Looking for guidance from other SHORTER women

I’m 5’0” and 138 lbs.

I’m a runner but prefer running outside to the treadmill. I also do strength training. Strength training shouldn’t be ignored until you reach your goal weight. It can help with weight loss and there are a lot of body weight exercises you can do if you have no equipment. FitnessBlender is my favorite for video workouts.

I eat 1200 calories on a no exercise day. I lose about a 1 lb a week. Your weight loss would probably be slower than that since you are shorter and pretty close to your goal.

Start building muscles at the same time as losing weight; you're unlikely to regret starting now. Being short and a healthy weight already, it'll be slow to lose a few pounds anyway. Look at body weight exercises if you're unable to go to the gym.

One thing you'll read on here, a lot, is that you don't need to exercise to lose weight / weight loss happens in the kitchen. Exercising is good for muscle tone, fitness levels, general well-being and 'earning' extra calories to eat but, if you're over-eating, your exercise won't help much with weight loss.


To lose almost 40lbs, I was eating 1200 a day, which is the minimum MFP will set anyone and is the minimum recommended for females, even us shorties. I'm now fluctuating at 108-110lb and in maintenance on 1340 a day. To lose half a pound a week, you need a deficit of 250 from your maintenance calories. However, with a deficit of considerably less than that, particularly for the last 10 lbs, not surprisingly, my weight loss was slow. My bathroom scales seemingly wouldn't move for ages and then suddenly I'd drop a bit. On the plus side, as my maintenance cals aren't much higher, it was a lot of practice for what I'd be eating like once I'd lost the pounds.

Make sure your logging is accurate. Weigh every solid / measure every liquid that you consume or use in cooking. Ensure that the entries you select from the database are accurate as many are out of date or just entered incorrectly.

The macros that MFP default to are fine for most people but consider the protein and fat numbers to be minimums, especially if you're doing any strength building/ weights.

All the calculators that you're looking at could have different ways of measuring. MFP is designed such that it calculates your maintenance figures and builds in a deficit based on the rate of weight loss you selected (with the caveat that it will never give anyone below 1200 to eat); you log your intentional exercise separately and eat back those calories as well. Other trackers look at your exercise and build that in to a daily allowance, which is fine if you do exactly the same thing, every day / week and just want a constant calorie number to eat towards, but may be less accurate if your exercise changes regularly. I'm happy tracking my exercise separately as it varies daily and week-to-week. If I've done an 8 mile walk, I want to eat more than on days when I don't leave the house.