seska422 Member

You could start with lightly active and see how that works. If you don't lose at the rate you expect, you can change your settings after a month or two.

I use the parts I want to use and don't use the parts I don't want to use. Day to day, I prefer a fixed calorie goal. I only use the Fitbit and MFP calories to look back through the data and see the big picture. What I use during the day on the Fitbit are my step goal, pulse, and active minutes. I enjoy playing with the…

It's a good idea to ramp up your calorie intake rather than just jumping from 1.5 pounds per week to maintenance. The general recommendation that I see posted is to increase your daily goal by 100 calories each week or two until you find your sweet spot. That 4 pound range would be narrow for me since my water weight flops…

Don't tie your success to something you can't directly control. Set goals like "I'll eat about 1500 calories today" rather than "I'll lose X pounds in Y weeks." If you do what you need to do, the results will come. Weight loss is a general trend over time, not a daily, or even weekly, cause-effect. Concentrate on the now,…

The thing about counting calories/macros is that you can do it with any food. I would suggest that you start by logging the way you normally eat for a week or two to gather data. You can then look through to see where you might wish to make changes such as smaller portions of calorie-dense foods or working more protein…

I checked out the Excel template. It implies a level of precision that just isn't there for weight loss like it is for paying down a mortgage. The amortization part is just the gradual stepping down of your calorie intake as your weight decreases in order to keep your deficit fixed while accounting for a smaller body using…

On MFP, the activity setting is meant to be what you do day-to-day outside of exercise. You add exercise separately. An alternate way to handle the numbers is to set your activity level to include what you think your exercise will be and then not add separate exercise. The overall point is to end up with as accurate a…

Well, at least there's an easy visual distinction between the over and under values. Personally, I have to make sure to get my protein and fat high enough so I'd flip the red and green on those. I'd also flip the colors on some of the other Nutrition Fact categories. It would be nice to have a setting to choose which color…

I have several Campbell's Healthy Request soups that are part of my dinner rotation. I usually add a bag of steam-in-bag veggies. That gives me a huge hot bowl of soup for 400-500 calories. I can include a can of soup in my day and still be close to my 2400 mg sodium goal.

Drinking enough water so that your urine is a light yellow is a good goal for water intake. That may be a different amount of water from day to day.

That sounds like something that's going to require personal experimentation. I take 2 caplets of Citrucel two times per day and drink 10-16 fl oz of water each time.

The problem with things like Slimfast is that they don't teach people how to handle real food so that they don't learn ways to keep weight off after they lose it. Exercise isn't required for weight loss. I lost most of my ~140 pounds of excess weight without exercise. What is required is to consume fewer calories than the…

I started with MFP's macro suggestions and found that, for satiety, I did well with at least 20% of my calories from protein and 30% from fat so I aimed for those every day. I also aimed for at least 25g fiber and less than 2400 mg sodium. I also drank hot tea between meals to keep my mouth and hands busy and put something…

One day at a time. I experimented to find a calorie intake amount that made me comfortable (for me it was 1350) and ate that until I got close to goal. I didn't worry about how quickly I lost. As long as I had a downward weight trend over the months, I was good to go.

I didn't. I started walking when I got close to goal. Baby steps. Weight loss is practice for maintenance and maintenance is forever.

I lost ~140 pounds while eating ~50% of my calories from carbs. Calorie intake and output are what matter for weight loss. I didn't starve myself. I crafted my current way of eating by starting with how I liked to eat and experimenting with reduced portions and/or satisfying substitutions. I suggest that you start by…

Does your friend hold the treadmill when she walks? A wrist pedometer counts arm swings as steps when on a treadmill so her pedometer-wearing arm would need to swing.

There is no right amount. You might eat more this time than you ate last time or will eat next time. You don't need to stick to the suggested serving sizes. Log before you eat. If the amount that you plan to eat has more calories than you were planning to spend, eat less. Practice over time and you'll get a feel for what…

US Nutrition Facts rules include allowances for companies to exclude part or all of the calories from fiber (depending upon solubility) from the total calories listed. That's one of the reasons that a "Net Carbs" setting wouldn't necessarily work as expected on MFP.

You could lose some progress but life happens. Sustained weight loss requires an average calorie deficit over the long term. Sustained weight gain requires an average calorie excess over the long term. In the short term, weight wobbles even outside of how many calories you consume. Worrying about what you've already done…

Personally, I'd go ahead and have the KIND bar. If you go a little over today, chalk it up to a learning experience. Experiment to find a workable way of eating. Have you considered using a weekly calorie goal? That way, you can eat a little less on not hungry days and a little more on hungry days.

It's likely some sort of Nutrition Facts number rounding rule. For example, if the fat isn't quite 14g but rounds up and the calories are an amount that rounds down to the nearest increment of 10.

We are always telling people that the numbers online for many exercise and weight loss calculations are estimates and starting points and that they need to collect their own data and work from that. I collected my own data and am working from that with success. My point is that (distance in miles)(weight in pounds)(0.3) is…

My calorie tracking accuracy is the same. My BMR is the same because I'm maintaining my weight. My stride is the same. The only variable is how far I'm walking. I wish that I could just cut 45 calories from my intake for each mile I don't walk but that leads to weight gain because I'm burning more than that per mile walked.

It's about twice the calories estimated from that formula. My experimentation has been my n=1 from maintaining my weight using MFP to track intake and Fitbit to track output. Fitbit tells me (and my long term weight response supports) that I can eat ~1500 calories if I walk ~3000 steps and ~2200 calories if I walk ~15,000…

It did. ;) That's one of the issues with the formula and why I think it shouldn't be posted when people ask how many calories they burn from walking.

The rule-of-thumb of 2000 steps per mile doesn't work for everyone (because of the stride differences you mention) but a mile is still a mile. I need to take about 11,600 steps for 5 miles. That 85 calories per mile for me is for ~2320 steps.

There's nothing weight-loss-wise that's enhanced with Premium for me. There are things that I like (such as no ads, setting my Protein and Fat goals in grams [rather than just remembering my goals], and time-stamping diary entries on the app) but that's convenience rather than being a game changer.

Since fat has 9 calories per gram and carbs/protein have 4 calories per gram, counting macros is counting calories. If you hit all 3 macros, you should hit your calories. There will be some variation due to rounding but your calories and calories-calculated-from-macros should be within about 100 calories. If they are…

It really depends upon the composition of your breasts. If they are mostly fat, you'll end up deflated no matter what exercise you do or how fast you lose. If they have dense breast tissue, they should stay mostly the same. Mine were almost all fat and are very deflated. I'm not bothered by it. I could always wear a padded…