We are pleased to announce that as of March 4, 2025, an updated Rich Text Editor has been introduced in the MyFitnessPal Community. To learn more about the changes, please click here. We look forward to sharing this new feature with you!

Upping my calorie goals?

wilsonunc
wilsonunc Posts: 45 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
Hi guys! I'm trying to decide if I should up my calorie goals. I had it set to 1580 cals/day but I have days where I have trouble meeting (extra hungry -- going over cals). I am a grad student during COVID so I am mostly sedentary, except I run 5-6 days a week for at least 30 mins (averaging 25-30 miles a week). I have not been eating back these calories. I'm 160 lbs and between 5'4 and 5'5. I've lost 10 lbs since I started (back) on MFP in August. I've honestly been at a bit of a standstill weight-wise over the last few weeks. I'm not looking to lose super fast -- the lowest I would want to go is in the 130's, which is the weight I was at about a year and a half ago. I also am very good about weighing my food on a food scale, so my cal counts are pretty accurate. Basically the only time I don't weight food and calorie count is when my spouse wants to order food outside the home without an available place to view the nutrition facts. I try to not worry on those days! that might happen once a week or less.

Replies

  • Ddsb11
    Ddsb11 Posts: 607 Member
    I would consider eating back half of your exercise calories to start.
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,771 Member
    Eat back your exercise calories. If you don't, hunger will make you eat more, and not necessarily foods that you want to eat.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    If what you are doing isn't working then yes you do need to change.

    Must say I'm a bit confused if you are calorie counting why you ignore a significant factor in your calorie balance which is your 25 - 30 miles running a week.

    It's not difficult to get a reasonable estimate for running and reasonable is perfectly good enough for purpose.
    You wouldn't ignore roughly 2,500 - 3,000 cals on the other side of the equation would you?
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 921 Member
    I calculated a TDEE estimate for you (and used 'sedentary' as the activity level) --- and your maintenance calorie goal should be ~1700-ish.

    Do you know how many calories you're burning during your runs? For example -- I also run (~20miles/week)...and usually on my runs I burn between 500-600 calories (this is just an estimate based on my Polar HRM).

    So if you're only eating 1580 --- that's already at a deficit (to lose weight slowly)....and if you're then burning calories on top of that --- I'd say it's safe to say that you're undereating. That's probably why you're super hungry some days. I'd imagine that other than putting in the effort to do your runs - you're pretty tired/run-down the rest of the time?

    So, I'd say --- keep your calorie goal the same and eat back AT LEAST 50% of your running calories (or more if you're still really hungry).....OR change your calorie goal to 1700 and eat back anywhere from 0-50% of your running calories. See where you go from there.
  • wilsonunc
    wilsonunc Posts: 45 Member
    Hi guys! sorry for the silence on my end.

    I guess I have been confused about what I should put for my activity level aside from running. When I put in my activity level as sedentary on MFP, it says I need to eat 1270 cals/day to lose a lb a week, which, when I add half of my exercise cals to that, I get to about where I'm at calorie-wise (say I burn 400-500 cals a session). That seems very low to me and I would be concerned to see what would happen if I put it at 2lbs per week (even if that is not my goal). So I think I'm just a bit confused on that end.

    I have a Garmin HR watch so I get accurate-ish calorie counts on each run!
  • wilsonunc
    wilsonunc Posts: 45 Member
    Sorry for the double post -- but so I'm understanding: If my TDEE is 1700 to maintain my weight (which it was when I did my separate calculation), and I burned 544 calories today on a 5 mile run, I could eat half of that back (272) for a total of 1972 calories. This should still give me a little bit of a deficit based on the remaining calories estimated that I burned, and should result in slow weight loss.

    If that is the case, then I've definitely been undereating on most days!
  • brianpperkins131
    brianpperkins131 Posts: 90 Member
    MFP does not include deliberate exercise in its calorie setups and expects you to log those activities and eat those calories back to maintain the deficit set for sustained loss.
  • charmmeth
    charmmeth Posts: 936 Member
    edited November 2020
    Personally, I set mfp to sedentary, log all my exercise, and eat all my exercise calories back. That's because my exercise varies from day to day, and if I am not exercising I am sitting at my desk. (I work at a university so research and teaching is all by zoom at present... ) If I were only to eat half the calories back then I would be increasing my deficit, so would (or should) lose faster. If you say mfp calculates your sedentary for losing 1 lb per week is 1270 cals then (assuming you are roughly at this norm) eating all your exercise calories should still mean you are losing 1 lb/week.

    Your records should show you whether you have been losing faster than 1 lb per week. If so, then upping your calorie intake would make sense.
This discussion has been closed.

Categories