How many calories do you reduce your daily intake, to speed up your weekly weight loss?

Hello, when I joined about 3 weeks ago , I asked the program to help me lose 2 lbs a week. I was given 1500 calories. The first week I lost 3 lbs, I did switch my food to a healthier Dash diet ( to lower my blood pressure. ) Next week I lost 0.5 lb and then the next week 1 lb. I reduced 100 calories to 1400. So far I did lose nothing this week. Should I drop it another 100 calories or 200 down to 1300 or 1200? thank you

Best Answer

Answers

  • Corina1143
    Corina1143 Posts: 3,832 Member
    It's early to start guessing. Celebrate what you've done so far. Don't make it hard.
  • jjjsroach
    jjjsroach Posts: 34 Member
    You can calculate all you want, but if you want to lose 2+ pounds per week, go to 1200 calories per day and stay there. Exercise if you want to (optional), but don't add back any exercise calories. I have been losing 2+ pounds per week doing this for months.
  • Corina1143
    Corina1143 Posts: 3,832 Member
    Very Generally speaking people who weigh over 300 can safely lose 3 pounds or a little more each week. People who weigh 200 may be able to lose 2 pounds a week safely. If you weigh less, you may want to slow it down a little, for your own good. Good health is important.
    I dont think the OP gave us stats.
  • andrewshelley1
    andrewshelley1 Posts: 5 Member
    Ok sorry I'm male was 212 when I started 207 now. Another question do you guys eat the extra calories that MFP gives you for exercising? I workout almost every day, nothing great. 30-40 minutes walking on treadmill and about 30 minutes weights.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,248 Member
    3 weeks is not enough time to judge what a weekly calorie amount is doing. Give it 3 more weeks and then adjust accordingly
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    edited February 10
    Ok sorry I'm male was 212 when I started 207 now. Another question do you guys eat the extra calories that MFP gives you for exercising? I workout almost every day, nothing great. 30-40 minutes walking on treadmill and about 30 minutes weights.

    I've eaten every delicious, carefully-estimate exercise calorie through just under a year of loss, and around 8 years of weight maintenance since. It's worked fine for me.

    I experience at least 2 benefits:

    1. I care about my exercise performance, and fueling it adequately is the best way to support it. Underfueling limits fitness progress.

    2. I'm pretty old (59-60 when losing, 68 now) but quite active. Periodically during those 9 years, I've had situations where I couldn't work out, at least not on my normal schedule. (Examples: Illness, recovery from injury or surgery.) Because I've learned to estimate exercise closely enough to be workable, I know how to adjust my maintenance calories so that I don't gain during those no/low exercise times, but I do get adequate calories to support healing. I like that.

    Do be sure you've set your MFP activity level based on your activity level before intentional exercise (stuff like job and home chores, so you don't double-count exercise calories. If you sync a tracker to MFP, turn negative adjustments on so that you get a more reasonable calorie adjustment should you happen to have a low-activity day.

    Also, as mentioned previously, run a 4-6 weeks trial of any new calorie intake level, to make sure your calorie needs are close to the estimate. (MFP and other sources just give you a number that's the average for people demographically similar to you. Most people are close to average, but it's possible - though rare - to be surprisingly far off, either high or low.) Once you have a multi-week average loss rate from experience, you can adjust your calorie goal if necessary.