How much of a gap do you leave for calories?
weight3049
Posts: 72 Member
Obviously you can't get an exact count for daily consumed calories, I was curious if it's normal to leave a gap in calorie count.
So for example if my max calories is 1,500 I'll just eat up to 1,200 in case of error.
So for example if my max calories is 1,500 I'll just eat up to 1,200 in case of error.
2
Replies
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I usually eat up to my goal of what's tracked. But I over track my portions if that makes sense. If something is a 1/2 cup or 3/4 cup then i just track it as 1 cup.3
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Assuming your activity level and settings are correct and reasonable for your situation, your goal is your goal.
Being under your goal is an attempt to force a faster rate of loss than the one you chose.
Faster is not always better. Selecting a reasonable goal and monitoring your weight trend appropriately go a long way towards helping with success.
If a significant portion of your extra calories come from logged exercise, then eating back only a portion of the exercise calories is often recommended.
However that exact proportion depends on how aggressive your goals are (relative to your energy reserves), and on how accurate your food intake loging is.
Most people seem to be able to successfully eat back 50 to 80% of exercise calories as given by the database.
Generally I would suggest that you pick a certain level of eat back and evaluate you logging performed after approximately 4-5 weeks by comparing what your logging indicates you should have lost / gained and what your weight trend has done during that time frame
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I try to eat to my goal. My goal is my goal. Not 300 calories below my goal. Now I may be below one day and above the next. But I do try to get close each day.14
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I eat all my calories including exercise calories. I've had to tweak it several times along the way, but I stay pretty accurate and MFP has proven to be pretty accurate calculator too, as long as you triple check the entries. I have left my activity level as sedentary even though I am fairly active...this compensates for over estimating exercise calories.4
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I use the goal calories like an archery target. Within 20 calories either way is a bullseye. Sometimes I'm under by like... 80 calories, because I just don't have anything around that sounds GOOD at that number, so I'll roll those calories to the next day and eat 80 extra calories... So... It's like bowling a spare instead of a strike... Ish. ;-)8
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My target for maintenance is 1800 cal/day.
I set my cal "goal" on MFP at 1500 which red flags any cals over that amt and reminds me that I "only" have a "gap" of 300 cals left 4 the day.
Sometimes I'm over but usually I'm under and, since I weigh myself daily, I always know whether I'm on track or going too hi or too low from day to day.
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I eat every single calorie I’m entitled to! I usually figure that +/- 50 calories is good enough for me. I lost 60 pounds using that standard, so really can’t complain.7
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Bolding mine. I think what the OP is suggesting is essentially what you're saying but in the context of an intake of calories. They're asking about leaving a buffer to take into account tracking errors with regards to food that they're eating. The assumption being that one may have tracking errors for various reasons that they're not able or unwilling to be able to minimize by way of weighing the vast majority of their food.Assuming your activity level and settings are correct and reasonable for your situation, your goal is your goal.
Being under your goal is an attempt to force a faster rate of loss than the one you chose.
Faster is not always better. Selecting a reasonable goal and monitoring your weight trend appropriately go a long way towards helping with success.
If a significant portion of your extra calories come from logged exercise, then eating back only a portion of the exercise calories is often recommended.
However that exact proportion depends on how aggressive your goals are (relative to your energy reserves), and on how accurate your food intake loging is.
Most people seem to be able to successfully eat back 50 to 80% of exercise calories as given by the database.
Generally I would suggest that you pick a certain level of eat back and evaluate you logging performed after approximately 4-5 weeks by comparing what your logging indicates you should have lost / gained and what your weight trend has done during that time frame
It's similar to the idea that you and many others have stated over the years about leaving an X percentage buffer for exercise calories in the case of exercise calorie tracking that isn't by its nature very precise (ie. calculating calories by means that don't involve a bike with a power meter or an concept 2 erg).0 -
I aim to be at my goal, on average - although I do look at weekly calories so some days are higher or lower with that.
Not sure how long you have been doing this OP.
I would firstly aim for calorie goal you have set - making sure it is appropriate for your stats.
Do that for 1 month.
And then tweak according to results.
Tweak by either tightening your logging or overshooting your goal, ie log 1200 knowing your inaccurate logging means that is really more like 1500.
If you are not losing weight as desired( making sure the desired result is realistic) , you need to create more of a deficit - by either of above strategies.2 -
Bolding mine. I think what the OP is suggesting is essentially what you're saying but in the context of an intake of calories. They're asking about leaving a buffer to take into account tracking errors with regards to food that they're eating. The assumption being that one may have tracking errors for various reasons that they're not able or unwilling to be able to minimize by way of weighing the vast majority of their food.Assuming your activity level and settings are correct and reasonable for your situation, your goal is your goal.
Being under your goal is an attempt to force a faster rate of loss than the one you chose.
Faster is not always better. Selecting a reasonable goal and monitoring your weight trend appropriately go a long way towards helping with success.
If a significant portion of your extra calories come from logged exercise, then eating back only a portion of the exercise calories is often recommended.
However that exact proportion depends on how aggressive your goals are (relative to your energy reserves), and on how accurate your food intake loging is.
Most people seem to be able to successfully eat back 50 to 80% of exercise calories as given by the database.
Generally I would suggest that you pick a certain level of eat back and evaluate you logging performed after approximately 4-5 weeks by comparing what your logging indicates you should have lost / gained and what your weight trend has done during that time frame
It's similar to the idea that you and many others have stated over the years about leaving an X percentage buffer for exercise calories in the case of exercise calorie tracking that isn't by its nature very precise (ie. calculating calories by means that don't involve a bike with a power meter or an concept 2 erg).
Except that the recommendation about exercise is based on perceptions that exercise is often overestimated (e.g., is a gross calorie number that includes BMR/RMR) when you really want is a net estimate that doesn't, for one)
While people not counting meticulously (e.g., eyeballing quantities) can be expected to underestimate intake, people who are logging meticulously (weighing food, not ignoring bite/licks/tastes, etc.) are likely to have a mix of under- and over-estimates that could balance out over time.
Either way, the intake errors (when logging meticulously) are likely to be less than the calorie deficit, and that in itself creates a buffer. We don't stop losing if we go over our deficit goal, we stop losing if we go over our maintenance calories . . . routinely. Someone targeting a pound a week loss has a 500 calorie gap (buffer) between goal and maintenance. Two pounds a week, 1000 calories. Really only the 0.5 pound a week people may need to be a little tighter with logging error potential, because their gap is only 250. And even they'll be fine, if the error (whatever it is) isn't an everyday thing.
OP is talking about knocking 300 calories off their goal - a goal that presumably already includes a deficit - on a routine basis. OP (according to profile) is male, so odds are reasonable that 1500 is already a fairly aggressive calorie goal.
If someone is undereating their goal by a few hundred calories, and automatically cutting exercise calories in half . . . that might be a bad plan (let alone doing that on top of picking the most aggressive possible goal, appropriate or not). Most people won't crash & burn in the 4-6 weeks it takes to get scale feedback on a strategy, if they're lucky . . . but it seems like some just take a higher than expected/planned loss as a "whoo hoo" moment instead of re-evaluating whether that's sensible.
OP, we can't give you the best possible advice without knowing your current weight and height, but if you're male and your goal is 1500 net, odds are good that you really should be eating 1500 net, as best as you can measure it, not 1200 net "just in case".
When I started losing weight with MFP, I was a 59-year-old 5'5" overweight BMI woman, and 1200 was too low for me. I got weak and fatigued. Unless you're very short of stature, and very inactive, and pretty old, I think your "eat 1200 just in case" plan isn't a great idea.12 -
50 cals either way. You’re undereating by 20%, which is way too much.4
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IMO it doesn’t sound sustainable in the long run. Cutting yourself short by 300 calories everyday sounds like setting oneself up for a binge. Trust the numbers that MFP gave you. If after 4-6 weeks you aren’t seeing results, you can look into tweaking things.3
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Let me be very clear from the get go, the post of mine that you responded was posted with the assumption that some people don't weigh their food on any sort of a regular basis and are gaining weight despite inputting calories into MFP in such a way that makes it look like that they're meeting the calorie goal from a numbers standpoint. By assumption, what I actually mean is knowledge. Again, I was very much not talking about people who are logging meticulously, hence why I said:
Bolding mine. I think what the OP is suggesting is essentially what you're saying but in the context of an intake of calories. They're asking about leaving a buffer to take into account tracking errors with regards to food that they're eating. The assumption being that one may have tracking errors for various reasons that they're not able or unwilling to be able to minimize by way of weighing the vast majority of their food.Assuming your activity level and settings are correct and reasonable for your situation, your goal is your goal.
Being under your goal is an attempt to force a faster rate of loss than the one you chose.
Faster is not always better. Selecting a reasonable goal and monitoring your weight trend appropriately go a long way towards helping with success.
If a significant portion of your extra calories come from logged exercise, then eating back only a portion of the exercise calories is often recommended.
However that exact proportion depends on how aggressive your goals are (relative to your energy reserves), and on how accurate your food intake loging is.
Most people seem to be able to successfully eat back 50 to 80% of exercise calories as given by the database.
Generally I would suggest that you pick a certain level of eat back and evaluate you logging performed after approximately 4-5 weeks by comparing what your logging indicates you should have lost / gained and what your weight trend has done during that time frame
It's similar to the idea that you and many others have stated over the years about leaving an X percentage buffer for exercise calories in the case of exercise calorie tracking that isn't by its nature very precise (ie. calculating calories by means that don't involve a bike with a power meter or an concept 2 erg).
Except that the recommendation about exercise is based on perceptions that exercise is often overestimated (e.g., is a gross calorie number that includes BMR/RMR) when you really want is a net estimate that doesn't, for one)
While people not counting meticulously (e.g., eyeballing quantities) can be expected to underestimate intake, people who are logging meticulously (weighing food, not ignoring bite/licks/tastes, etc.) are likely to have a mix of under- and over-estimates that could balance out over time.
Either way, the intake errors (when logging meticulously) are likely to be less than the calorie deficit, and that in itself creates a buffer. We don't stop losing if we go over our deficit goal, we stop losing if we go over our maintenance calories . . . routinely. Someone targeting a pound a week loss has a 500 calorie gap (buffer) between goal and maintenance. Two pounds a week, 1000 calories. Really only the 0.5 pound a week people may need to be a little tighter with logging error potential, because their gap is only 250. And even they'll be fine, if the error (whatever it is) isn't an everyday thing.
OP is talking about knocking 300 calories off their goal - a goal that presumably already includes a deficit - on a routine basis. OP (according to profile) is male, so odds are reasonable that 1500 is already a fairly aggressive calorie goal.
If someone is undereating their goal by a few hundred calories, and automatically cutting exercise calories in half . . . that might be a bad plan (let alone doing that on top of picking the most aggressive possible goal, appropriate or not). Most people won't crash & burn in the 4-6 weeks it takes to get scale feedback on a strategy, if they're lucky . . . but it seems like some just take a higher than expected/planned loss as a "whoo hoo" moment instead of re-evaluating whether that's sensible.
OP, we can't give you the best possible advice without knowing your current weight and height, but if you're male and your goal is 1500 net, odds are good that you really should be eating 1500 net, as best as you can measure it, not 1200 net "just in case".
When I started losing weight with MFP, I was a 59-year-old 5'5" overweight BMI woman, and 1200 was too low for me. I got weak and fatigued. Unless you're very short of stature, and very inactive, and pretty old, I think your "eat 1200 just in case" plan isn't a great idea.The assumption being that one may have tracking errors for various reasons that they're not able or unwilling to be able to minimize by way of weighing the vast majority of their food
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The question is, is he losing while logging 1,500 calories. Mind you, from this thread we don't know whether or not the OP is losing, gaining, or maintaining. If he isn't losing weight, then he has major logging issues. It's not as if we don't see that. There are plenty of posts where people talk about not being able to lose on 1,200 calories a day and those people often assume that their counts are actually correct when they clearly aren't. That said, it doesn't seem like the OP is denying that logging errors may be going on, if anything it seems like he's assuming that they are.
If someone isn't weighing their food and not losing weight, saying "eat X amount of calories and reassess in a month" where X is less than most of us would recommend isn't all that far out there because food isn't being weighed (or at least not on a regular basis) and they were already at maintenance at a minimum.3 -
Thank you Ann for noticing!
Chances are very high that a male with a 1500 Calorie target is already set to lose at 2lbs a month which may already be too aggressive of a goal for them.
Eat your dang calories. Evaluate your logging performance by comparing your expected weight change to your actual weight trend change after 3 weeks or so. Given that you're not subject to monthly hormonal water retention fluctuations you don't have to wait 4-6 weeks to ensure you've captured a complete cycle.
Now, if you were set to -250 a day and lifted weights for 3 hours a day, I wold eat less than the full amount4 -
I eat util mfp says I have zero calories remaining (on average for the week). I like food.5
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Eating 1,200 is not leaving a "margin of error". It's significantly under-eating. If your goal is 1,500, you should be eating 1,500.
I eat until I'm out of calories for the day. My target is 1750 and at 1740 I'm still looking for something to eat, even if it's a 5 calorie pickle or something; at 1750 I stop.
There's no point in coming in under your target. If the target is already the correct calorie level for your desired weight loss, what is the point of under-shooting it? Doing that habitually will leave you hungry, unsatisfied, and put you at risk of falling off the diet altogether.
Eat all your calories. 1,200 is not enough food if MFP told you to eat 1,500. You're not going to lose weight faster by starving yourself; you'll just end up binging.7 -
If you weigh and measure your food properly there's no reason to leave significant margins. I aim for 1300 a day or so (5'2-5'3 mostly sedentary woman, on the high end of normal BMI), and I'm happy if I'm +-50kcal.
Some people suggest only eating back part of your exercise calories, but if you're a guy that should still leave you well above what you're suggesting. No need for a 300kcal "buffer" if you're already aiming for the bare minimum, imo.4 -
Just starting out- I have an1800 calorie max. This seems high but is significantly lower than my overeating and just initially training myself to log in and eat less. There hasn't been a day I've eaten over 1500 but I need the cushion even if just psychologically. Eventually as I get stronger- I will lower my goal.
My logging is pretty good and i feel pretty accurate. I personally can't worry about a handful of calories in either direction as it wasn't a handful that put the weight back on me- it was the huge amount of calories I ate.0 -
What’s you rate of loss currently? I mean I’m a sloppy logger and don’t Wright most good so I do like to leave a couple of hundred under my goal if I can. But I’m only losing half a pound a week.1
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weight3049 wrote: »Obviously you can't get an exact count for daily consumed calories, I was curious if it's normal to leave a gap in calorie count.
So for example if my max calories is 1,500 I'll just eat up to 1,200 in case of error.
For me, it depends on how accurately I can count the calories and track my exercise. I never eat all my exercise calories back for that reason (if it matters, I went from obese to normal this past year).
I own a food scale, but don't use it for restaurant food, other people's food, takeout salads, etc. I use the numbers at the gym, but I don't own any devices to measure my exercise when I walk or run outside. I can use a math formula with time and distance to come up with average speed and calories burned, but that isn't exact. I've also read that the exercise numbers on MFP are often inflated.
Like you, I leave a margin of calories.0 -
I keep a 300 calorie buffer, but not because of logging errors. I keep it in case I get the munchies after dinner. 😂3
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Interesting that a fair fraction of those who've been around here for a while (and who I know have been pretty successful, based on other threads), are saying "eat to your goal, or very close", and relatively more of newer people are arguing "routinely leave a margin that you don't eat".
That's not 100% true, but it appears to be kind of the trend. Probably meaningless, though.
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weight3049 wrote: »Obviously you can't get an exact count for daily consumed calories, I was curious if it's normal to leave a gap in calorie count.
So for example if my max calories is 1,500 I'll just eat up to 1,200 in case of error.
For me, it depends on how accurately I can count the calories and track my exercise. I never eat all my exercise calories back for that reason (if it matters, I went from obese to normal this past year).
I own a food scale, but don't use it for restaurant food, other people's food, takeout salads, etc. I use the numbers at the gym, but I don't own any devices to measure my exercise when I walk or run outside. I can use a math formula with time and distance to come up with average speed and calories burned, but that isn't exact. I've also read that the exercise numbers on MFP are often inflated.
Like you, I leave a margin of calories.
I find that MFPs numbers for walking and running are good for me. If anything, they undercount my calorie burn since I live in a hilly area. All my runs and walks include hills, which burns more calories. I eat back 100% of my walking and running calories, as given by MFP, and it has worked very well both for losing weight and maintaining it.4 -
My target for maintenance is 1800 cal/day.
I set my cal "goal" on MFP at 1500 which red flags any cals over that amt and reminds me that I "only" have a "gap" of 300 cals left 4 the day.
Sometimes I'm over but usually I'm under and, since I weigh myself daily, I always know whether I'm on track or going too hi or too low from day to day.
Because the weight of water and food passing through your system is going to have a greater effect on your weight from one day to the next than your calorie deficit will, you can't really rely on daily weigh-ins as a check. You need to look at trends over time, and if those are appropriate in direction and rate, you need to just trust the system.3 -
Rather than leave a margin, if I am eating out and am guessing at calories, I will often just add 100 “quick add” calories to account for calories I fear I miss, but then I eat to my goal. I don’t do this when I’m eating my “normal” meals where I weigh and measure everything.2
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jlhalley7835 wrote: »I usually eat up to my goal of what's tracked. But I over track my portions if that makes sense. If something is a 1/2 cup or 3/4 cup then i just track it as 1 cup.
I do the same thing. I always estimate higher.0 -
I do leave a gap, depending ion my activity, appetite and food choices. I iusefood scale, pre measure and since I started counting calories at about 13 ( I'm 47) I have years of experience. I do allow myself go up to 1270( my matenance) but generally leave some space
Here is why
It works for me
Many foods say less calories than they have.. Some " calorie free" foods do have calories with more than the serving size measured. Truvia and Erytherol have some. I use a good amount. I chew sugar free gum all day too. Either way I have maintained for awhile and I am happy.
I do not eat the exercise calories back either. I stay at my goal very consistantly.Again for me this works.1 -
Slightly below maintenance (300 calories) 5 days a week, 2 days a week I "close the gap" with alcohol consumption usually end the week total at maintenance. My sustainable approach to maintaining single digit bf...don't judge me lol! 0
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Eat to your calorie goal. If you're not losing after 4-6 weeks then adjust down. There is no reason to leave a gap2
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