Let's see how it goes! Testing the "If everyday were like this..." calculation.

Good luck!
Much will depend on how accurate you are with calorie data input. Some data will be beyond your control as far as accuracy as the food choices on MFP are crowd sourced, Products with listed calories can be off by 20% and just how focused you are on logging everything you eat and drink.

I'm betting on "not accurate", but it will be interesting to see your results. Please report back.

Why I think likely not accurate: Various reasons. An obvious one is that it says "if every day were like today". Every day can't possibly be like today. We move more or move less in daily life. We unavoidably make logging errors even when we think we're being perfect. We eat a somewhat different mix of foods, and some burn up more calories being digested/metabolized than others.

That's not all, but it should be enough to make my point.

It's an interesting experiment, and I'll look forward to seeing how it turns out for you. But I hope you won't be discouraged if it doesn't work! :flowerforyou:

It did work for me in the initial months but doesn't take into account the plateau which is bound to occur. If already on a significant deficit, the only way to reach those goals is increasing steps/activity.

Waiting to hear how it works for you!

Are you updating your weight in MFP?

Knowing rate of weight change is a fundamental part of projecting the future, since without that knowledge there is no way to confirm if the size of an assumed deficit is correct.

NCGOALIEMOM wrote: »

So many people can eat in a deficit, doing all the things, and struggle to lose.

How does that work? If you burn more than you consume, but don't lose weight, where exactly did the "more" come from?

weight change does not equal fat change

population statistics do not equal individual measurements

perceived caloric balance does not equal actual caloric balance

achieving a caloric balance over a day, a week, a month, three months does not equal figuring out how to achieve it over six months, a year, three years, five years, all through changing health and life challenges.

NCGOALIEMOM wrote: »

Those calculations are based on calories in calories out math. Science is now proving that is an inaccurate measurement of weight loss success. So many people can eat in a deficit, doing all the things, and struggle to lose. There are so many more factors to weight loss than CICO.

There is more to weight loss, as a practical matter, than just getting calorie intake right, and getting calorie intake right isn't just about complying with a so-called calculator or fitness tracker.

Human bodies are dynamic: Calories in affect calories out, and potentially vice-versa.

There are some other sources of variability in results that surprise many people, such as that some foods require more calories to digest/metabolize than others (though that doesn't get us to zero net calorie foods, as some speculate).

I've read several popular-press articles that claimed fat loss wasn't founded on CICO, or that calorie counting didn't work. Frankly, they were stupid articles. They weren't understanding what CICO is, or how to do calorie counting realistically. (Example: Thinking that so-called calculators are truth machines rather than statistical estimators.)

I'm not claiming to have read everything out there, so if you have a good source, post it. I'm willing to learn.

I mentioned that there are many more factors to practical weight loss than CICO. Some of these:
* figuring out how to stay reasonably full and happy on reduced calories;
* learning how food choices affect energy level and why that's important;
* dealing with potentially very difficult individual issues where we may use food for something other than fuel or nutrition, such as self-soothing or pure pleasure;
* counting accurately enough without slipping into a destructive relationship with food.

CICO is just the symbolic equation, essentially a principle of physics expressed in a domain specific way: We can't live without expending energy, and we can't make energy out of nothing. What we eat may not be absorbed, but the energy absorbed from food is either spent or stored.

Calorie counting is the most direct application of the CICO concept to weight loss, but all fat loss methods rely on calorie balance as their foundation, or they don't work. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but that's where I stand right now.

I’m game!

shines555 wrote: »

Wait how does it tell you progress like that

When you click the button at the bottom of your food diary that says "complete diary", you get a pop up message.

I wish mfp would ditch that "motivator." It's not accurate for all of the reasons stated above. And, if you are trying to lose .5 a pound per week, it's demoralizing. In order for me to see any noticeable difference in my body, it's going to be literally months of work. That's fine with me because I need to keep this up after I lose the weight. But my weight loss in five weeks will be negligible and not make a bit of difference in how my clothes fit. Just close the diary and get a message that says, "Today is over. Did you do your best? Make tomorrow a good day!" or something like that