Newbie

keyydav89 wrote: »

Hello! According to my weight age height etc mfp is stating I need to eat 3,000 calories a day!!! Can someone please explain to me with eating 3,000 calories and working out 3 to 4 days a week for 45 minutes will I lose 1 pound a week? Is that too many calories to intake for a day?

Lol, yes way too high. What is your weight and height?

Weight, height, age, activity level all work together to ESTIMATE what your maintenance calories would be. Eating 500 Cal a day less than maintenance will generally speaking lead to losing 1lb a week once you average that over many -500 days and many weeks. This estimate will be accurate for most but not all. Some will be under-estimated. Some will be over-estimated. Inputting correct values for weight, height, age, and most importantly activity level also plays into all this.

I have a bit of an issue with the idea that we first pick a rate of loss and then figure out what we should eat to hit it. to me going at it this way increases the likelihood of pursuing inappropriate goals.

Generally speaking most people who try to lose weight over the long run will have a relatively good chance to succeed if they achieve the loss of 0.5% to 1% of their body weight per week while applying deficits that do not exceed 25% of their TDEE (maintenance calories). Generally speaking 0.5% will be tolerated better than 1% for people who are leaner or who have been losing weight for a while.

Starting from a high weight the long game and taking the time to understand oneself are pretty important. so is making choices one believes they will be able to sustain for the foreseeable future as long term adherence is the name of the game.

Let's consider some examples.

I am 240lbs. My TDEE is 3500 Cal. 25% of that is 875 Cal. That's 1.75lbs a week which is between 0.5% and 1% of my body weight. This is a good target. I could set MFP at 1K deficit and assume that sometimes I won't hit that. Or set it to 750 and make sure I always hit it with a tiny bit to spare.

I am 350lbs. My TDEE is 3500 Cal. Technically a safe loss rate for me would be between 1.75 and 3.5 lbs a week. 3.5lbs a week requires a 12,250 per week / 1750Cal per day deficit. That would be a 50% of my TDEE per day deficit. That's quite high. OK to maybe do for a few days. But not for the long run. 1.75lbs on the other hand requires 6125 Cal per week of deficit, or 875 Cal a day. It is 25% of my TDEE. That's as fast as I would choose to go for anything more than a few days.

Time is open ended. Especially if you're starting from a morbidly obese position, you should probably start thinking of weight control as a lifelong commitment. One that can actually be quite fulfilling and fun! But NOT a 'quick loss and I'm done' sort of thing.

So pure speed is of much less concern as compared to learning how to make choices you will be able to continue making again and again.