How doyou know how many calories to maintain?

tiiukai1
tiiukai1 Posts: 2 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
Hi there and please forgive if this has been answered before. My first time in here. Once you achieve your weight loss goal, how do you know how many calories are needed to maintain that weight?

Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,939 Member
    If you lost weight, you know how much you were eating and how fast you were losing.


    One pound of weight loss per week would be a 3500 calorie per week calories deficit. That's 3500 divided by 7 days = 500 calories per day deficit.

    Adjust your calories accordingly.
  • NeahF
    NeahF Posts: 49 Member
    Isn't there a function on your goal settings for maintain? If you put your current weight as your goal weight, it should automatically put your calories at maintain.
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    What @cmriverside said. You go by your own numbers and then check the results. You may continue losing if eating more results in a higher BMR and NEAT so you will need to keep tweaking it over time.

    If you were not calorie counting then do what @neahF says and go through the guided set-up and get an estimate. Try to eat those calories consistently plus any exercise calories and then check those results in about 6 weeks.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,012 Member
    FWIW, there's further discussion of that question in this thread from the "Most Helpful Posts" section:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level/p1
  • tiiukai1
    tiiukai1 Posts: 2 Member
    Thank you all for that feedback. I am calorie-counting so your replies gave me the answers I need. Thanks again!
  • 425Recess
    425Recess Posts: 260 Member
    Tinker - watch your weight, if it starts to go up, lower your calories, if it starts to go down, raise your calories. And repeat. Life changes. With "Stay at Home" , I had to lower my calories. I was doing DVDs instead of the gym but daily activities wasn't the same. I had to walk across the parking lot to get into the gym and walk around the store instead of using the "pick-up." When things are more normal again (said with my fingers crossed), I will lower my calories.
  • TexasAggie1280
    TexasAggie1280 Posts: 31 Member
    The Harris Benedict Equation is the best method to determine this. If you google it, you'll find some online calculators that will do the work for you. I learned about this in college and had to use it a lot for various projects. According to my professors, it is the best measurement to determine caloric requirements based on your goals.
  • TexasAggie1280
    TexasAggie1280 Posts: 31 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    TexasAggie1280 wrote: »
    The Harris Benedict Equation is the best method to determine this. If you google it, you'll find some online calculators that will do the work for you. I learned about this in college and had to use it a lot for various projects. According to my professors, it is the best measurement to determine caloric requirements based on your goals.

    An equation is just a starting point, a statistical hypothesis to be tested for our n=1. Actual personal experience is the "best measurement". The equations will be close for most people, because most people are close to average, by definition. They aren't "a measurement" at all, they're an estimate.

    HB original estimates my BMR is 1234, HB revised says 1232. At sedentary per Sailrabbit (1.2 multiplier), my TDEE should be 1481-1483. Five years of logging data says my TDEE (not counting exercise, i.e., when sedentary) is something a bit over 2000. I'm losing slowly, but steadily, on 1850 net. Crazy, huh? ;) This sort of thing is rare, but it happens. Experience > formulas.

    FWIW, the BMR estimates I get from the other formulas (Mifflin St Jeor, Katch-McArdle) aren't very different from one another, or from HB, +/- 100ish.

    Interesting insight. I'll have to look into this formulas more! Thank you for the information.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,581 Member
    edited May 2020
    Equations are derived from populations.

    The original Harris Benedict probably better matches the slightly less tall, slightly more lean, and slightly more active population of 1909 to 1917... before cars, microwaves, and dishwashers.

    The Mifflin-St Jeor population sample is more representative of our current world: slightly more tall, slightly more corpulent, and probably much more sedentary other than by deliberate effort as compared to people just over 100 years ago.

    While activity level doesn't directly influence BMR, it does (potentially) influence body composition at any particular weight and height combination, and body composition does affect BMR.

    MFP, Fitbit currently seem to use Mifflin for their base BMR
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,981 Member
    What I did - incredibly boring and straightforward, I know.

    I simply changed my settings on MFP from 'lose at x rate' to 'maintain' and then ate the new number of net calories.
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,676 Member
    I started with MFPs numbers. When I continued to lose weight, I raised the goal. When I still lost weight, I raised it again. When my weight was stable over several weeks, I stopped thinking about it.
  • briscogun
    briscogun Posts: 1,135 Member
    paperpudding wrote: »
    What I did - incredibly boring and straightforward, I know.

    I simply changed my settings on MFP from 'lose at x rate' to 'maintain' and then ate the new number of net calories.

    This is WAY too complicated. We are going to need some kind of algebraic algorithm to really drill down on this. ;)

    So I just entered maintenance a few weeks ago and I'm keeping a daily log of my calories eaten and my weight that day so I can try to figure out the correlation between my calories and my weight. I seem to be balancing somewhere just below what MFP says I should be at, and over 400 calories less than the online calculator I used. I'm finding that tracking my actual data is working best.

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