Why did MFP change my calorie goal?

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megkeel2014
megkeel2014 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I have lost 24 pounds in five months and my daily goal MFP assigned based on my input did not change during that time. The only recent change I made in my goals was to add another 10 pound weight loss goal, after reaching my initial weight loss goal. Suddenly, at the beginning of this month, my daily calorie goal had been increased by 370! If anything, I think the daily calorie goal should decrease after significant weight loss, not increase. I have been pretty consistently logging both my food an exercise for five months, so there are no major changes there. It seems I would probably start gaining weight back if I increased my calorie intake now.

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  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,680 Member
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    Did you change your activity level or daily exercise? If not, you might try setting up your goal page from scratch with your age, weight, activity level etc. Kind of like rebooting the computer.
  • megkeel2014
    megkeel2014 Posts: 2 Member
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    I may have increased it to active since I have been much more active since I started my weight loss, and that could explain the increase in the calorie goal. But I haven’t been losing it too fast (about 2 pounds per month) so I guess I will need to make a manual adjustment in the calorie goal (or decrease my activity level) to keep losing at the rate I have been. Thanks.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,531 Member
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    That makes sense. About 20 pounds lost might have lowered your TDEE by about 100, then increasing the activity level might have gone from 1.2x BMR to 1.4x BMR, which can add several hundred to your TDEE.

    You can test it out here, plug in your before and after weights, and look at the effects of different activity settings. Note this includes your workouts/sports, whereas MFP expects you to add those day-to-day as you do them.

    https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 13,332 Member
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    @megkeel2014

    This has happened to me a few times. It doesn't have anything to do with you changing your goal weight. That has nothing to do with how MFP assigns you a goal weight. You can go through the guided setup any time you like to revise your goal, and that's actually a good thing to do as you lose weight.

    You are correct that as you lose weight, your goal should go down. You might want to reduce the rate at which you plan to lose. That will increase your daily calorie goal. I think it's a bug somewhere in MFP, and everyone should keep an eye on their log in case it happens to them. It might happen to me again soon.

    In my case, I was in maintenance. I was not trying to gain or lose. I went up and down in a range of a certain number of pounds over time. No big deal. I took the number from the guided setup and actually changed it a little bit in part because I had enough data that I had an idea what it should be based on logging and watching my scale every day. The other part is I'm a dork and I like palindromes; I set my goal to a number that is a palindrome.

    One day I just happened to log in to MFP before my wrist device had added movement to my MFP account. When I am active, my goal increases, just like it should. I screwed up my eyes, scratched my head, and wondered, "What the hell?" I didn't need to go back through the guided set-up. I just went back to the settings and changed the number back to what it was supposed to be.

    I sent in a support ticket just to alert MFP staff that this had happened. I did it again the next two times it happened. It hasn't happened since. I let them know it could be a problem if I was using MFP to hit my daily goal, but my daily goal had been changed without my knowledge and was now something like 150 calories per day more than it should be. I would have gone out of maintenance even hitting what MFP was telling me.

    Go change the number back and submit a support ticket. Keep looking out because it might happen again. There are bugs here from time to time, and that's just how it is. It's also a very powerful tool that can help us meet our goals, and I'm glad to be able to use it.

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