935 calories??

angelathailand wrote: »

I'm confused about what my macro % should be, and should I be eating my exercise calories or not? That doesn't make sense to me if I want to lose weight.

Of course it makes sense to take a significant calorie expenditure into account when you are counting calories.
On the food side that would be like deciding not to log your breakfast - ruins the numbers doesn't it?

MyFitnessPal is trying to get the message across that exercise isn't for weight loss for a short period - it's for health, fitness (and even enjoyment!) for life. The other part of the message is just like your car, the more you drive the more fuel you need to put in, the less you drive the less fuel you put in the tank.

Bear in mind that the average TDEE calculator you used gives you a number that includes an estimated average of your exercise.
Or if you decide to use an all day wearable tracker that will take your exercise into account.
MyFitnessPal just presents the same numbers in a different way but over time ends up very similar.

Just decide if you want a same every day eating goal then use the TDEE number minus a small deficit (you don't have much to lose, you are small, you are very active and exercising on top of that)
Or if you prefer a daily goal that varies in line with your exercise then complete the MFP goal set up and pick a slow rate of loss.

Unless you have some particular needs or preferences then the macro split on here is fine as a starting point. You can tweak it later if you like.

BTW Ange, your attachment didn't appear.

1385 - 1060 (what you have eaten)= 285 (you have to eat this)

165 (work out calories earned) - what type of exercise and how long did you do it?
We might be able to get an idea of how correct that number might be. for most people half is usually correct but that can vary depending on the person and exercise).

Take into account that your weight, especially as a woman, varies over the month and is highly influenced by water retention. Especially with only a very small amount of weight to lose and given a correspondingly small deficit (because you only have a small amount to lose and because you're a small person who CLAIMS they are not very active)... weight fluctuations will be more frequent and larger than your underlying fat level change.

To measure your underlying fat level you may want to start using a weight tracking app or web site that takes into consideration multiple weight ins and your general trend and de-emphasises shorter term weight fluctuations.

only because these were the first ones that sort of worked when I tried them out, I would suggest libra for android, happy scale for iOS, trendweight.com (you would need a freely available without a device fitbit.com account), or weightgrapher.com. Weighgrapher has some ability to visually show you your graph a monthly cycle ago, which people may find of use to them if they have substantial monthly hormonal fluctuations. I use trendweight personally.

to modify your long term weight trajectory you only need to worry about 3 numbers when you get down to it.

Your TOTAL CALORIES expended from ALL sources including from being alive. You can pre-estimate that based on your crystal ball and internet research, estimate by adding up incremental variable exercise to a base amount that expects an estimate of your based activity level to be included (MFP method), or off-load the estimating to a watch or other device (my personal method which is, in reality, just a more granular version of the MFP method as the watch increments from a base estimate based on the activity it detects).

You may have to dig into your watch a little bit because from your narrative, it is unclear to me whether your 1700 Calories expended as per your watch is referring to total calories for the day--including those burned by being alive--, or whether it is talking about a total of active/exercise calories that were burned in addition to the ones you burn by being alive.

It seems to me that the SECOND number in the display, the one that comes after the slash is the number we would want to consider as your total calories burned from all sources: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/troubleshooting/TSG01003163/#view-the-burn-calorie-logs-on-your-samsung-smart-watch

You need to know your total calories in -- which you estimate by logging your intake from all sources.

You need to know how your weight behaves OVER TIME. Usually a meaningful time horizon exceeds 4 weeks and is why I suggested a weight trend app further up thread.

This allows you to correct between your expectations based on population averages and your own individual reality.

You only have a small amount of weight to lose.

You seem to think that you have accurate information about your fat percentage. This may not be as true as you think. Hint: even a dexa scan or a dunk test have considerable margins of error. Single point (for example feet only) bioimpedance is ridiculously unreliable. If you want to manipulate your stats, drink a couple of glasses of water and repeat your measurement with your bioimpedance device. While you're at it, work up a bit of sweat or have a shower between measurements.

400-500 Cal is a LARGE deficit to be aiming for given your current BMI and amount of weight to lose. You seem to think that losing weight doesn't have potential side effects. I seem to think that just as with a pill that your doctor prescribes the benefits have to outweigh the side effects before you embark in a course of action.

Personally I believe that you will end up with better results in a few years if you were to embark on a structured exercise program while eating at maintenance as opposed to a deficit.

It is just an opinion, of course, and reflected in my own biases that it is sometimes not desirable for people to risk inducing hormonal changes by a weight intervention where one is not necessary for health.