MFP exercise calories

kellysdavies

Everyone says MFP over estimates the calories they give for exercise and you should only eat half back. What does MFP actually say about this? Does it agree? Why don't they fix it ? Why don't they make it more accurate ? We enter all of our stats, sex, height etc and it knows our weight: can't it be more accurate ? Why don't they fix it if so so wrong?

CA_Underdog

Kelly, for simple exercises like "Walking, 4mph" MyFitnessPal tends to be dead-on. As you say, it knows your age, gender, height, weight, etc. Thus, its numbers (at least for me) tend to agree really well with both exercise machines and heart rate monitors.

For complex exercises like "Elliptical" or "Hiking" there are no easy fixes. For the elliptical it doesn't know your minute-by-minute speed, resistance, and incline. For hiking, it doesn't know your speed, elevation gain, or pack weight. The good news is, this is where an exercise machine or more targeted calculator can typically provide the information you need.

I eat 100% of my calories back and it's working well for me, but I defer to more accurate measuring devices whenever they're available and replace MFP's estimates with those.

MelodyandBarbells

kellysdavies wrote: »

Everyone says MFP over estimates the calories they give for exercise and you should only eat half back. What does MFP actually say about this? Does it agree? Why don't they fix it ? Why don't they make it more accurate ? We enter all of our stats, sex, height etc and it knows our weight: can't it be more accurate ? Why don't they fix it if so so wrong?

Many possibilities:

The calories could be gross calories burned, rather than net. As in it also adds in what you would have burned not exercising

The calories could be accurate, but a user's food logging not quite accurate. By reducing exercise calories eaten, it makes up for less than accurate food logging

Could be the exercise calories are accurate but for a specific level of intensity. If yours is higher or lower, your burn may be different

Either way we asked for a feature that allows a user to adjust all exercise calories down by a fixed proportion. Not holding my breath on that one but its out there

nutmegoreo

It's just a calculator and works on best guesstimate, like everything else. Treadmills and ellipticals... even the daily target given by MFP is not going to be accurate for everyone. Two people with the exact same height, weight, sex, and age are still going to have varying results. Best thing to do is try it out for a month or two (MFP target plus 1/2 exercise cals), and adjust according to your results. If you are losing at an appropriate rate, you are doing fine, if too fast, increase your intake, if too slow, reduce your intake. Make sure you are realistic with your expectations. Remember that calorie intake will need to adjust downward as your weight decreases.

whatyouwill

I tend to eat between 30-50% of my exercise calories back but load this with Protein where possible rather than carbs. It's interesting actually, MFP actually underestimates the calories burnt when I go running compared to Strava (the app I use for running).

I wouldn't get too caught up on this. Try a two week experiment on eating back 50% of the exercise calories and see how you get on...if it's too tough in terms of hunger/fuel for workouts, then you should eat back more I guess. If you can do it no problem, keep at it. Find what works for you.

It's swings and roundabouts and as others have said, everything is a guestimate unless you use the very best technology. For example, the X-Trainer at the gym I use, it has a basic calorie calculator which would come out the same for me (217lbs) and my mate (168lbs) for the same workout. "Go firgure" as the yanks like to say.

Metazoick

There is waaaay too much variance between individuals and how they approach working out, as well as all the activities and intensities that could be included under a certain umbrella term, plus it isn't exactly easy to formally study the average calorie burn of a certain exercise (for simpler, more consistent and hugely practiced things like walking you have a decent chance at finding numbers based on actual experimentation but beyond that it's just a guess). The only way anything could know for sure is if it has way too much access to your bodily functions, and/or somebody has spent thousands on grant money to see what the net calorie loss for burpees is and then the forumla taken from this study asks you to input way too much info on yourself and the activity. All we have are guesses, and if a site trying to get you to feel good about working out and burning calories has to be biased one way or the other, it's going to tell you that you just got a gold star for that cardio session.

pinkteapot3

I eat every single one of my exercise cals and I've been losing weight at an average of 1lb/week, which is what I set the app to.

Exercise has to be measured as accurately as food. I do think some people over-estimate how much they've done.

My exercise is running and cycling three times a week each. I use apps to record it so I know exactly how long I've done and at what speed. I log "Running, 6mph" and "Cycling, 14-16mph" because I know I've hit that average speed for the duration. My heart-rate monitor calculates the cals burned to be almost identical to what the MFP database says.

I don't log any of the 'lifestyle' exercise - walking to the corner shop, gardening, cleaning the house. There's far too much potential for variation in how much effort you put in compared to what the app had in mind.

kellysdavies

I just don't know why MFP doesn't just half the calories it gives and then the advice is to everyone to make sure they eat all the calories back they're given for the exercise. Seems a healthier more positive approach.
I'm fine with it, I use FITBIT anyway and use other apps and calculators... but I just think it's daft that's it an accepted process and advice given on literally every post I've seen to only eat back half. Seems counter-productive to me.

MelodyandBarbells

kellysdavies wrote: »

I just don't know why MFP doesn't just half the calories it gives and then the advice is to everyone to make sure they eat all the calories back they're given for the exercise. Seems a healthier more positive approach.
I'm fine with it, I use FITBIT anyway and use other apps and calculators... but I just think it's daft that's it an accepted process and advice given on literally every post I've seen to only eat back half. Seems counter-productive to me.

Some people eat back 100% and lose just fine. Using a food scale is also phenomenal advice but the tool is not going to require that every user does this

novembersuse

I totally agree! It's infuriating, because I find that MFP makes a massive difference to my determination, and I trust it and rely on it. It's really frustrating to be told all the time that all my exercise logging is lies!

Jruzer

MFP's estimates are pretty close to the estimates I get from my HRM and from other sources. This is backed up by my weight vs time trends.

If it halved the estimate I would be starving.

nutmegoreo

kellysdavies wrote: »

I just don't know why MFP doesn't just half the calories it gives and then the advice is to everyone to make sure they eat all the calories back they're given for the exercise. Seems a healthier more positive approach.
I'm fine with it, I use FITBIT anyway and use other apps and calculators... but I just think it's daft that's it an accepted process and advice given on literally every post I've seen to only eat back half. Seems counter-productive to me.

Fitbit will not be completely accurate either. It is also a calculator. I found significant differences between Fitbit, BodyMedia, and MFP. If the numbers bother you, you have the ability to manually change them when they are entered so that you will only see the half count.

Are you manually adding in exercises here, plus allowing Fitbit to adjust your calories? That would be creating a double count on exercise, which won't help. Hopefully, you aren't, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Florida_Superstar

It's just a tool to help you get in the ballpark, so the accuracy will vary and you have to experiment a little to see what works for you. I use the Endomondo fitness app to calculate my calorie expenditure during exercise--it imports into MFP and tells me I can eat an extra 500 or 600 calories from exercise that day. However, my personal experience is that if I eat anything over the 1600 calories MFP recommends, I will gain weight. So in my case I think that MFP has overestimated my daily caloric intake in the first place. Otherwise, if 1600 was accurate, I should be able to eat at least a little over that without gaining weight, but I can't. I don't really care, though, because I figured out that 1600 is what I need and that works for me. It makes sense that a calculator designed for everyone can't account for individual differences in metabolism, etc.