How accurate?

I haven't been on here too long, but there are many people on here who have lost lots of weight. This whole program is more of a general framework - it estimates your basic calorie needs based on your activity level, and then uses that to structure a food plan based on how much you want to lose. It's not going to be exact, but unless you pick an activity level that is way off from real life, then it should be a fairly good estimate.

Personally, I think just the fact that it has you log all your food and exercise can benefit anyone who is trying to lose weight. The site promotes living a conscious lifestyle when it comes to food, exercise and nutrition.

A side note - if it told you you will lose 20 pounds in 5 weeks then you must not have eaten as many calories as it told you, because this site promotes weight loss of no more than 2 lbs a week, and won't let you select anything more than that when setting up your program.

Hope you give it a try and find what you're looking for!!

It's about logging your meals and you can forward to tomorrow and try out different combinations of meals until you get the right combo...then you have your day planned and you are less likely to get off track!

I'm not sure about the 20 lbs in 5 weeks considering that with this site the most a person should lose is 2 lbs a week.... but for myself I started back using this site at the beginning of June and as of September (3 months of using the site) I had lost 36 lbs so I was averaging just over 2 lbs a week.

I'm not sure if that helps at all

Good luck on your journey!

kristinsvette30 - wow - if you're doing that much exercise you really should be eating at least some of your exercise calories. Most people on MFP say you should eat at least half. The 1200 cal/day is based on no extra exercise and the weight loss you put in. If you exercise, you have to eat more to fuel your body. Here are a few good posts explaining:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

Chances are, you wouldn't really lose 20 pounds in 5 weeks (or at least you wouldn't be able to sustain that kind of weight loss for too long) because your body can only get by efficiently on that kind of calorie deficit for so long before you start experiencing side-effects.

Good luck!

Well I'm not a doctor or a nutrition expert or anything, but the general idea is that if you're just doing normal daily stuff then the 1200 calories (assuming that's what MFP suggested you eat) will be fine. When you exercise, it burns extra calories. Alot of people think that that just means you will lose weight faster, but when you are working your body harder like that, you need to eat enough calories to sustain the extra work. 1200 calories isn't going to cut it if you're burning a bunch in exercise on top of normal daily activity.

You have to remember that the calorie plan MFP gave you already has a built-in calorie deficit so you will lose the amount per week you set it up to lose. It's not good for your body to lose more than about 2 pounds per week - so if you're already setup to lose that many, then you should be eating most of your exercise calories. Since I started I haven't tried exercising without eating my calories, so I don't personally know first-hand what the side effects would be (especially if you do it long-term), but I would imagine your body would have a hard time running efficiently and you could even go into starvation mode if your deficit is high enough on a regular basis - this would make it hard to lose weight even if you are using more calories than you are eating.