This is the number you’re going to set your MFP calorie goal to. Use this tool based on your activity level to determine this number. You can use MFP’s calculations based on your activity level. Step 2: Figure out your Maintenance calories before exercise. You will be aiming to eat at least this much every day, if you workout you get to eat those exercise calories back!! There is a BMR calculator on this site under TOOLS. You would burn this if you just stayed in bed all day. Step 1: Figure out your BMR Basel Metabolic Rate – this is your body’s calorie requirements for basic functioning. So if you want to figure it out here is what to do.

Rather than force feed yourself on high calorie burn workout days, you can use those great workouts to maximize your weight loss – which, let’s face it, is probably one of the main reasons why we workout to begin with. With this method, you can reach whatever deficit you want day by day, and you will know that you are safely keeping your deficit under 1000 (2 lbs a week loss). 5 lb a week weight loss, but there’s not a lot of wiggle room with 250 calories, and a few off calculations with exercise and food and you could find yourself gaining, not losing. Well we can all agree that eating less (under your BMR) is not a good way to go. When you have less to lose, your options are to decrease your deficit by eating more, or eat less and run the danger of a weight loss plateau because your body isn’t getting the nutrients it needs for basic functioning. You would then eat all your exercise calories and keep your 1000 calorie deficit, making noticeable progress quite achievable. At 2200 or above, you can safely create a 1000 calorie deficit without exercise – so if you set up MFP to lose 2 pounds a week it would set your calories to 1200. This is mostly appropriate for people who’s maintenance calories before exercise are less than 2200. I found a way to set up MFP so I could see my daily deficit each day, and I could maximize my calorie burn on heavy workout days, and not have to eat like a bird on my non workout days. If this is you then I am going to do my best to explain to you my understand of myfitnesspal and the use of determining your calories and exercise for weight loss. Maybe this is you! Maybe you are a numbers person and you need to see it with the data in order to believe that you are making progress. Although, for some people counting calories is a must. It was a no brainer way for me to lose weight.

The minute you tell me to sub total, add or calculate anything I immediately shut down and if I have to do it then most likely (90%) of the time my calculations are wrong!!! So I think this is why I embraced Tosca’s rules so easily. I truly think that God left that part out of my brain. I can honestly say that following that method brought me the greatest amount of success. I did not track calories instead I followed her rules for proper portion sizes and the specific pairing of foods together. I simply read the book, Eat Clean Recharged, By Tosca Reno and followed the principles of clean eating. When I started my health and fitness journey I did not use any type of calorie calculator or tracker.

Bmr calculator myfitnesspal