Things We Shiuld Take Into Account

jrn8ion

i see people burning tins of calories doing cardio workouts. Most will add more calories to meal plan to balance out. But beware calorie estimates may not be accurate. Interesting article:
http://www.builtlean.com/2013/03/04/estimated-calorie-burn/
Personally I only estimate half of whatever the app or cardio machine tells me & log that. Seems to work for me. If I do adjust calories I try not to add more than 100 on a work out day. Just food for though lol.

shadow2soul

That's why the typical advice here is to start with eating 50% or so and adjust up or down based on actual results. Everything is an estimate and most will have to adjust to some extent. Some people will find that MFP estimates are just fine for them; others will find that they are really way out in left field.

I have found that my fitbit is pretty spot on. So I can eat the 100% of my adjustments and still lose the weight I want to. In fact, prior to owning the Surge, my Fitbit calorie burn was typically too low for me (based on actual results it was underestimating by 200 calories on average). At the same time, I've seen posts from people who have found theirs to be overestimating by sometimes up to 10%.

You have to adjust things based on actual results. Not 1 weeks worth of results, because of normal fluctuations 1 week wouldn't be enough time to tell. However, a month would be a decent sample size.

barbecuesauce

I lose faster than MFP's rate of loss if I eat 50% back (roughly 50%, over 3-4 months). I lose slower if I eat them all back (as I did this last month, when I frequently ate over those calories and averaged just under .5 lbs/lost week). Because I overate so often this past month, I do not know how close to 100% MFP's estimates come. But I seemed to lose about 1 lb/month more than I should when I eat 50%.

Equus5374

I have actually stopped logging calorie burns altogether and have manually set my MFP stats to reflect my TDEE, which takes into account weekly exercise and calories burned just being alive. It's easier for me to eat the same amount every day than to see varying amounts due to (outrageous) calorie burns.