people who have had success by upping their calories!

ok people help me...I want to lose around 10 lbs. and I would like to average at least a 1lb a week. It tells me I should stick to 1200 calories which I have been trying to do. I also exercise 6 days a week usually run 3 days a week and do a brisk walk on the other 3 burning probably about 300-400 calories a day. What calorie intake should I shoot for? What is the bmr and amr that I see mentioned?

1st thing is 1lb per week is a little too aggressive if you want to keep the weight off and keep your muscle in the process.

I would suggest to change your goal to .5 pounds per week and NET that amount. I would check your BMR to make sure that your net goal is at or more than your BMR.

NET= Calories per day + exercise calories

I would maybe add some strength training to your work out since the last 10lbs tend to be harder to get off with just cardio.

i am trying to lose about 20 pounds or so (i'm about 145-150 right now) and it reccomended i eat 1200 a day so do you think i should up this? or just eat more on a day that i am working out?

Up it!!

bump

I just posted about this this morning on my wall. I upped my calories almost 2 weeks ago, and since the beginning of the year (I've been doing 1200 since then), this is the first time I haven't noticed a loss. Not a gain, but more little fluctuations. I'm trying to be patient but I know that 1200 wasn't enough for me, I'm way too active. I'm sedentary at my job but I'm working out sometimes twice a day during the week and doing high intensity cardio. I'm just trying to be patient at this point!

i am trying to lose about 20 pounds or so (i'm about 145-150 right now) and it reccomended i eat 1200 a day so do you think i should up this? or just eat more on a day that i am working out?

up it up it up it!!!!!!!!! check out the link in the OP's post, it will help you figure out how many you really should be eating. Imho, MFP should never tell anyone to eat 1200 calories. EVER. At least eat your BMR, if not more. please!!!! AND eat back your exercise cals!!!

bump to read later

a girl recently posted on one of my statuses and said "One of my friends working on her master's degree in health and personal fitness suggested eating 80% of your daily TDEE to preserve muscle and maximize fat loss."

so take your TDEE
heres a website:
http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html

and multiply it by .8

i'll do mine as an example

my TDEE=2327

2327 x 0.8 = 1861

Mine came out to
2233 x 0.8 =1786
that's for exercising 3 to 5 days a week,do you eat back the exercise calories?

You just included it in activity level, so no.

I lost my weight on 1350-1450/ day (my BMR is about 1330) . I find it really difficult to only eat 1200 - in fact nearly impossible because hunger drives me to distraction - and that range still gave me a 500 deficit which was true to form and aside from a rather long plateau ( overcome by upping the caloris to the maintenance range for my then current weight for a couple of weeks and then dropping back down to 1400), the weight loss what pretty constant...

... And above all, the meals were normal and target manageable, so it was easy to maintain once I'd reached my goal. I'm a great believer in training yourself to eat properly and part of that is to simply be reasonable - life's too short not to enjoy the occasional slice of cake!

I just posted about this this morning on my wall. I upped my calories almost 2 weeks ago, and since the beginning of the year (I've been doing 1200 since then), this is the first time I haven't noticed a loss. Not a gain, but more little fluctuations. I'm trying to be patient but I know that 1200 wasn't enough for me, I'm way too active. I'm sedentary at my job but I'm working out sometimes twice a day during the week and doing high intensity cardio. I'm just trying to be patient at this point!

Be very careful with high intensity cardio and calorie restricted diets.

From experience I knew full well what could happen, you can eat away at muscle to provide glucose when you are at a depleted state.
The "hitting the wall" of marathoners.
Except you hit it after multiple days of doing the same thing. Using up your glucose stores, your diet doesn't provided enough to top you off (and even if it does, still happens) and you start hitting workouts that will have to convert muscle to glucose to keep the blood sugar up.

You can do the math for day after day, and recommend doing so if you want to keep up that routine and not burn muscle.

Figure out how many cal of carbs you eat in a day on avg, or shoot for.

Figure out how many calories of exercise you are doing daily.

If your are truly intense, your carb/fat burn will be around 70/30, or possibly even worse at 80/20 for carbs being higher. Closer to anaerobic, closer to 100% carb burn.
So if you burn 1000 a day, 700 was carbs. This is on safe side for "intense" efforts.

Your liver holds 400-450 calories of glucose, which goes first for energy used and keep blood sugar up.
Once it runs out , the muscles have about 1500 is used - by the muscles.
The blood sugar must still be kept up, and muscle glucose cannot be released into the bloodstream for that - so muscle will be broken down. Not much, but considering muscle only has 600 cal's of energy in it, doesn't take much to lose 1 lb of muscle.

So anyway, if you don't even eat 700 cal's worth of carbs a day, your muscle glucose can't be topped off, because your liver gets it first. And energy needs after eating any carbs is used for energy right then, rather than fat at all, insulin is up, that's what it does, fat storage, not fat release mode.

I lost 2.4 lbs of muscle in a 8 weeks, and doing the math, the intense cardio was using up my glucose stores over several days, resulting in one of the final days probably getting a mere 195 cal of energy from muscle breakdown, and that would weigh 0.325 lbs in a week, and over 8 weeks would weigh 2.6lbs.
And I ALWAYS NET'd about 200 over BMR. But still got hit with that problem.
That's why i was NET'ing 200 over BMR, thought it would still be safe. But I never gave myself big enough rest day to recover. Just enjoyed pushing hard, and was able to.
So I burned muscle I didn't use for the cardio, but that doesn't mean it was going unused, I'd rather have it than lose it. Very hard to build muscle on calorie deficit, and I just don't do weights that way.

So just something to think about. And start doing bodyfat% measurements, even if something simple like http://www.gymgoal.com/dtool_fat.html.

Then each 2 weeks, don't look at just the BF% going down, do the math to see where the LBM went.

I'm new (:D) and reading this discussion has majorly confused me!!

I started on MFP about 2 weeks ago (privately on my ipod) and was given the 1200 calorie each day and I don't eat my exercise calories back. I zumba roughly 5 times a week and do strength training with weights to keep my muscle.

Should I eat more? I've been noticing inch loss and my weight is decreasing? I feel fine on 1200 calories a day, no tiredness or crankiness. In fact I feel pretty good about eating a lot of leafy greens and things like that so I'm never really hungry even though they aren't very calorific (if that's the word?).

I just did my TDEE and it's at 2661 but I feel that that's REALLY quite high!

So confused!! Help?!

Reread through the thread. Most of those that raised their cals did so after they stopped losing, as you will too.

You feel fine know, but your body is in major upheaval trying to make do with what, 700 calories a day?
1200 minus your exercise calories is how much your body has left to work with. If that doesn't even sound scary to you, it's because you don't know. Please do some research on Google about "BMR meaning" to find out why that will just cause your metabolism to slow down, and at some point 1200 will become your maintenance calories. And now your metabolism will be messed up. And only 2 directions to go. Hopefully one direction doesn't sound safe even now.
So you might as well get the correct direction now before it happens, because you can lose just as much safer and eating more.
Just because you feel satisfied, doesn't mean your body is.

Reread through the thread. Most of those that raised their cals did so after they stopped losing, as you will too.

You feel fine know, but your body is in major upheaval trying to make do with what, 700 calories a day?
1200 minus your exercise calories is how much your body has left to work with. If that doesn't even sound scary to you, it's because you don't know. Please do some research on Google about "BMR meaning" to find out why that will just cause your metabolism to slow down, and at some point 1200 will become your maintenance calories. And now your metabolism will be messed up. And only 2 directions to go. Hopefully one direction doesn't sound safe even now.
So you might as well get the correct direction now before it happens, because you can lose just as much safer and eating more.
Just because you feel satisfied, doesn't mean your body is.

Please don't think I'm being silly, I was just going from what the MFP counter was telling me to eat. I assumed because it said 1200 calories a day was enough and that I'm feeling fine eating that much that it was ok?!

I'll up my calories now rather than later if it's going to mess up my metabolism, thanks for the reply

i am trying to lose about 20 pounds or so (i'm about 145-150 right now) and it reccomended i eat 1200 a day so do you think i should up this? or just eat more on a day that i am working out?

up it up it up it!!!!!!!!! check out the link in the OP's post, it will help you figure out how many you really should be eating. Imho, MFP should never tell anyone to eat 1200 calories. EVER. At least eat your BMR, if not more. please!!!! AND eat back your exercise cals!!!

Well, that's not exactly true. My BMR is only 1215. So, 1200 is really okay for me--and others like me. As long as I net 1200 per day, I am netting my BMR. This is incredibly sad for me, because I would love to eat more to lose. But, my TDEE is around 1500. So, I can't really afford to eat more.

I know that most people aren't as short as me, but to say NEVER just isn't the truth.

It's a toss up between the muscle and taller.

The muscle would be nice, I'm trying to get it now. But taller would be awesome--I could save money by not having to have all of my pants shortened...

Please don't think I'm being silly, I was just going from what the MFP counter was telling me to eat. I assumed because it said 1200 calories a day was enough and that I'm feeling fine eating that much that it was ok?!

I'll up my calories now rather than later if it's going to mess up my metabolism, thanks for the reply

Definitely not silly. You are not the only one by a long shot that got that goal, probably the majority do. Women are more prone to select 2lb week weight loss to get it done now, they are more likely to select sedentary whether it applies or not because it sounds like that will be faster. And MFP stops doing the math at 1200, whether that is really 1000 deficit daily or not.

And women are tougher and more willing to suffer while metabolism lowers and they are hungry. Men are wimps.

i will suggest, since you said you are not hungry at that lower level, either the metabolism hasn't lowered, or it dropped really quickly. If you have yo-yo dieted many times, that can happen.

Just add 200 cal per day for a week, like an extra snack associated with a workout. Then another 200 for another week, ect.
You want your body to see it can increase metabolism, not just store it in case the insanity continues.

You can also setup MFP as followed to have that lower goal set, and have it adjust automatically as you lose weight.

Settings - Diet/Fitness Profile
Set activity level to Sedentary
Set weight loss goal to Maintain.

MFP will make your goal calories 2051. Which is about 80% of your real TDEE estimate that you selected.

You eat to that every day, and you don't have to eat back exercise calories.

And in the back of your mind, keep it loud and clear that no matter what the MFP math says - you have at least a 650 cal deficit going on, which is about 1.3 lbs a week loss, actually more probably.

Or, if you need the math to look correct for more encouragement:
Select activity level of Very Active.
Weight loss goal to 1lb weekly.

Goal should be set to 2044. And MFP will tell you the math looks like 1lb weekly, even though it will still be what it was before, better than 1.3lbs weekly.

Now as your weight goes down, so will the daily goal correctly. Because your BMR also lowers.

Remember, with both those settings, you already included exercise estimate in there, so you do not need to eat them back, opposite of normal method that MFP uses.
So if you miss a workout - don't eat the snack that day, and leave out another snack later too.

And as it was mentioned, if you know your exercise calories by means of HRM (not required), subtract that from eaten goal, and you should be around your BMR, if below slightly, don't worry, your rest day eating the same amount will make it up and allow body to get stronger being fed.

Thank you so much

I've adjusted my counter as suggested (to very active 1lb loss a week) and will see what happens I've never actually 'dieted' before so I'd rather get it right the first time and not yo yo over the years to come.

(Recap: I eat 2000 a day and do my exercise as normal to get to my BMR of 1600 and that should still facilitate my weight loss?)

Thanks again ^_^