Food diary

leighforty

I have been using the food diary for a few weeks now and dont understand all the facts and figures. In my settings it says my daily goal is 1.200 calories but in the diary the target changes each day. Is there any instructions which will explain how it all works?

lynn_glenmont

MFP gives you a daily "net" calorie goal based on what it estimates (using the information you provide) your daily calorie expenditure is without exercise, with a built-in deficit based on how much you say you want to lose every week. When you log cardio exercise, it adds the estimated expended calories to your daily goal, so that your net consumption will remain the amount needed to lose weight at the rate you initially said you wanted to lose weight at.

For example, my daily goal for what MFP thinks is a bit less than a pound a week loss (but which actually would allow me to lose about a pound and a half, because online calorie calculators have their limits) is 1500 calories. If I go for a 40-minute walk at 3.5 mph, MFP estimates I burn about 200 calories, and will adjust my goal for that day to 1700 calories. I can now eat 1700 calories and still be on track for losing a pound to a pound and a half for the week.

You want to eat those extra calories (or at least part of them; a lot of people will tell you that MFP overestimates calorie burns from exercise, although that has not been my experience for walking and running -- I use the MFP estimates, yet I continue to lose more weight than MFP estimates I will). You need the calories (energy) to fuel your workouts, and if you create too large a deficit, you will eventually outpace your bodies' ability to break down fat and it will have to make up the difference either by breaking down lean body mass (muscle, etc.) or by cutting back on some of its normal functions (e.g., repairing muscle, which goes on every day whether you lift or not but is also how you build muscle, and maintaining your menstrual cycle, if you are a premenopausal woman). Too large a deficit can also leave you irritable, mentally foggy, too tired to exercise, so hungry that you end up overeating when you finally snap, and so unhappy that you quit your efforts altogether.