Nutritional vs. Fitness Goal settings

JCM74
JCM74 Posts: 5 Member
edited November 10 in Health and Weight Loss
I'm a 6'1 male and currently @ 221lbs. I have my settings at losing 1.5lbs per week, and am being given 1730 calories per day. I have my "normal daily activity level" at sedentary since I work a desk job, but play basketball 2x/week for at least 90 mins. and hit the gym at least 2x/week for cardio.

For the question "How many times a week do you plan on exercising?", I have 4x per week @ 60 minutes. But I noticed that if I change this to no exercise per week, it still shows the same weight loss stats and calorie goals. Shouldn't something change - like either being given more calories to eat, or more weight loss as a result? Is MFP assuming I will just eat back 100% of my calories? I don't - I'm normally under by 400-500 on days with heavy sports exercise because I don't want to force eating when I'm not hungry, I'm getting plenty to eat and eating almost half the calories back.

Also, I lost about 20 pounds in about a month just by keeping within my calorie limits using MFP, nothing crazy at all aside from eating a little healthier too, but things seemed to have really slowed down the past 2 weeks. Wondering if I am hitting a plateau and need to either improve the diet, incorporate some weight training, or add more cardio. Thanks for any feedback.

Replies

  • JCM74
    JCM74 Posts: 5 Member
    bump for some advice, thanks!
  • estjames
    estjames Posts: 76
    MFP does assume that you eat back your calories, but I don't think it is mandatory that you do. The big thing is east at least 1200 calories per day.

    As for the slowing in weight loss, you dropped a lot (congrats by the way) very fast, so your body is adjusting to those changes. Moreover, you may want to consider changing your goal loss per week from 1.5 lbs to 1 lb as only wish to lose about 20 more lbs. You may also try eating more, from what I have read from others' comments, eating more (as in their exercise calories, they are not going over their net calories) helped them push past a plateau.
  • HonkyTonks
    HonkyTonks Posts: 1,193 Member
    MFP does not factor in your exercise goals into the calculation it gives you.

    When you set up MFP, it asks you how much you'd like to lose per week. It calculates your TDEE on your behalf based on your activity level (eg sedentary, active, very active, etc) and then subtracts the number of calories required for you to lose the weight you have said you want to lose. The only time MFP factors in any exercise is if you have set yourself to be lightly active or active, those will impact on the TDEE calculation. If you have set yourself to active then you shouldn't be adding exercise calories either. I would reassess what you've set up and go from there.

    Regarding your plateau, wait it out for longer than 2 weeks. If it goes on for a while, examine your calorie goal and probably add some more weight training in.
  • JCM74
    JCM74 Posts: 5 Member
    Thank you both, one last bump for any additional feedback.
This discussion has been closed.

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