Not Understanding Net Calories

lgfrie wrote: »

This is all so confusing.

Unplug the Garmin. Put it in a drawer. It is not helping you.

Go to the MFP Goals tool. Enter your age, gender, height, weight, etc. Tell it you want to lose a pound a week.

It'll probably tell you 1200 calories, because your maintenance level (break even) is around 1600 cals/day, so to lose a pound a week you'd have to eat 1100 (a deficit of 500/day = 1 lb per week lost) but 1200 is the lowest it will give you.

Eat that 1200 every day. NEVER less.

If you work out - meaning an intentional 30 or 60 or 90 minutes of weight lifting or cardio - either get a calorie estimate for that or just assume it's 200 calories per 30 minutes, and eat every single one of those calories, in addition to the 1200.

That's all you have to do. The weight loss will follow. That Garmin has you tied up in knots and is not helping you at all. Jmho.

This.

The problem is the Garmin is tracking things in different categories than MFP does.

So I think the confusion is because MFP and the Garmin calculate the cals differently. Using the Garmin for other purposes rather than cals makes sense.

If your BMR (which basically means the amount of cals you would burn daily if you didn't move at all) = 1281, then your sedentary maintenance cals would be around 1.2x1281, or 1537. MFP calculates your calorie goal from that, if you told it you are sedentary, and that's why you get 1200 (1200 is the minimum).

What the Garmin seems to be saying is that you burn around 256 (or an average person of your height, weight, sex, and age) would, if sedentary. The remaining 466 (772-256) is what it is giving you for other movement, either walking around beyond a sedentary amount or intentional exercise (and again it is an estimate).

MFP counts additional exercise beyond whatever you tell it when you set it up (sedentary or lightly active or whatever) toward your calorie goal, so when you logged exercise you will get more than 1200. That's important, since most women will get 1200 if they say sedentary and want to lose 1 lb/week (or more), but eating 1200 and ignoring significant exercise (like say I run an average of 5 miles a day) would be extremely unhealthy. Ignoring extra cals from logged exercise is not using MFP as intended, although many will reduce the exercise cals to make sure they are not overstated.

As I read your Garmin numbers, it is saying your actual TDEE (that's the total amount of cals you burned) on the day you showed us is 2003 cals. Therefore, if you wanted to lose 1 lb/week, you would want to eat about 1500 cals on that day. Eating 1200-1300 would be more like 1.5 lbs/week, which could be okay if you have a good bit to lose, but can be too aggressive a goal if you don't. At 67, one risk of an overly aggressive goal (in addition to just burn out or having it all hit you at once later) is more muscle loss than you otherwise would have.

The best way to tell if you are undereating is how much you are losing weekly going forward, so I'd keep an eye on that.

The EASIEST thing to do, if you don't want to log exercise in MFP or use it's adjusted cal goal would probably be to use a Garmin cals per day (the 2003) - 500 (a one lb loss goal).

It looks to me that you originally told Garmin that you wanted to lose 1.5 or 2 lb/week, and that's why it's giving you 1200. Again, if you have more to lose, that can be okay, but based on your 1281 BMR I am guessing you might not.