MountainBum's Journal, 20 Feb 16

The calorie calculator on here is notoriously generous, probably best to disregard it and do a little more research before landing on an actual calorie target.  

Yes, the calorie calculator here is way too high for us all - pick the amount of calories that would support your GOAL weight. 

Glad you questioned it. I just started and figured I was eating the 2300 cal./per day, already. Now, I know for sure to aim lower. 

I'll shoot for 2500 or so, maybe a bit more so I can retain as much muscle as possible. Slow and steady wins the race, almost year now out of the gym a d a healthy lifestyle with 25lbs gained....glad to be getting back on track.  

The app calculate your daily calorie intake based on your gender height and activity, if you are a very active guy, your calorie intake is gonna be high, otherwise you gonna lose weight fast, than eventually gain it right back. The calorie chart fills up real quick!!! 

Good point, thank you Meeel. I just switched my profile from high active to low active and it dropped to 2600 which is more accurate I think, I'm probably right on the middle of the two. And yes it's amazing how fast that chart fills 😁, really helps when you are first starting to track cals and macros how terrible some of the foods we eat are. I got on a horrible Rock Star energy drink kick the past 6 months that's gonna go out the window soon.... 

Hey Mountain, try using sedentary to calculate your RDI (even if you're active), then only put in real exercise, the calorie burn estimates for exercise are a bit generous too in some cases. 

THAT makes so much sense @HCB! My RDI with the calculator here in 2000! I left it at that, then lowered it manually to 1200. That was kinda hard, and Mahjohn commented on one of journal entries that he saw no deficit and that could be my "not-losing" problem. But over 1200 was still a deficit from the 2000, so I wasn't sure where he was coming from. It must have been on a day when I had played around with it myself that he saw it. I'm eager to see what the number would be for intake at my goal weight! 

I've been on the site for just under 2 weeks and the calories given for me (1600) also seemed too high for me to lose weight, given previous experience with tracking food. (But all diets have recommended amounts that were too high for me) So I just adjusted down. It's a great site, very easy to track everything you in precise amounts. Note the little triangles to the left of food amounts. If you click that, it allows you adjust amounts up or down. Happy exercise and healthy eating!  

Steven Lloyd- thanks for the tip, I'll probably leave it as is for now. Before this extended break I've had of living unhealthy I had a pretty good grasp on cals and macros. Simply tracking here gives me the tools I need to get back at it. I am going to shoot for a 40/30/30 macro intake and see how my fat loss reacts to that since I am a more endomorph body type. And yes I got a good laugh at the 800 cals for 1 hour of weight lifting on here.....I started a new push/pull/legs routine (always did a 2 day push/pull split before), so I'm just tracking my 1-1.5 hours of lifting here at 1/4 hour. Thanks for the all the replies, looks like I found a great community here! 

U bet Mountain that works, I also only submit part of my exercise time doing the activities that are too optimistic - otherwise you're just tricking yourself. Good luck!!