upping my calorie limit..good idea?

I too am struggling with understanding the whole calorie amount that is proper for me. MFP says that for me to loose 1 pound a week I need less than 1300 cals, that seems awful low to me. I exercise at least 4 days a week for at least one hour a day but, so I think that my activity level should be at moderate, not sedentary. I think I should be having around 1600 cals but I am afraid of going over the other side and not loosing much. I don't know, I am so confused, wish I had someone to just tell me what to eat and when and how and etc....

Private butlers and chefs that what we need!

Based on those activity levels, you are not sedentary. Sedentary means NO exercise outside of your normal daily activities.

As for upping the calorie limit - if you are still hungry - first look at your food choices - and then decide if it's a good decision. I.e. if you are eating mostly processed junk - upping your calories won't help. But if you are eating quality foods, doing well on your macros and you are still hungry - maybe they are too low. Try it for a few days - but make those extra calories work for you - don't fill them with junk.
Plus - if you are planning on increasing your activity levels, more calories are probably a good idea to keep you fueled through your workouts!

Sometimes you have to play around with things a bit to find what works for you. I just upped my calories after adding in a lot more exercise...I think that my net was too low and I hit a plateau. I'm gonna give it a couple of weeks and see what happens.

@ knittermom THIS!

I upped mine because I was at a stand still. The more research I did, I think I was actually in starvation mode. Look at some of the other posts on here for BMR and TDEE, and find out what yours should be. http://www.cordianet.com/calculator.htm is a great site for telling you how many calories you need to lose weight. You'll probably find that you are eating far too little as I was for my activity level, and you're only hurting your metabolism. You can change your MFP goals based on your findings. Good luck!!

I had to do the same. I changed mine from 1440 to 1690 & it's worked out a lot better. I figured that I would change it back to the 1440 when I got adjusted, but I like being able to have either slightly larger meal calories or an extra snack. So I'm going to keep it at 1690 for a while.

I too am struggling with understanding the whole calorie amount that is proper for me. MFP says that for me to loose 1 pound a week I need less than 1300 cals, that seems awful low to me. I exercise at least 4 days a week for at least one hour a day but, so I think that my activity level should be at moderate, not sedentary. I think I should be having around 1600 cals but I am afraid of going over the other side and not loosing much. I don't know, I am so confused, wish I had someone to just tell me what to eat and when and how and etc....

Private butlers and chefs that what we need!

the 1300 calories is WITHOUT exercise--you log you exercise and eat those calories back to arrive at your daily target and still lose 1 pound per week.

I am eating back my exercise calories however it is difficult to post how much I am burning when I work out at home doing pushups, situps, jumping jacks, etc... How do I calculate that, so those days I dont log the exercise because I don't know what to log. It's frustrating when I don't know how much to eat. This is my first day of upping my calories to 1400 and I worked out this morning so I will see how I feel in the morning. If it is better than I've felt lately then I will keep it there for a while.

I too am struggling with understanding the whole calorie amount that is proper for me. MFP says that for me to loose 1 pound a week I need less than 1300 cals, that seems awful low to me. I exercise at least 4 days a week for at least one hour a day but, so I think that my activity level should be at moderate, not sedentary. I think I should be having around 1600 cals but I am afraid of going over the other side and not loosing much. I don't know, I am so confused, wish I had someone to just tell me what to eat and when and how and etc....

Private butlers and chefs that what we need!

I'm going to attempt to explain where I *think* the misunderstanding is, so I hope this will be helpful.

There are special formulas designed to calculate your BMR, which is the calories you'd burn while comatose, basically. Obviously, though, these formulas aren't even attempting to predict how much you're *actually* burning in a day. So there's an option of applying multipliers to the BMR number to get a rough estimate of actual calorie expenditure. For example, sedentary is multiplied by 1.2 and it goes up from there.

As you go up levels, you're assumed to be engaging in more an more exercise.

Where things get confusion is the fact that some energy expenditure calculators prefer to just wrap your exercise calorie burn into the base energy expenditure. So if you exercise a certain amount they figure you have a 1.6 multiplier. You multiply BMR x 1.6 and you get a number and you just use that number. You DO NOT separately calculate your exercise calories because you'd effectively be double-counting them, since a certain number was already assumed for them.

Other resources (including MyFitnessPal) choose to assume that everybody is sedentary, and then allow you to record your exercise on top of that as it happens.

The former case, where you just assume a certain amount of exercise, is simpler because it doesn't require you to always be coming back and keeping track of the details of how much you worked out. It also sort of saves you from getting obsessed over details like when a site has options to log walking 3.0 mph, or 3.5mph, but what if you were walking at 3.3? How do you count that?

The approach MFP chooses, on the other hand, tries to be more specific about the number of calories burned, and more flexible (since it can recognize that you worked out 7 times one week and 3 times another, and note the calorie differences involved). On the other hand, it can lead people to feel a little weird about food planning, because you don't necessarily know ahead of time what your calorie allocation for the day is going to be. What if you eat breakfast and lunch with an assumption that you'll be working out, but then the workout doesn't happen? That can freak people out and make them skip dinner in order to avoid missing their calorie goal.

Neither approach is really better exactly, because they both have their benefits. If you'd prefer to just have a flat stable number, you can always use another calculator to figure out what you want your actual calorie goal to be, and go into MFP goals to set the goal manually. If you want to log your exercise after that, you could put everything down as 1 calorie or something to avoid messing with the numbers too much, or just do your food logging here and your exercise logging elsewhere.

Anyway, I hope that gives you a sense of why different sites seem to be giving you such radically different calorie intake targets.

Sytera, make sure you account for the breastfeeding. At one point my pediatrician calculated my baby's intake at 900 calories a day based on his weight and weight gain. (It was probably when he was 6 months old and only breast feed, I sure was ready to start adding food!) He added that he really didn't know how many calories it took for my body to make the milk. You may want to do a little research on that because you don't want to skimp on feeding that precious baby.

I've been adding 500 for it but I'm wondering if I burn more. He is 7 months old, gained a lb in the last month, and is only breastfed (so a lot!). I will have to look around and see if I should add a little more. Thanks!