need help understanding!

Robben28

Hey everyone! I need help understanding MFP. It sets the calorie limit for yourself and takes into consideration how active you are. But why does it add more calories for the day after you workout, if you are wanting to lose weight?

IsaackGMOON

Well, you are already eating in a caloric deficit (eating less than your body needs to maintain its weight). So you're eating those calories back which are burnt through exercise to provide your body with more energy.

Look at it this way;
- You're eating 1800 calories but your body needs 2300 calories to maintain its weight. This is a 500 calorie deficit (7 x 500 = 3500 calories / 1lb).
- Burning another 200 calories through exercise nets you at 1500 calories, but you eat these back for more energy and because you're already in a deficit, you will still lose weight.

Maries_wine_calories

you might do well with checking your stats on a site like iifym.com you can understand more about eating at a deficit if you're more aware about your personal burns and intake needs.

yarwell

It aims to lose weight at the same rate irrespective of exercise, hence the hamster wheel algorithm exercising to earn more food leaves you with the same calorie deficit (if exercise measured correctly).

PAV8888

When you use a TDEE calculator your average exercise is included in the estimated burn.

MFP does not include exercise in your burn estimate/deficit calculation. When you are picking an "activity level", MFP assumes you are picking the level based on your non-exercise based daily activities.

As such exercise gets dealt with separately.

Not eating back your true exercise calories is equivallent to increasing your target deficit (assuming your MFP activity level was correctly chosen).

It is entirely possible for people to exercise enough that they actually end up in negative calorie territory for the day.

There does exist some controversy as to how you can calculate your true exercise calories (and it gets more complicated if your non exercise activity doesn't match the setting you picked).

Usual advise is to eat back at least 50% of your exercise calories (or 100%, or a value in between), and to ADJUST that value based on your real life results over a few weeks.

My own piece of advise is to use a weight trendline program to input your daily weigh ins. It will help you see past natural daily weight fluctuations. (Weightgrapher.com, trendline.com, happy scale, spreadsheets...)

Liftng4Lis

Because the deficit is built in already. MFP gives you a base and you earn more through exercise.