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:
- Is Negative Caloric Data in MyFitnessPal necessary/needed?
- 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:
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?