Goal setting

jp62c6knqh wrote: »

Q: I have a scale that calculates DCI. Daily Caloric Intake. My understanding is that this is the cal needed to maintain. To lose 2 lbs a week cut that by 1k cal. MyFittness Pal suggests 1200 cal minimum and warns you if you go under. The math then looks like this. DCI (1825) - 1000 (to lose 2 lbs / wk) = Daily goal (825). Consume 1200 to get to minimum for My Fitness Pal to let you "complete" a day. To get back to 825 do 375 cal of exercise. On the app it looks like 825 - 1200 - 375 = 0. Am I looking at this correctly? 825 seems low and when I use the "guided" goals in the app it sets my daily goal at 1500. If it helps I'm 47 M 167 trying to get what I believe is BMI normal ~ 155 lbs. I've on a day 190 on the app and so far have lost 38 lbs. I've cheated ~ 8 times in that timeframe. I workout daily and am looking to do my first sprint triathlon in over 10 years.

First, your scale doesn't "calculate" your maintenance calories, it estimates them based on population averages. You're an individual, so that number can guide you as a starting point, but it's a hypothesis to be tested (over 4-6 weeks minimum, to look at weight change averages).

Second, you don't say how heavy you are now. I'd recommend that you not try to lose weight faster than 0.5-1% of current weight per week, with a bias toward the lower end of that unless you're currently severely obese and under close medical supervision for deficiencies or health complications.

Third, not everyone should be losing 2 pounds a week if they value their health, energy level, etc. . . . as implied by that first point just above.

Fourth, 1500 (not 1200) is the MFP minimum for men, and you're meant to add exercise calories to that and eat those, too (assuming you set MFP activity level based on pre-exercise activity, as the directions say to do). Getting 825 net calories (calories eaten - exercise) is a bad plan for any adult. Not healthy in any way, probably counterproductive for weight loss if you have a meaningful amount of weight to lose (and probably even if only a small amount to lose).

If you've lost 38 pounds in 190 days, your effective calorie deficit (doing whatever you have been doing, including so-called cheat days) is about 700 calories per day. If you're getting close to goal weight, that may be a little high. If you've still got some weight to lose (like maybe 20-30+ pounds), it's probably fine for a while yet.

Your approximate maintenance calories - better estimate than your scale's - is 700 + whatever your average daily calorie intake has been over around the last month. It's still approximate, but it's personalized. If you're very average (statistically), it may be close to what your scale estimates. (The reasons people are/aren't average in calorie needs aren't always obvious.)

Believe your experiential data. If you haven't been calorie tracking and are just starting, what I'd recommend is logging what you've been eating, and see what your loss is in 4-6 weeks, then estimate your actual maintenance calories or calorie goal using those results. Then you'd have the data you need to fine-tune your loss rate.

Also, eat a reasonable net number of calories . . . which is not 825 calories or anything near to it.

I admit I'm a mysteriously good li'l ol' calorie burner, but I lost weight at a good clip eating 1400-1600 plus all carefully-estimated exercise calories, when I was a 59 year old, 5'5" woman in the mid-150s pounds. Now 67 and around 130 pounds, I maintain on 1850 or so plus all exercise calories. Personalized experiential estimates are better than statistical estimates for a whole population of similar people.

Best wishes!

As Ann said, the scale doesn't calculate DCI or TDEE. It just uses the same Miffin based multiplier (based on estimated activity level) of BMR (based on your height, weight and age) that MFP and sites like this do:

https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

You've been losing at 1.25 pounds per week. If you have about 12 pounds to go, you shouldn't be trying to speed that up. You'll risk losing muscle mass doing that. If you change anything, maybe start eating a couple hundred calories more.

You mentioned the rate of loss slowing down. That's likely anyway, since your BMR will be going down as you lose weight. Your BMR may be 1500 calories now compared to 1800 when you started (picking numbers out of thin air as examples), so if you've maintained the same calorie inputs, the deficit and weight loss will lower over time.