Please answer real quick, Has any one lost weight at maintenance calorie setting?

Brandonalex15
Brandonalex15 Posts: 102 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
The calories mfp gives me for 0.5/1 pound a week has never felt like enough and it’s discouraging. I was wondering and hoping that someone has lost weight at maintenance calories. My activity level is sedentary cus I’m at home all day. I exercise daily though and log it, and I eat back the exercise calories. Basically and simply has anyone experienced weight loss at maintenance calories?

Answers

  • MargaretYakoda
    MargaretYakoda Posts: 2,997 Member
    Maintenance, by definition, means keeping your weight steady.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,458 Member
    edited October 26
    myfitnesspal gave you a number but that doesn't mean it's your Maintenance or weight loss calories, necessarily.

    Log your food over a period of months to find your calories. That number you were given is just a starting point. As an example, I know from many years of logging food that I need to eat 300-400 calories PER DAY more than myfitnesspal or other calculators say I should be eating based on their instructions. You have to figure out your calories. Online calculators are not able to do that for everyone.

    With that said, it might be that you need a change in what you're eating. Too many sweets, bread or cereal or other highly processed carbs can lead to feeling hungry even if the calories are right.

    This is a process. You need to try out different things.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,616 Member
    I don't lose weight at maintenance calories because the true definition of maintenance calories is the number of calories it takes to make a person's weight stay stable within a small range of pounds/kilos of scale weight . . . not the number some calculator, fitness tracker, or MFP spits out labeled "maintenance".

    Those (calculators, fitness trackers, or MFP) give statistical calorie estimates that are essentially the average for similar people. Most people are close to average, a few further away (high or low), and a very rare few surprisingly far off.

    I'd lose weight faster than a pound a week at the calories MFP thinks would maintain my current weight. I need 25-30% more calories than MFP estimates. (Same is true for my good brand/model fitness tracker, one that is reasonably close for others who've posted here about using it.) That's around 500 calories per day difference, give or take.

    The only thing that will really tell you your actual maintenance (or weight loss) calorie needs is experience: Follow a given calorie goal for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycle if you have those), and see what your average weight change is over that whole time period. That will give you enough data to make a personalized estimate.

    You can run that experiment using estimated maintenance calories, if you like: If you lose weight doing that, great. If you don't, you'll have a much clearer idea of how much you need to cut to lose half a pound a week. (500 calories per day is roughly a pound a week, 250 for half a pound, etc.)

    I'm curious why your goal seems like not enough calories to you? Are you not feeling full? Feeling low energy? Simply seeing that it's a lot less food than you're accustomed to eating?

    We might be able to help you figure out how to make the process more tolerable, if we had more information.

    Best wishes!

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