Target Calories on Goal tab vs Food tab are different- how to fix?

Do you have a fitness tracker synched to MFP? Have you entered exercise for the day into the exercise part of your diary?

healthy_new_me_now_2021 wrote: »

I don't have a fitness tracker synched to the app. I did enter exercise in the exercise portion.

I have 2 different fitness bands- is it possible to synch both a fitbit and a Garmin? I alternate their use when the other one is charging

The exercise you entered burns calories. Since you entered the exercise by hand, you should've seen (maybe edited) the exercise calorie estimate when you added the exercise. MFP adds your exercise calories to your calorie goal.

So, if your goal calories on your goal page are 1200, and you enter 300 calories of exercise on a particular day, your goal calories on your diary page will then be 1500.

The idea is that we're supposed to set our MFP activity level based on our life excluding intentional exercise, i.e., based on things like our job and daily life routine. If we say we want to lose a pound a week, MFP would estimate the number of calories we'd need to maintain our current weight, and subtract 500 daily to create that pound a week loss. So, if our calories to maintain our weight were 1700, MFP would subtract 500, giving 1200 as the weight loss calorie goal.

Then, when we exercise, we burn more calories above and beyond daily life stuff.
Let's say it's those 300 calories. That makes our calories to maintain our weight (that day) increase to 1700 + 300 = 2000. We log the 300 calories of exercise, it gets added to our weight loss calorie goal, which becomes 1500. Since 2000-500 = 1500, that keeps our same estimated pound a week weight loss.

You can sync one fitness tracker, not both. If you're going to sync a tracker, it's best to wear it as close to 24x7 as possible. If you do sync one of the trackers, I'd suggest you enable negative calorie adjustments in MFP when you do so.

As an aside, 1200 is the lowest calorie estimate MFP will give a woman. It's mostly only required to go that low if someone is quite petite, older, and not very active, with possibly not a lot of weight available to lose. Even in those cases, it can imply that the person has selected a very aggressive weight loss rate to pursue, which can be counterproductive in various ways. Since MFP will only go down to 1200, it may also not give the requested weight loss rate (because MFP thinks its risky to lose that fast, and may limit getting adequate nutrition). A common suggestion around here is to avoid losing more than 0.5-1% of current weight per week, with a bias toward the slower end of that unless severely obese and under close medical supervision for deficiencies or complications.

I admit I tend to be cautious about this: I'm older (59 at start of loss), sedentary (excluding exercise), and not very big, so I got the 1200 estimate for a fairly reasonable loss rate at my size then. Nonetheless, it was too aggressive (because I need more calories than MFP estimated). I got weak and fatigued, then took several weeks to recover even though I increased my goal calories as soon as I realized. There may have been some hair thinning a few weeks down the road, too. (That's usually a delayed reaction.) That really brought home to me that fast weight loss can be risky!

Best wishes for progress from here!