Isn't the moderate 3-5 workouts per week? Seems like most people fall in that range. I would think your workouts plus keeping up with your kiddos would have to put you at least moderate! I ultimately decided on a higher calorie target plus eating back my exercise calories. I end up getting near my TDEE on exercise days but typically stay well below on rest days so there's plenty of room if I go over (which happens most of the time ).

Planning for a crazy day today. I have a dentist appointment this morning so I'm heading into work late and I've got a huge pile of work to catch up on! We have an all staff meeting today and I'm expecting they will announce they will be doing some layoffs. It was hinted at in our last meeting in March. I think my department will be fine, though. We're a new group and haven't been fully rolled out yet so I don't anticipate they will make any changes in our area. Still, never leads to warm fuzzy feelings around the office!

I'll be heading to the gym for my workout tonight, probably should have gone this morning since I have all this extra time but too late now I guess. I hope that weird trainer from last week that got all huffy when I had to interrupt her to get equipment she was blocking by training her client in the storage area isn't there. She was giving me the eyeball all last tuesday after that and it was not appreciated! I mean seriously, why would you train in the equipment storage area? Of course people will have to interrupt you! Every time I got near them after that she was glaring at me. Yeesh.

Good morning all,

Hope everyone is doing well. Having a bit of a rough start to the week. Eating thus far has not been great and I'm looking at a challenging week with lots of activities and not a lot of time for exercise. In short, feeling a little defeated already. Gotta change that frame of mind! Everyday has a challenge in some way, it's what you do with it, right?

Cheers,
Jackie

[Rant about calories. tl;dr]

How many calories to eat is really tricky. I will say this for certain. If you believe the estimates you are getting for you BMR, no matter what you do you should never ever go below that. That is literally the bare minimum your body needs to function. It will lead to all the dreaded things like slower metabolism and muscles mass loss. Honestly, I think eating right at your BMR will also cause this to happen since you are clearly doing more than just breathing and cell repair all day. So you have to figure out where calorically you are creating a reasonable deficit that still supports your body.

I am saying all that because MFP has some seriously dangerous and irresponsible practices running around. I saw (one of our dear 30s) receive the comment that she was "Eating too many calories for weight loss because most of (the posters) friends on here were eating like 500 calories less." So here is the thing. Not everyone should be eating the same calories. Weight matters, height matters, activity level matters. MFP does a really sh*tty job of accounting for that. For example, when I feed the MFP BMR calculator my numbers and it told me my BMR was 1750. BUT when I set the site to "I would like to lose 1lb per week" it gave me 1650 daily calories. That just defies logic and good sense.

While I think Weight Watchers has it's own problems I will say this for it, you have a number of points based on how much you weigh/height/activity level and you absolutely must eat that number everyday. On WW, I rarely saw the same sort of issues we are having here. If people followed the plan then they lost weight. Pretty much every time. I just don't get the same vibe from MFP. I feel like a lot of people are working really hard and seeing nothing in return. That is very frustrating.

The worst part is you think you can't up your calories because without proper guidance it feels like you are just making random decisions about where to set it. Like you don't want to be the fat kid in the room preaching about how everyone should be eating more while you're not really losing either. God knows if I was great at figuring out what to eat and sticking to it I probably wouldn't be here complaining about it! How can I claim any expertise?

It feels so lose/lose.

[The End]

I have a good day today - I've eaten three good meals, done some good exercise, and I'm still 300 calories under before even thinking about adding back exercise calories. I also bought a second-hand mountain bike today - an absolute bargain - but it's been 25 years since I've ridden a bike so I'm taking it slowly!

I don't believe in "one size fits all" diets, no two individuals should eat exactly the same, or hope to achieve identical weight-loss if they did. Even assuming they were the same height, same weight and did the same activity, each metabolism would work differently and therefore, the results would be different. I agree that no-one should eat under their BMI, and that for some people - especially those who are very active - eating a good bit more ensures the best weight loss. But for everyone,it's a balancing act and it takes time and effort to achieve optimum results.

It isn't all about how much either - 300 calories worth of chocolate will not keep the body satisfied for long, 300 calories worth of salad is probably enough for the whole day!! Just saying.

I see a lot of very interesting points being made today and very well made too. When i started on MFP i was eating about 1300 calories a day. i assumed naturally that i would lose weight faster. But i felt strange, my legs would feel strange when i'd walk home from work, numb or like i had a cramp. The feeling would only go away after i ate something. As time has gone on my calorie intake has crept up to around the 1700 mark. I feel better, stronger and i'm able to work harder in the gym. Shortly i'll be moving to what i've knicknamed phase 2. To add some muscle to my frame. I'm going to have to up my calorie intake to aroud 2000 a day at the very least. This scares me a little and goes against everything that i've been doing. I know that's illogical to think that way but i can't help myself.

Good point SG. Its not one size fits all. I know exactly what you are talking about.

Ellie - Oh yes, I forgot to write that I hardly ever get to sit on the weekends. I'm not working out usually, but between laundry, feeding kids every 30 min (seriously, they are worse than teenagers!), and general chasing after my fearless toddler my legs ache at the end of the day! I'm confused though - I thought going that route you weren't to eat your exercise calories, unless you were netting below BMR? Which come to think of it, I didn't factor that in to my calcs last night. Hmm. Might have to post over there for sure.

You're not, but I had to adjust it to something that works for me. Thing is I will typically always go over my calories by about 200 regardless of what I set my goal to. Because of that it pretty much works out that I'm eating my tdee-15% on non-workout days and I always ensure I net above BMR on workout days but also typically end up close to TDEE. Its really just a silly of way of tricking myself into eating the right amount of calories without going over.

Busy day around here! Everyone is so right on about different diets working for different people.

Sara Grace, I hear you on the somewhat irresponsible thing but I suppose on the flip side they have to just give healthy guidelines and let people make their own choices. I have to admit I actually started with MFP in Feb 2011 but I had to delete my account because I had accumulated too many of those not eating enough friends and it was actually starting to have a negative impact on my attitude towards food. I felt guilty about closing out my diary if I was over calories and even if I had "a lot" of calories due to exercise I felt like I had eaten too much-and by a lot I mean netting 1200-1300 but maybe consuming around 1800 total. I got to a place where I was exercising just to eat and ended up binging at least once a week because I was so hungry. Fortunately I had an aha moment back in Jan and joined back up with the intent to go at this the right way with other people doing it the right way. I did spend a brief amount of time on another site and they actually had theirs set so that if you ate less than 1200 you diary would not show up in the news feed, its not much but that was at least something (I didn't like the site as much as this one either).