Calories per day

I'm 5'5", weigh 126-ish, and am lightly active most of the time. I eat roughly 2000 calories (average) a day to maintain. The only macro I care about is protein and that's for satiety and muscle retention. Fat and carbs fall where they will.

I've really only had success with calorie deficit, other approaches have failed for me. I do focus on taking in at least 20% of my calories from protein...mainly because otherwise left to my own devices I will eat foods that tend to leave me hungry. It's when I'm not satiated that I end up falling off the wagon.
And 20% still leaves you plenty of room to enjoy the occasional (reasonable/controlled) splurge on not-so-healthy-yums.

For the calories per day - one thing that comes to mind for me is I don't like to place reliance on the "activity" estimates in the built in calculations. I find if I rely on Fitbit calorie burn estimates or other algorithms...it tends to spit out a higher number of calories available and then I wind up not losing. I prefer to eat roughly my BMR, and make the deficit in movement and exercise. Otherwise I'm either starving or not losing.
So my work around is to set my goal calcs at sedentary and a 1lb per week loss to sort of force the MFP daily goal value to align to my BMR. It's a tried and true target for me, but everyone is different. There is, unfortunately, a bit of trial and error that goes into figuring out what works for you individually.

There are lots of calculators for this across the internet (just search for "TDEE calculator") but all of them, including what MFP gives you, are just estimates. Your metabolism, the amount of activity you perform during the day, etc., are all going to impact your daily caloric needs and no calculator can do more than give you an estimate because of the wide variation between individuals for those quantities. It's going to come down to you choosing one of those estimates, trying it for a few weeks, and seeing what your weight does, on average, then adjusting the calorie level accordingly.

puddy310 wrote: »

Good morning....Just curious if anyone had any info about calories per day. This app says I should be at 2300 per day but I feel like I should be around 2000. Also, anyone have any luck with macros or had success with that vs just staying a deficit? Lastly, does anyone do a refeed day where they go up some in calories. Obviously, lots of questions and the information out there is broad. Just curious what has worked and not worked for people. Thanks

Why do you feel like it should be around 2000? Your calorie requirements are dictated by your stats and activity. I lose about 1 Lb per week on 2300-2500 calories per day.

Macros don't really have much to do with losing weight. The only way to lose weight is being in a calorie deficit. There is no universally optimal macro ratio

puddy310 wrote: »

Good morning....Just curious if anyone had any info about calories per day. This app says I should be at 2300 per day but I feel like I should be around 2000. Also, anyone have any luck with macros or had success with that vs just staying a deficit? Lastly, does anyone do a refeed day where they go up some in calories. Obviously, lots of questions and the information out there is broad. Just curious what has worked and not worked for people. Thanks

Counting calories while watching macros, or counting macros, works out to be about the same thing. That's because each macro has a typical calorie level, 4 calories per gram for protein and carbs, 9 calories per gram for fats. (Also, 7 calories per gram for alcohol, which isn't exactly a nutrient, just a thing with calories.)

It's calories that relate directly to fat gain/loss. (Indirectly, nutrition may affect energy so influence calorie expenditure through fatigue or the like; or affect how full you feel so make it harder/easier to stick with a calorie goal. Also, nutrition is important for health and body composition, of course.)

Through loss and in maintenance, I most often stick with my calorie goal, but sometimes eat over goal (occasionally way over goal) for some reason (whim!), but I don't do a structured refeed day. As long as I account for my calorie intake, my weight behaves as I'd expect based on that intake, on average over time. Water weight fluctuations can make scale results look whacky over a day or few, the fat gain/loss trends show up more gradually.

GwynLeder wrote: »

I met with a neighbor who is a retired dietician. She recommended that I eat about 1150 - 1250 calories to eat to lose. that might be too little for some of you but I think 2000-2500 calories a day is way too many.

I’ve dealt with two dietitians. The first early on, who suggested MFP and gave me some very helpful basic tips and suggestions to enhance my initial loss.

I had four phone sessions with a dietician from my health insurance- the last one just yesterday. I declined any additional sessions.

Not to come acrost as a know it all, but I’ve reached the point reading and participating here, that I feel like I know as much (more ) about my nutrition than she did. Granted, these were phone sessions. She hasn’t met me in person or seen me. It got the point she was asking me leading questions to answer myself because she just couldn’t provide any advice. I felt like I was giving her pointers.

She also mentioned in passing that she is a personal trainer. I felt like some of the advice she offered me to eat for my training needs was way off base, too.

I dunno. Maybe I’m the dietician’s unicorn, maybe she didn’t believe some of what I was telling her about my activity level, calorie goals, nutrition needs, but I wasn’t getting anything useful.

I have found, during this whole weight loss and maintenance process, that listening to my own self, weighing advice and suggestions from the boards, listening to what the dietitians offered, creating a balance was the best thing for me.

Unless you are really short, I think the typical rote physician/dietician advice of around 1200/day is lazy. Physicians I get because they don’t have the time to train for nutrition. That’s someone else’s domain.

I’m 5’7 and starting weight was well over 220. I
began with a goal of 1470, increased to 1700 (advice of first dietician) , then 1900(insistence of trainer), and still lost weight consistently- seventy pounds the first year. Granted, I’m very active, but not so much when I started.

It’s your responsibility to monitor yourself and make sure you’re eating enough. You get the one body. Abusing it by under feeding it to lose rapidly is, IMHO, as bad as abusing it with alcohol or toxins like cigarettes. No matter how fab your doc or dietitian are, you’re the ultimate judge of where that line is.

TL:DR. Listen to your body

There was a really stupid article in the WSJ this weekend that “3500 calories doesn’t equal a pound”.

What it boiled down to was that a study showed weight comes off faster for heavier people but it as fast for lighter people, and that weight loss speed varies with current weight.

Well DUH!!!!!