Calories Burned = More Calories to Consume

UnikittyRocks

Or does it reeeaaally?

I burn 500+ calories when I workout bringing my 1200 up to 1700 for the day. But am I just "maintaining" if I use those calories or can I still lose, which is my goal. Down 1, 19 left!

TheVirgoddess

No, you're not maintaining - because you burned those calories.

Here's an example. Say your TDEE is 1900 (TDEE = total daily energy expenditure - ie what your body burns by breathing, going to the restroom, walking, cooking dinner, thinking, etc).

So MFP gives you 1500, putting you at a 400 calorie deficit. Meaning you're eating less calories than your body burns, and so it will use its fat stores, and you'll lose weight.

Now. If you go for a run, and burn an additional 500 calories, you've now burned your TDEE + your exercise. That puts you at 2400 burned for the day. So, your deficit is now 900 calories.

So, you eat back your exercise calories - or at least part of them. Because your deficit is already figured in - and exercise increases the deficit.

Make sense?

AmyRhubarb

Depends on how accurate your calorie burn estimates are, and how reasonable your goals are when you set up your MFP account.

What are you doing to burn 500 cals in a workout, and how are you estimating the burn? A HRM or other tracking device will give you a better estimate than going with what a treadmill or other machine spits out, and MFP's estimates are notoriously high. For calories eaten, are you measuring and weighing with a food scale, or just eye-balling things?

If you are being as accurate as possible, then yes, you should eat those calories back and you will still be in a deficit if your NET cals are at or near goal at the end of the day. Food is fuel - don't sell yourself short or think you'll speed things along by not eating enough. This can really backfire on ya in the long run.

UnikittyRocks

TheVirgoddess wrote: »

No, you're not maintaining - because you burned those calories.

Here's an example. Say your TDEE is 1900 (TDEE = total daily energy expenditure - ie what your body burns by breathing, going to the restroom, walking, cooking dinner, thinking, etc).

So MFP gives you 1500, putting you at a 400 calorie deficit. Meaning you're eating less calories than your body burns, and so it will use its fat stores, and you'll lose weight.

Now. If you go for a run, and burn an additional 500 calories, you've now burned your TDEE + your exercise. That puts you at 2400 burned for the day. So, your deficit is now 900 calories.

So, you eat back your exercise calories - or at least part of them. Because your deficit is already figured in - and exercise increases the deficit.

Make sense?

AmyRhubarb wrote: »

Depends on how accurate your calorie burn estimates are, and how reasonable your goals are when you set up your MFP account.

What are you doing to burn 500 cals in a workout, and how are you estimating the burn? A HRM or other tracking device will give you a better estimate than going with what a treadmill or other machine spits out, and MFP's estimates are notoriously high. For calories eaten, are you measuring and weighing with a food scale, or just eye-balling things?

If you are being as accurate as possible, then yes, you should eat those calories back and you will still be in a deficit if your NET cals are at or near goal at the end of the day. Food is fuel - don't sell yourself short or think you'll speed things along by not eating enough. This can really backfire on ya in the long run.

Thanks to you both! And I'm so happy to know I'll still be in a deficit, phew!

My workouts consist of high intensity interval training at Orange Theory. We all wear HRM, that shows HR and calories burned. If you have an Orange Theory near you, check it out, it's an awesome workout!! I set up MFP for a 2lb loss per week for a total of 20lbs. I'm 5'7 and my current goal is 130. I'm down 1.5 since joining 6 days ago. But I wanted to make sure I wasn't messing it all up by eating the burned calories!

TheVirgoddess

I still think you should lower that to 1lb a week, but you already know that

Sued0nim

HRMs track steady state cardio, if you find you are not losing as you wish then cut down what you eat back

That said with 19lbs to lose you should have your goal at 0.5 - 1 lb a week and no more

UnikittyRocks

TheVirgoddess wrote: »

I still think you should lower that to 1lb a week, but you already know that

Thanks! I know, I've been told! Although I'm not sure why...I feel like if I set it to 2 per week, I'll see more results even if I don't meet it exactly. Whereas a .5 goal might not not be aggressive enough and may result in a 0 loss that week. I dunno, I'm clearly not an expert! I'm so motivated, I want to keep up this steam I have going!

malibu927

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

TheVirgoddess wrote: »

I still think you should lower that to 1lb a week, but you already know that

Thanks! I know, I've been told! Although I'm not sure why...I feel like if I set it to 2 per week, I'll see more results even if I don't meet it exactly. Whereas a .5 goal might not not be aggressive enough and may result in a 0 loss that week. I dunno, I'm clearly not an expert! I'm so motivated, I want to keep up this steam I have going!

Weight loss isn't linear anyway, so no matter what goal you choose there will be times when you lose less/not at all/gain. Plus MFP will not give you a goal under 1200 calories, so you're most likely not set to 2 pounds per week as you'd like.

When you choose a larger deficit than would be needed for your weight, you run a greater risk of losing lean body mass along with fat. A smaller deficit ensures you're losing more fat than muscle. It also makes the transition to maintenance easier, as you won't have to jump up so many calories.

jkal1979

malibu927 wrote: »

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

TheVirgoddess wrote: »

I still think you should lower that to 1lb a week, but you already know that

Thanks! I know, I've been told! Although I'm not sure why...I feel like if I set it to 2 per week, I'll see more results even if I don't meet it exactly. Whereas a .5 goal might not not be aggressive enough and may result in a 0 loss that week. I dunno, I'm clearly not an expert! I'm so motivated, I want to keep up this steam I have going!

Weight loss isn't linear anyway, so no matter what goal you choose there will be times when you lose less/not at all/gain. Plus MFP will not give you a goal under 1200 calories, so you're most likely not set to 2 pounds per week as you'd like.

When you choose a larger deficit than would be needed for your weight, you run a greater risk of losing lean body mass along with fat. A smaller deficit ensures you're losing more fat than muscle. It also makes the transition to maintenance easier, as you won't have to jump up so many calories.

OP, if you go under goals it will give you a chart with the calories needed to maintain, the deficit it gives you and how much you can expect to lose on 2 pounds a week.

For example, with 40 pounds to lose I have mine set to 1 pound a week. If I set mine to 1.5 or 2 pounds a week it will give me the 1200 minimum but it says I won't lose more than 1.3 a week no matter which one I set it to.

You would be a lot better off setting it to .5 pounds a week for the reasons stated above.

Mr_Knight

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

My workouts consist of high intensity interval training at Orange Theory. We all wear HRM, that shows HR and calories burned.

Well that right there is a problem - those kinds of workouts will register with highly over-estimated burns on an HRM.

UnikittyRocks

OP, if you go under goals it will give you a chart with the calories needed to maintain, the deficit it gives you and how much you can expect to lose on 2 pounds a week.

For example, with 40 pounds to lose I have mine set to 1 pound a week. If I set mine to 1.5 or 2 pounds a week it will give me the 1200 minimum but it says I won't lose more than 1.3 a week no matter which one I set it to.

You would be a lot better off setting it to .5 pounds a week for the reasons stated above.
[/quote]

Thank you! I looked for the chart but didn't find it under Goals. I found a bar chart under Nutrition but it didn't give the details you mentioned. I would love to see what MFP predicts for my loss. I did change my weekly goal to see what would happen, but my calories stayed the same even at a 1lb loss.

Liftng4Lis

Most people eat back half the exercise calories, to allow for overestimation of burns.

cwolfman13

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

Or does it reeeaaally?

I burn 500+ calories when I workout bringing my 1200 up to 1700 for the day. But am I just "maintaining" if I use those calories or can I still lose, which is my goal. Down 1, 19 left!

If your 1200 calorie goal is a weight loss goal WITHOUT including exercise in your activity level and you then exercised (unaccounted for activity), how would you just be maintaining.

It's simple math...

It's likely that without exercise you maintain right around 1700 - 1800 calories or so...1200 calories gives you a weight loss deficit of about 500 - 600 calories. Now let's say you exercise and burn 500 calories...your theoretical maintenance number would also increase...it would not longer be 1700 - 1800 calories, it would be 2,200 - 2300 calories...so if indeed you ate 1700 calories (because 1200 + 500 = 1700) you would still have the same deficit to lose weight...because 2300 - 1700 = 600 calorie deficit still.

You just have to be very careful in estimating calories burned...it's tricky business.

UnikittyRocks

Mr_Knight wrote: »

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

My workouts consist of high intensity interval training at Orange Theory. We all wear HRM, that shows HR and calories burned.

Well that right there is a problem - those kinds of workouts will register with highly over-estimated burns on an HRM.

Why is that, how do you know? That's a bummer!

jkal1979

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

Thank you! I looked for the chart but didn't find it under Goals. I found a bar chart under Nutrition but it didn't give the details you mentioned. I would love to see what MFP predicts for my loss. I did change my weekly goal to see what would happen, but my calories stayed the same even at a 1lb loss.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. That information is on the website, not the app.

Mr_Knight

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

Mr_Knight wrote: »

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

My workouts consist of high intensity interval training at Orange Theory. We all wear HRM, that shows HR and calories burned.

Well that right there is a problem - those kinds of workouts will register with highly over-estimated burns on an HRM.

Why is that, how do you know? That's a bummer!

HRMs don't measure calories. They measure heart rate. And heart rate does not correlate well with energy expenditure, except under very specific conditions.

This is talked about in excruciating detail in literally hundreds of threads here.

cwolfman13

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

Mr_Knight wrote: »

UnikittyRocks wrote: »

My workouts consist of high intensity interval training at Orange Theory. We all wear HRM, that shows HR and calories burned.

Well that right there is a problem - those kinds of workouts will register with highly over-estimated burns on an HRM.

Why is that, how do you know? That's a bummer!

HRMs are only relatively accurate for steady state aerobic events...your calorie burn isn't directly correlated to you calorie burn, it's just used in an algorithm that to work also has to assume a steady state cardio event as some estimation of what level of VO2 max you are working.

When you do things like HIIT, circuits, weight training, etc you have sudden jumps in your HR and the algorithm says, "oh...they're working at such and such a level of VO2 max and just burned a gazillion calories...when in reality that activity was not a good indicator and thus calorie burns become inflated.

Even with a steady state cardio event, it's an estimation...it's one of the downsides to this particular method...it is difficult to determine calorie burn. The most important thing is that you're giving your body something to work with to fuel your workouts in order to be able to perform better in general and for recovery...so it is generally advisable to eat back exercise calories less some allowance for estimation error. People come up will all sorts of methodologies here, some of which makes sense while others are far more arbitrary.

JAT74

Some might not agree with my method but in my case MFP set my maintenance calories at 1650 which is overestimated as I've checked on many other TDEE calculators and without exercise I maintain at around 1500 calories which I think is pretty accurate, and it may even be less.

I had 30 lbs to lose when I started so going by the 1200 calories MFP gave me I would be set to lose just over 0.5 lbs per week as my deficit without exercise would only be 300 calories (1500-300 =1200) and I know that a deficit of 500 calories per day is needed to lose 1lb per week. Even with calorie burns of 400 calories per day on average I would only have a deficit of 700 per day which would allow me to lose less than 1.5lbs per week.

Like you I want to lose around 2lb per week or at least 1.5 minimum so what I do is set my goals to 'custom' and set my minimum calories at 800. This means that with my daily exercise which varies from burns of 300-600 calories depending on the day, my food totals go up to anything between 1100 and 1400 calories. I therefore eat the amount shown in my food log after adding in my exercise for the day.

So far using this method I am losing 2lbs per week (5.5lbs so far since 5th Jan) though I know this will probably slow down and there will be some days when I can't exercise, and on those days I'll still eat at least 1100. I would rather start off losing faster and then if it becomes less when I'm nearer my goal or if I have some days where I don't exercise I'll feel like I'm almost there.

By the way I have also been logging all exercise, for example cleaning whether light or heavy, short dog walks and all the workouts I do too so some days the calorie burns come out quite high. It has also meant that most days I can eat more than enough to keep me feeling satisfied.