 'tiny' at every family get-together. In reality, my BMI is 24.5. So while I'm not overweight, I'm far from tiny.

I also don't judge based on clothing sizes, since vanity sizing has rendered them basically useless.