confused about calories vs exercise

ghealai

Hi all, I'm fairly new to this (and loving it by the way!) But I'm a bit confused about the calories MFP has allocated and how they tie in with exercise. So MFP seems to reset to 1200 so I guess that's the recommended target for me and my goal. But what are you supposed to do with the exercise calories? Ignore? Just eat a bit more if you're hungry? I've noticed that on the days where I don't do exercise per se my 'projected weight in 5 weeks' seems to be pretty high suggesting a very small loss per week (I think less than 0.5kilo) which seems to suggest to me that severely cutting my intake of calories doesn't do much really. On the flip side when I've exercised it's much lower, which makes sense of course. But it seems to me that using a lot of calories exercising and cutting food could potentially leave me in the negative. I should say that now I've got into the swing of it I'm not generally very hungry, and if I was I'd ease off. Just trying to understand the balance as I was active and ate healthily before I started this - but am still overweight so obviously consuming more than burning. Anyway, any advice welcomed : )

DeguelloTex

A lot of people eat back 25-75% of exercise calories in order to net MFP's calorie goal. If the calorie burns were absolutely accurate, eating back 100% would be fairly reasonable.

Basically, if your (realistic) goal is to lose X pounds per week, you'd want to eat back enough exercise calories so that you lose (over time) X pounds per week. If you lose more quickly, eat back more exercise calories. If more slowly, less. (All this presumes logging is accurate, or at least wrong in a consistent way.)

ghealai

Hmmmm. Ok thanks DugelloTex. Perhaps I need to just trust in the system for a couple of weeks and then see if everything balances out. So far I haven't been eating them back. But to be honest I'm not quite sure what I should be aiming to lose per week. Is half a kilo pretty standard? (I'm 64kilos , 5'2")

DeguelloTex wrote: »

A lot of people eat back 25-75% of exercise calories in order to net MFP's calorie goal. If the calorie burns were absolutely accurate, eating back 100% would be fairly reasonable.

Basically, if your (realistic) goal is to lose X pounds per week, you'd want to eat back enough exercise calories so that you lose (over time) X pounds per week. If you lose more quickly, eat back more exercise calories. If more slowly, less. (All this presumes logging is accurate, or at least wrong in a consistent way.)

Of_Monsters_and_Meat

ghealai wrote: »

Hmmmm. Ok thanks DugelloTex. Perhaps I need to just trust in the system for a couple of weeks and then see if everything balances out. So far I haven't been eating them back. But to be honest I'm not quite sure what I should be aiming to lose per week. Is half a kilo pretty standard? (I'm 64kilos , 5'2")

DeguelloTex wrote: »

A lot of people eat back 25-75% of exercise calories in order to net MFP's calorie goal. If the calorie burns were absolutely accurate, eating back 100% would be fairly reasonable.

Basically, if your (realistic) goal is to lose X pounds per week, you'd want to eat back enough exercise calories so that you lose (over time) X pounds per week. If you lose more quickly, eat back more exercise calories. If more slowly, less. (All this presumes logging is accurate, or at least wrong in a consistent way.)

Try for 1 lbs per week. If that doesn't work out set it for 0.5 lbs per week.

segacs

The math in a nutshell:

MFP uses the NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) method to calculate your goals. So it's saying, okay, this person burns calories merely by being alive, going to work, brushing her teeth, running errands, sitting at a desk, breathing, basically doing everything that isn't exercise. Let's take that number of calories and subtract a deficit from that (500 calories/day to lose 1lb/week, for instance). So if she doesn't do any other exercise or workouts beyond her normal daily routine, she should lose 1lb/week eating at the calorie goal we give her.

Now, let's say you go to the gym and work out for an hour and burn 250 calories. In order to maintain that 500 calorie daily deficit, MFP would expect you to eat back those 250 exercise calories. If you don't, now you've created a 750-calorie deficit (in this example), which is likely too steep for you.

The actual numbers in this example aren't relevant. The relevance is the way this works. So you'd enter your height, weight, age, and daily activity level excluding exercise, and that gives you a net calorie goal. If you exercise, you should eat back those calories in order to maintain the same deficit. That's how it's designed to work.

Two caveats, though:

1. If you go into MFP's exercise database and log your exercise, it will estimate how many calories you've burned doing it. YMMV but many people find that MFP's database vastly overestimates calorie burns for cardio exercise. You may want to manually lower the burn estimate, or else just decide to eat back, say, 50% or 75% of your exercise calories, not 100%. Because you can quickly erase your deficit if you're constantly overestimating exercise burns and eating back too many calories.

2. If MFP gave you 1200 calories as a net goal, that's the minimum it assigns to women. Unless you're very small, short and inactive, it's probably too low for you. You likely were given 1200 calories because when MFP asked you how quickly you wanted to lose weight, you picked the maximum 2lbs/week. That's not really realistic for most people unless they're very obese, and usually big, tall and male. For most women trying to lose moderate amounts of weight, 1lb/week is going to be the maximum recommended, and by the time you get down to those last 10-15 lbs, you should be looking more at 0.5 lbs/week. There are many reasons for this, but mathematically it comes down to creating a reasonable 15-20% calorie deficit and still getting your nutrition in and feeling full. If your maintenance calories aren't that high, it's simply not realistic to create and sustain an 1000-calorie daily deficit unless you're starting from a really high number. Try editing your goal to reflect the slower pace, and MFP should give you a higher net calorie goal.

Hope this helps!

cwolfman13

Just from a purely common sense standpoint, why do you think MFP would give you those calories and increase your goal if you weren't supposed to eat them back? Do you think MFP is just trying to trick you?

Have you read the stickies...they pretty much explain how this tool works.

segacs

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Just from a purely common sense standpoint, why do you think MFP would give you those calories and increase your goal if you weren't supposed to eat them back? Do you think MFP is just trying to trick you?

Have you read the stickies...they pretty much explain how this tool works.

It is confusing at first. I know a lot of people don't intuitively understand the need to eat back exercise calories. After all, the thought process usually goes, "I'm here to lose weight, so why wouldn't I exercise more and lose faster?" It's a bit complicated if you've never thought of it in terms of what a reasonable deficit is before.

Echoing the advice to read the sticky posts. Lots of good info there.

RolemodelmomT

Really helpful info...one question. where are the sticky posts??

segacs

RolemodelmomT wrote: »

Really helpful info...one question. where are the sticky posts??

They're the announcement posts at the top of each of the forums, like this one or the "getting started" forum.

RolemodelmomT

That's what I thought, but wanted to make sure. Thank you!

ghealai

Aaaaah, so MPF is likely offering me 1200 because I suggested I wanted to lose more than half a kilo a week! I see now. Thanks all for the really useful info/advice - I'll keep going and see what happens