Highly confused! How does calorie deficit work in MFP?

If you include your exercise in your activity level, don't add exercise separately. If you set your activity level excluding intentional exercise - which is what the MFP instructions say to do - then you would log your exercise when you do it, and eat those calories too, to keep the same weight loss rate.

If you synch a good fitness tracker to MFP, and you enable negative adjustments, MFP and the tracker will compare notes and adjust your calorie goal based on what the tracker estimates you've burned. For a lot of people, that's simplest.

If you want to include exercise in your activity level, it may be better to get a calorie estimate from a calculator designed for that approach. This is IMO one of the better ones:

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

That one has more activity levels, with better descriptions of each, compared to a lot of other calculators. It also lets you compare estimates from several different research-based calorie estimating formulas. That detail does make the user interface look complex at first, but if you step through it, it's easy to use.

Either method can work: In one case you're averaging your planned exercise into your calorie goal (making it important to stick to that exercise plan!). In the other case, you're putting exercise in separately. Either one accounts for all of your activity that contributes to your calorie needs. What tends not to be a great idea is mixing the methods, i.e., adding exercise calories on top of a calorie goal that already includes exercise plans (won't lose weight as fast, maybe not at all), or exercising a lot on top of a calorie goal that didn't include exercise (potential for under-eating, under-nutrition, and bad consequences from those).

Either way, follow a particular approach closely for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual periods if you're having them), then adjust your calorie goal based on your actual results. The calculators - either type - just give you a statistical average of calorie needs for similar people. But we're each unique individuals: The calculator estimates will be close for most people, noticeably off (high or low) for some, and surprisingly far off for a rare few. That's the nature of statistical estimates.

Note that fitness trackers are also just giving statistical estimates of calorie needs, just more detailed, nuanced ones. They can be wrong, too, for people who are non-average in some way. (Why a person is non-average may not be obvious.)

If your period stops and you're not losing weight, you should see your doctor. That's not normal.

If you were losing weight fast and your period stopped, that would be a sign of severe under-eating.

I'm one of the people for whom MFP's and my tracker's estimate is quite far off. Once I adjusted my calories based on a month or so of results, my weight changes became pretty predictable.

Summary: See your doctor about the stopped period. Adjust your calorie goal to achieve weight loss once you have enough experience data to work with.

Best wishes!

Just to add to collective wisdom, as someone in perimenopause, I’d throw that in as an option as well as saying when I started having irregular periods (including skipped periods) my doctor also checked my thyroid levels to eliminate that as a cause. It’s a symptom worth getting checked out by a doctor, whatever the likely cause.

BodyTemple23 wrote: »

@westrich20940 thank you!

Yes, I opted for moderate exercise in TDEE and it gave me 1700 calories for maintenance. My BMR is 1200. So I can basically have 1200 calories a day (but if 1200 calories are without exercise, I'm essentially creating a deficit of 1200 - exercise calories, no?).

In the past, I did lose weight by eating 1200-1300 calories. Plus, religious workouts.

As a side note, to clarify the vocabulary:
your deficit = the amount of calories you are consuming under your TDEE. So if your TDEE is 1750 per day and you're eating 1500 per day, you have calorie deficit of 250kcal per day

BodyTemple23 wrote: »

herringboxes wrote: »

My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that amenorrhea (loss of period - but it would have to be several to be official) can be caused by too low body weight/body fat - but not really from too low calories for someone with currently adequate body mass/fat.

So, are you currently at too low a weight?

I'm overweight by about 15-20 pounds. I'm trying to lose weight.

How did you determine you're 15-20lbs overweight?


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

BodyTemple23 wrote: »

@ninerbuff @mgalsf12

I'm 43 Y, 5'3 and 144 pounds. I'm overweight.

I felt my best when I was 129 pounds back in 2019. I still had a few pounds to lose, but I had a lot of energy.

Weight loss can improve energy level, but getting stronger and more cardiovascularly fit, and tuning up nutrition if it can be better - those can potentially have a bigger impact on energy level, IME.