A Bit Confused on Calorie Calculation

Are you using MyFitnessPal just simply to log your food or is your plan to use it to help you lose a bit of weight? I've lost using the app twice (once pre pregnancy...and once post), my experience has been not to overthink it. Add your info in and just do what it tells you to do. the more complicated I try to make the math, the less successful I have been.

It's possible that I'm reading this wrong...but it looks like your TDEE is 3454, and MFP is telling you to do 2100 to lose? Is that correct? IF (and only if) youre going to use the app to lose, rather than just as a food journal, you just sort of ditch that 3454 number. You take the 2100, and that's your base rate. If you don't exercise, that's what you eat. If you do, and you burn 500 calories in that workout, than you eat 2600. If you ate 2900 calories everyday, you'd still lose weight, just slower. If you want to stay at what MFP calculated for you, and you ate 2900, you are correct in assuming that you would "need" to burn 800 through exercise/additional activity.

I'd just choose a way that feels better for you - either pick a daily caloric intake that you will stick with every day that will keep you losing, or follow MFP and eat fewer calories on days you don't workout. Different strokes for different folks.

My TDEE is like, 2400ish. I workout 5-7 days a week. To lose weight at a rate I'm happy with, I could just eat a flat 1600-1700 calories a day. That seems to not work well for me...I lose the weight fine, but it sort of makes me a little crazy for some reason.

If I follow MFP, I'm set at 1200. If I don't workout, I stay at 1200. If I do, and I burn 500 calories, I eat at 1700, etc etc.

That seems like a lot of rambling, so I hope it was helpful. lol

MFP does NOT include purposeful exercise in your calorie goal - it assumes that you will eat back at least a portion of your workout calories

chuckey24 wrote: »

Yes I put it as weight loss.

I don't come close to eating the 3454. I'm just afraid of getting started again and knocking myself back out of the gym because I'm not eating enough. I actually gained a lot of weight (stress weight) because I was working out the same (very intense, heavy weights) but cut my food down tremendously. It impacted my blood pressure and everything. I had to take time off. I just want to know calorie count. It's weird. I use Mayoclinic calculator and it says I need 2650; another site says to maintain my current weight I need 3434 calories and my bmr is 2215. What's rough is I can't eat 3434. All of the other calculators I use do not come near the minimum calories that MFP does. So I'm a bit nervous here. I don't want to overtrain.

MFP is a NEAT method calculator...all of those other calculators are TDEE calculators. Two different methods, but 6 of 1, half dozen of the other if you're doing it right.