MyFitnessPal & Garmin Calorie Configuration

I have been over several forum posts, reddit threads, etc about Garmin & MyFitnessPaul and would like to see if I can get a cumulative answer here. 

What I am looking answered is:

  1. Is Negative Caloric Data in MyFitnessPal necessary/needed?
  2. What is the optimal caloric configuration for weight loss (body fat), but muscle maintenance (or gain, but let's make it easy and stick with maintenance)

Currently, I am 95 KG and looking to get to 90 by losing body fat (and ideally, not muscle mass). 

So if I lookup my BMR, I get the following:

BMR = 1,989 Calories/day

Daily calorie needs based on activity level
Activity Level Calorie
Sedentary: little or no exercise 2,387
Exercise 1-3 times/week 2,735
Exercise 4-5 times/week 2,914
Daily exercise or intense exercise 3-4 times/week 3,083
Intense exercise 6-7 times/week 3,431
Very intense exercise daily, or physical job 3,779

From there, in MyFitnessPal I set the activity level to "Lightly Active", and a Calorie goal of 1500 (so a 500cal deficit). Garmin instantly adds -200 (so I end up with 1300) calories every morning (with negative adjustments enabled). 

This is obviously way too low, but, then I do workouts, walks, etc. to bring this up to 1990/2000 a day, and eat at this calorie rate.

If the goal is to lose weight but retain muscle - would this be an alright configuration or should I tweak this? 


Or.. should I go find a nutritionist? Laughing

  • 1) only true way to loose weight i.e. burn more than you consume.

    2) difficult to tell - for all we know 95kg is your ideal weight for your body. If you are doing this seriously you should get a propery BMI analysis so you know exactly how much you can/should lose. Don't forget that everyones bones weigh different amounts, and muscle weight is higher than fat, so while you may be losing inches and getting healther and more toned (i.e. loosing fat and reducing your body fat percentage) you can actually increase you weight as replacing that fat with heavier muscle.

    Using a nutritionist is a health way of losing weight so that you have a correctly focused diet against your burned calories to ensure you don't damage your body and to ensure that your diet is sustainable.

    If you look overweight and feel overweight you are probably fine running with what your watch is showing - if your profile is correctly set up its normally close to what that calorie calc suggests. Then just make sure that you are logging all your food, snacks, drinks. As long as your consumed is less than your passive + active burned you should start loosing weight - but note as these are all estimates you would need to make sure that its quite a bit under to account for these being estimates;.

  • Yeah - so from a BMI perspective, I am roughly 1-2 points considered overweight. 

    From a Body Fat percentage, I am at a 20%. I am using a Withings scale for this, but I know it isn't necessarily as accurate as other means (eg: Calipers, Tape, Water Pressure based tests)...

    Sorry for not adding these previously. Not exactly a huge fan of sharing all my details. Sweat smile

    So I do think there is some way that I could go. 

    For point 1, of course. And that is the plan.

    For point 2, from what I have seen, my body fat percentage seems to stay consistent over periods of time but also changes rapidly (by a scan of 2 points) without much reasoning behind it.

  • 2) - that is probably more due to the lack of consistency from the scale than anything else.

    Maybe get as professional a reading once or twice a year using DEXA (Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry) - as it will not only tell you how much fat you are carrying but also where it is, so you can appropriately target it.

    At the very least I would use MFP picture and measurment options along with any weight measurements. At the end of the day I would focus more on being fit, healthy and toned than an actual weight measurement, which without a DEXA analysis could be completely misleading and potentially result in causing harm....

    Do listen to your body.