Reducing calories

jayjay8282
jayjay8282 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi all!
Just wondering when to reduce your calories? I have been eating 2,000 for 2 months now. When should I lower and to what amount? Thanks!

Replies

  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 989 Member
    Assuming you did the setup in MFP, are eating the calories that MFP set you and are losing weight at a safe rate, recalculate via the Guided Set up under Goals. I think the suggestion is to do that roughly every 10lbs, although it may not change by a lot.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,393 Member
    Here, use this guide to help you determine your recommended rate of loss.

    On Myfitnesspal you are supposed to eat more on exercise days, too. Set your goals, add in exercise (on the "Exercise" tab) when you do it and log food for a couple months. Adjust if needed based on your results at the end of those two months.


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  • lgfrie
    lgfrie Posts: 1,449 Member
    Technically speaking, you burn around 5-6 calories less for every pound you lose, subject to various things like your weight, gender, etc. So after losing 10 lbs, you're losing around 50-60 calories less per day eating the same food.

    This is something you can see for yourself by playing around with a TDEE calculator such as the one over at TDEEcalculator.net. Just put in your current weight, run the formula, then put in your weight minus 10 and see what the difference is. Probably around 50 cals.

    With that said ...

    You don't have to reduce your calories. That's an option you "can" use to try to maintain the same weight loss rate, but you don't "have" to do that.

    I've been steadily and slowly increasing my calories since I started dieting 356 days ago, my theory being that my dieting efforts will eventually dovetail with a maintenance level of calories right as I get to my goal and then I won't have to rethink anything or change any eating habits. And also, I like food :) Rewarding myself for a good spurt of weight loss by getting another 25 calories per day seems to keep me motivated, versus my reward being less and less food, which in a way is punishing success - never a good formula.

    Bottom line, there are different ways to do this, and you have lots of options as long as "lose weight as fast as possible" isn't the objective.
  • jayjay8282
    jayjay8282 Posts: 2 Member
    Thanks everyone! I just started my journey 60 days ago. To date I’ve lost 25 pounds. The first 6 weeks the weight melted off and last week I was up 5 ounces and today, week 8, up 8 ounces. I am working out everyday 30 min per day- I do Beach Body so one day is cardio the next Pilates the next upper body etc. I want to lose weight in a healthy way. When I downloaded this app I changed the suggested calories MFP provided me to 2,000 a day wanting to lose 2lbs per week. A friend said their calories went down on their own and idk of mine has t because I manually changed my calorie intake? Idk if I gained ounces the last 2 weeks bc of water weight-I weight same day every week first thing in the morning. Maybe it’s muscle gain? Possibly plateau although I feel it’s too soon for that. Just wondering when to lower to continue losing weight
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,209 Member
    edited June 2020
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    Did you read @cmriverside 's post above? How much weight do you have available to lose?

    My would most likely suggest a no more than a 25% deficit.
    Which means that you would have to be eating 3000 out of 4000 Calories to achieve 1000Cal a day/2lbs a week, and you're already going faster than that.
    Actually, since there is initial water weight to consider, it might be more correct to state that you're going at "a good 2lbs a week", as opposed to stating that you're going faster.
    But there is certainly no evidence showing that you're NOT going at least that fast.

    Daily scale weight fluctuations are NORMAL.

    Anything that ends up with you eating 2000 Cal while losing more than 1.33333lbs a week means you're creating a deficit that is more than 25%. I.e. it would be extremely aggressive.

    Thus, the time to lower your calories is NOT now.

    You may want to start using a weight trend application or web site and load up all your post data so you have an ongoing record of your smoothed weight level changes and a better handle on your long term deficit when compared to your expectations based on your logging.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,102 Member
    jayjay8282 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone! I just started my journey 60 days ago. To date I’ve lost 25 pounds. The first 6 weeks the weight melted off and last week I was up 5 ounces and today, week 8, up 8 ounces. I am working out everyday 30 min per day- I do Beach Body so one day is cardio the next Pilates the next upper body etc. I want to lose weight in a healthy way. When I downloaded this app I changed the suggested calories MFP provided me to 2,000 a day wanting to lose 2lbs per week. A friend said their calories went down on their own and idk of mine has t because I manually changed my calorie intake? Idk if I gained ounces the last 2 weeks bc of water weight-I weight same day every week first thing in the morning. Maybe it’s muscle gain? Possibly plateau although I feel it’s too soon for that. Just wondering when to lower to continue losing weight

    60 days? Beach Body? It's not (mostly) muscle gain, sadly.

    Don't get me wrong, Beach Body is fine exercise. It's just not optimal for (focused on) muscle gain.

    For a woman, a quarter pound of muscle mass gain per week would be a very good result under ideal conditions (though strength gain can be much faster**), or twice that for a man. Ideal conditions include a good progressive strength training program (which Beach Body isn't, exactly) faithfully performed, excellent nutrition (especially protein), relative youth, good genetics, and a calorie surplus (i.e., not weight loss). Conditions short of that don't torpedo all muscle growth, necessarily, but it would be slower than that quarter pound a week, and in really negative conditions it could be zero or negaive (not saying you're there).

    On the flip side, a quarter pound a week of fat loss would mean slower scale-weight loss than would be observable on a body weight scale (amongst normal water weight and other non-fat fluctuations) over several months, and probably only then with a weight-trending app.

    So, pretty much no realistic rate of muscle mass gain (especially for women) is going to mask any satisfying rate of fat loss on the scale, unfortunately. I wish! :)

    ** Strength gain, especially in relative beginners, is primarily from neuromuscular adaptation (NMA): Basically, more effectively and efficiently recruiting and using existing muscle fibers. Adding muscle mass (new muscle fibers) is a different thing.

    If you think you'd lose 2 pounds a week at 2000 calories a day, that implies that you think your TDEE is 3000 calories a day. That's not impossible, but it's relatively high for a woman. How did you come up with 2000? For sure, as you get lighter, your calorie needs (at constant activity level) will be smaller, just from moving less body weight through the world every minute of every day. If you set your calories manually, I wouldn't expect MFP to adjust them for you automagically.

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