Simplest breakdown of how to lose a lb. a week...ever

Great post, it makes sense however I just let MFP do all the work. I get 1200 per day, I exercise each day and I eat the calories MFP tells me I've earned. In terms of understanding weight loss in a simple sense this is a good explanation

Pls can someone advise, my bmr on this site is 1285 x 1.2 = (office worker) = 1532, does that mean if i want to lose only 0.5lb a week i eat 1532- 500? that puts me below 1200??? but if i eat 1200 thats only a deficit of 332?
my doctor adviced 800 cals a day but everyone here diss's this??????

current weight 162lbs
woman
4ft 10
diary open


pls pls help

Hi there

MFP calculates your maintenance calories at 1620, MFP calculates that to lose 1lb per week you should be eating 1620 less 500 which is 1120. This however is way too low so it will default to 1200 as a minimum. If you go to tools and calculate your BMR then I would recommend that you eat at least that which is what works for me. 1200 wasn't enough. My Maintenance is about 1700 and I have my goals set to lose half a pound per week which is 1490, my BMR is about 1300/1400 (depending on which calculation used!). I only eat about half of my exercise calories. If I ate them all I wouldn't lose weight.

This is just me though - and it took a lot of attempts to get it right. I read the forum topics to get different ideas for goal setting and the BMR idea seemed to make the most sense to me and it works for me. It is very confusing though!

Pls can someone advise, my bmr on this site is 1285 x 1.2 = (office worker) = 1532, does that mean if i want to lose only 0.5lb a week i eat 1532- 500? that puts me below 1200??? but if i eat 1200 thats only a deficit of 332?
my doctor adviced 800 cals a day but everyone here diss's this??????

current weight 162lbs
woman
4ft 10
diary open


pls pls help

I'm the same height as you and can explain this clearly, I'm busy right now, but if you still don't understand it completely by tonight send me a note to remind me and I'll reply to this thread with some figures for you.

EPIPHANY!!! Oooh....so the calories that MFP gives me should be what I eat every day because it already does the 500 calorie deficit to lose weight....so when I exercise and it brings me under my goal calories for the day,I should really eat more to up it to that goal....no wonder I'm not losing weight...I'm in starvation mode I think! Thanks for this helpful post!

my doctor adviced 800 cals a day but everyone here diss's this??????

current weight 162lbs
woman
4ft 10
diary open

If you're on a medically supervised plan to eat 800 calories, then you should follow your doctors' recommendation. At 4'10 you are a small person and can eat less than MFP's default 1200 calories.

It really is that simple. If you eat at a deficit, you will lose weight. A pound is equal to roughly 3500 calories, so if you burn 3500 calories more than you take in, you'll lose about a pound.

The problem is that these are estimates on top of estimates. The first and probably biggest is how much you're burning. Calculating calories your body has burned can be very difficult to do, particularly if folks haven't taken the time to do the number crunching.

People are also notoriously bad at logging food intake. Not that actively try to leave things out, but more often that they misjudge a serving size, or neglect to include all the ingredients, or have a bad reference point for caloric value of what they're consuming.

It really is a simple matter of creating a deficit, but it can still be a lot of hard work to iron out a plan the works for you and gets you the results you're looking for. And in theory, theory is the same as practice, but not as practice.

i am a little confused with alll the replies. i want to lose approx 3lb per week i think that is just right for me as i have over 100llbs to lose, so according to my math i should be burning approx 1500kcals per day in order to achieve this right???

The first thing I'd ask is what brought you to the number of 3lbs per week? Why do you need to lose at that speed? The more a person has to lose, the larger the deficit they can safely create in their diet (and yes, 3lbs per week would be 1500 cal/day deficit). Read: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/setting-the-deficit-small-moderate-or-large.html

One thing to recognize though is that although the deficit will generate weight loss, it does not happen linearly. On top of the my point about errors with estimations, there are all kinds of bodily functions that can skew the number on the scale. The most prevalent that I know of is water retention. Whatever your deficit, you need to be looking at it over a longer term than just a week. Do not expect to see the same constant loss every week or you will likely get frustrated at some point. Read: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html

Finally, consider going with something more moderate. Speaking as someone with a lot of experience with crash dieting, more moderate approaches tend to have more lasting effects. Would you rather lose 100 lbs in a year and gain it back 2 years later or lose 100 lbs over the course of 3 years but keep it off? One really important aspect of changing your eating habits is when you come off the diet and go into maintenance mode. Dieting in a more moderate fashion means that the transition from cutting to maintenance will be much closer, and much less of a shock that could potentially send you back to old, bad habits.

My $0.02, take it or leave it.

Good luck either way.

I am very surprised that a physician would recommend you eat only 800 calories. That is way too low for anyone, even my 17 month old that weighs 27lbs is supposed to eat at least 1000 calories/day. Your body IS in starvation mode and is holding on to every reserve that you have; you maybe damaging your muscle, tissues, and other vital organs. If you have been doing this type of diet for any length of time, I would suggest 2 things: 1) change doctors and 2) ask for a complete blood count workup from your doctor- to make sure everything is ok..

Okay I know I'm going to sound thick but what's TDEE?

Total Daily Energy Expenditure - the amount of calories your body needs to function in a day.

Edited to add link to a site that shows you how to calculate your own TDEE:

http://www.free-workout-routines.net/tdee.html

me ages at first to starting loosing weight an i started drinking more water an exercising and it started coming off slowly at firs and then more gradual dont give up.xx

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