Negative Calories - Confused

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Talan79
Talan79 Posts: 782 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
My negative adjustments have been disabled, but today, it added calories back into what I should consume. I ran 4 miles and I use UP24. I haven’t had an issue since I got the UP in December.
My goal is to lose weight by creating a deficit, so I do not want to eat back the 400 I burned through exercise. If my negative calorie is not enabled, it shouldn’t add in calories correct?
I read that I should check it off and enable if I use a fitband and it syncs on a regular basis, but my goal is to lose and not maintain. So what should I be doing?

Replies

  • TheVirgoddess
    TheVirgoddess Posts: 4,535 Member
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    MFP already builds in a deficit. So IMO you should be eating back at least part of your exercise calories. And it will give you calories back whenever you exercise - because you're burning.

    Negative calorie adjustment means that if you don't burn as many calories as MFP says you do (according to your UP), that it will subtract calories from your goal, to maintain your deficit.

    Make sense?
  • Talan79
    Talan79 Posts: 782 Member
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    Ok, so it seems like I should enable the negative calorie feature. But when I did that, it take up my entire calorie intake and macronutrients.
    My UP says that I burn about 1800 calories on days that I do work out. And about 1380 on days that I don't. So for now, I'm doing 1200-1250 to have that 500 calorie deficit daily. The UP app tells me based on my height/weight, my calories should be 1200. Seems about right?
  • TheVirgoddess
    TheVirgoddess Posts: 4,535 Member
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    tzarba wrote: »
    Ok, so it seems like I should enable the negative calorie feature. But when I did that, it take up my entire calorie intake and macronutrients.
    My UP says that I burn about 1800 calories on days that I do work out. And about 1380 on days that I don't. So for now, I'm doing 1200-1250 to have that 500 calorie deficit daily. The UP app tells me based on my height/weight, my calories should be 1200. Seems about right?

    Right, it will do that in the morning, before you've done any walking or workouts - as you move through out the day, that number will increase. I, personally, don't like negative adjustments - I'm just super mindful everyday of where I end up burn vs intake wise. It's a totally personal thing though.

    If your UP gives you 1800 a day, you should aim to eat around 1300 a day for a 500 calorie a day deficit (so, roughly a pound a week).

    How much do you have to lose?
  • Talan79
    Talan79 Posts: 782 Member
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    I'm 5"2 and 120 now. I'm supposed to be bn 118-132 for my frame.
    I'd like to get down to 116-118, and wouldn't mind putting some back on with muscle gain. I'm not overweight, my goal now is overall tone. I think its harder to lose when there isn't much to take off.
  • Talan79
    Talan79 Posts: 782 Member
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    I don't like the adjustments. When I view the graph on MFP, it looks like I under rate since it adds calories back in. Even though I have it disabled, starting today it was still adding calories. I found that I can delete the adjustment from MFP app and it wont do it anymore.
  • TheVirgoddess
    TheVirgoddess Posts: 4,535 Member
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    tzarba wrote: »
    I'm 5"2 and 120 now. I'm supposed to be bn 118-132 for my frame.
    I'd like to get down to 116-118, and wouldn't mind putting some back on with muscle gain. I'm not overweight, my goal now is overall tone. I think its harder to lose when there isn't much to take off.

    Generally speaking, that's true.

    You can only really gain muscle if you're eating at a surplus.

    My two cents? Focus on body re-comp, rather than losing weight. Start lifting heavy. There are lots of people on here that know an awful lot and are happy to help.

    If you do want to lose, reset your goal to .5 pounds a week. With only a few pounds to lose, you don't need to be so aggressive. The goal here is to eat as much as you can, while still losing weight.

    Good luck :)
  • WaterBunnie
    WaterBunnie Posts: 1,370 Member
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    If you don't want to see the adjustments then you should unsync your accounts. The whole point of syncing them is so that your device can amend the activity level you have classed yourself under (sedentary, lightly active etc) the adjustment is then made so that you remain at the deficit you have set yourself (0.5lbs per week for instance) rather than undereating on high activity days. If you are doing this for health and recomposition don't try to make your deficit even higher by undereating. I've lost 112lbs so far by eating back all of my exercise calories. There's no need to suffer!
  • Talan79
    Talan79 Posts: 782 Member
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    Thanks ladies for the feedback :)

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