Still confused about eating back calories
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crittergirl222
Posts: 120 Member
I've read through a bunch of posts, and have managed to confuse myself even more.
MFP goal is 1500cal/day. If I burn 600 with exercise and end up with around 500ish calories left over at the end of the day am I doing this right??? I am seeing people putting in 1 calorie burned to avoid eating calories back...and now I am confused.
MFP goal is 1500cal/day. If I burn 600 with exercise and end up with around 500ish calories left over at the end of the day am I doing this right??? I am seeing people putting in 1 calorie burned to avoid eating calories back...and now I am confused.
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Replies
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MFP's goal is designed to put you in a deficit without doing any exercise. If you do exercise, you increase your deficit and so you should consider eating some (or all) of these calories back so that you don't experience low energy, excessive hunger, muscle loss, or other health problems associated with eating too few calories.
The trick is to make sure you truly are burning 600 with exercise. The MFP exercise database over-estimates for a lot of people, so many people only eat back a portion of the calories to account for that. I would only eat back all 600 if I felt sure that was close to what I was burning and that it wasn't an over-estimate.
Ideally, you wouldn't have hundreds of calories left at the end of the day because that means you are adding those calories on top of the deficit MFP already created for you with your initial calorie goal.0 -
crittergirl222 wrote: »I've read through a bunch of posts, and have managed to confuse myself even more.
MFP goal is 1500cal/day. If I burn 600 with exercise and end up with around 500ish calories left over at the end of the day am I doing this right??? I am seeing people putting in 1 calorie burned to avoid eating calories back...and now I am confused.
2 methods;
1. Use MFP as designed. Get a calorie deficit with zero exercise factored in. Log exercise - eat back 50-75% of exercise calories (adjust for error, MFP tends to be generous). That gets you back to your ORIGINAL deficit.
2. Find your maintenance and include the exercise you plan to do (http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/). Then take a percentage off that number. Eat those calories. If you want to log workouts, use 1 calorie because exercise was already factored in.
At the end of the day - these 2 methods give similar numbers when the same data is plugged in. If workouts are consistent and you like the same number of calories everyday...choose method 2 (exercise is averaged out for the week). If you are not consistent with workouts or like up / down calories use method 1.0 -
janejellyroll wrote: »MFP's goal is designed to put you in a deficit without doing any exercise. If you do exercise, you increase your deficit and so you should consider eating some (or all) of these calories back so that you don't experience low energy, excessive hunger, muscle loss, or other health problems associated with eating too few calories.
The trick is to make sure you truly are burning 600 with exercise. The MFP exercise database over-estimates for a lot of people, so many people only eat back a portion of the calories to account for that. I would only eat back all 600 if I felt sure that was close to what I was burning and that it wasn't an over-estimate.
Ideally, you wouldn't have hundreds of calories left at the end of the day because that means you are adding those calories on top of the deficit MFP already created for you with your initial calorie goal.
My treadmill/MFP both give me calories burned and I shave 200 off the top just to be safe.0 -
crittergirl222 wrote: »I've read through a bunch of posts, and have managed to confuse myself even more.
MFP goal is 1500cal/day. If I burn 600 with exercise and end up with around 500ish calories left over at the end of the day am I doing this right??? I am seeing people putting in 1 calorie burned to avoid eating calories back...and now I am confused.
2 methods;
1. Use MFP as designed. Get a calorie deficit with zero exercise factored in. Log exercise - eat back 50-75% of exercise calories (adjust for error, MFP tends to be generous). That gets you back to your ORIGINAL deficit.
2. Find your maintenance and include the exercise you plan to do (http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/). Then take a percentage off that number. Eat those calories. If you want to log workouts, use 1 calorie because exercise was already factored in.
At the end of the day - these 2 methods give similar numbers when the same data is plugged in. If workouts are consistent and you like the same number of calories everyday...choose method 2 (exercise is averaged out for the week). If you are not consistent with workouts or like up / down calories use method 1.
I will look into this. Thanks!0 -
crittergirl222 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »MFP's goal is designed to put you in a deficit without doing any exercise. If you do exercise, you increase your deficit and so you should consider eating some (or all) of these calories back so that you don't experience low energy, excessive hunger, muscle loss, or other health problems associated with eating too few calories.
The trick is to make sure you truly are burning 600 with exercise. The MFP exercise database over-estimates for a lot of people, so many people only eat back a portion of the calories to account for that. I would only eat back all 600 if I felt sure that was close to what I was burning and that it wasn't an over-estimate.
Ideally, you wouldn't have hundreds of calories left at the end of the day because that means you are adding those calories on top of the deficit MFP already created for you with your initial calorie goal.
My treadmill/MFP both give me calories burned and I shave 200 off the top just to be safe.
Treadmills and MFP both over-estimate, but it sounds like you're accounting for that by removing calories off the top. If you find that your weight loss stalls when you eat back the calories, you can eat back fewer calories.0 -
If you are going to use MFP as designed, you are supposed to eat your calories back. The problem comes that many people simply don't get that, so for various reasons they don't eat their exercise calories. There are ways to set your calorie goal so it includes the calories of your intended exercise, in which case your deficit will be designed off that total calorie number. In that case you would not eat exercise calories. What people forget here, is unlike other sites while include your intended exercise calories into calculation of your total calories and giving your calorie goal with its deficit, MFP does not. So, if you are going to eat the calorie goal MFP gives you EAT YOUR EXERCISE CALORIES0
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crittergirl222 wrote: »I've read through a bunch of posts, and have managed to confuse myself even more.
MFP goal is 1500cal/day. If I burn 600 with exercise and end up with around 500ish calories left over at the end of the day am I doing this right??? I am seeing people putting in 1 calorie burned to avoid eating calories back...and now I am confused.
In your example, your deficit would be 500 more than you planned. If you set your MFP goal to be a 1 pound loss (i.e., 500 calorie deficit), then you will now have a 1000 calorie deficit. For many people, that kind of deficit is hard to maintain day after day and might result in giving up, periodically binge eating, or a lack of energy/concentration for workouts.
As always, this assumes your calorie intake and burn is accurate.0 -
So based on the link in scoobysworkshop I should be eating 2100 cal/day, as opposed to MFP 1500. That's quite a difference!0
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crittergirl222 wrote: »So based on the link in scoobysworkshop I should be eating 2100 cal/day, as opposed to MFP 1500. That's quite a difference!
Have you been losing weight for a while or are you just starting? If you've been at it for a while, are you losing faster than you expected?0 -
crittergirl222 wrote: »So based on the link in scoobysworkshop I should be eating 2100 cal/day, as opposed to MFP 1500. That's quite a difference!
Yes - but.....if you chose 15% on Scooby's vs. 1 pound a week on MFP. Are these values similar? But then again. maybe you did use pounds.
Also Scooby's 2100 vs. MFP 1500 + exercise calories....even at half that's 1500 + 300 (or 1800).0 -
ModernRock wrote: »crittergirl222 wrote: »I've read through a bunch of posts, and have managed to confuse myself even more.
MFP goal is 1500cal/day. If I burn 600 with exercise and end up with around 500ish calories left over at the end of the day am I doing this right??? I am seeing people putting in 1 calorie burned to avoid eating calories back...and now I am confused.
In your example, your deficit would be 500 more than you planned. If you set your MFP goal to be a 1 pound loss (i.e., 500 calorie deficit), then you will now have a 1000 calorie deficit. For many people, that kind of deficit is hard to maintain day after day and might result in giving up, periodically binge eating, or a lack of energy/concentration for workouts.
As always, this assumes your calorie intake and burn is accurate.
The bigger issue is some people cannot burn enough fat to meet a 2 pound per week goal, largely because they don't have enough fat left to burn off. Make the deficit too big then, and you end up burning off lean mass which you don't want to do.0 -
crittergirl222 wrote: »So based on the link in scoobysworkshop I should be eating 2100 cal/day, as opposed to MFP 1500. That's quite a difference!
I assume you selected an activity level including your intended exercise? If so, that is where your difference comes, because unlike MFP, scooby includes intended exercise. With MFP your exercise calories are not added until you actually exercise which is why you are supposed to eat them back.0 -
Most of the people who are putting in 1 calorie for exercise are doing so because they've already accounted for exercise in their activity level and are using the TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) method vs. the MFP method whereby exercise is not accounted for in your activity level and you account for it by logging it and getting additional calories.crittergirl222 wrote: »So based on the link in scoobysworkshop I should be eating 2100 cal/day, as opposed to MFP 1500. That's quite a difference!
The difference is that with MFP you're supposed to log your 600 calories of exercise...with scooby (TDEE) it's included in your activity level. If you ate back 600 of your exercise calories with MFP you would have 1500 + 600 = 2100....six of one, half dozen of the other.
Also, make sure you're comparing apples to apples in terms of rate of loss goals...often times taking a % off of your TDEE...say 20%, will be a less aggressive goal than if you tell this calculator you want to lose 1 or 2 Lbs per week or whatever. The more aggressive the goal, the fewer the calories.0 -
@crittergirl222, I just went to http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ and put in the same variables I gave MFP and got real close to the same numbers MFP gave me, i.e. BMR 1900, TDEE 2612, for 1lb/wk weight loss Daily calorie intake 2090 (MFP says 2030).
Check your inputs.0 -
d_thomas02 wrote: »@crittergirl222, I just went to http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ and put in the same variables I gave MFP and got real close to the same numbers MFP gave me, i.e. BMR 1900, TDEE 2612, for 1lb/wk weight loss Daily calorie intake 2090 (MFP says 2030).
Check your inputs.
The difference is the activity level -- if OP is burning 600 calories a day through exercise, that will account for the difference in the two goals.0 -
d_thomas02 wrote: »@crittergirl222, I just went to http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ and put in the same variables I gave MFP and got real close to the same numbers MFP gave me, i.e. BMR 1900, TDEE 2612, for 1lb/wk weight loss Daily calorie intake 2090 (MFP says 2030).
Check your inputs.
So did you enter you activity level at Scooby at the same level you have set here at MFP?0 -
It's all trial and error. I like the idea of going with sedentary and adding back exercise calories because, it gives me incentive to actually exercise. In the end it works out about the same as lightly active and not logging anything but, it actually gives me motivation to exercise. Of course I actually need to stick with one setting for an entire week to judge. I'm usually tinkering with the settings too often. Of course I'm probably giving bad advice because I've lost more than my goal pretty consistently. I have a heart rate monitor coming in the mail tomorrow so hopefully i can get that working properly. I may need to calculate the median between lightly active and sedentary because i work a job that would be lightly active but, i only do it for 4-6 hours and i tend to be lazier when i work late at night with few customers.0
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crittergirl222 wrote: »I've read through a bunch of posts, and have managed to confuse myself even more.
MFP goal is 1500cal/day. If I burn 600 with exercise and end up with around 500ish calories left over at the end of the day am I doing this right??? I am seeing people putting in 1 calorie burned to avoid eating calories back...and now I am confused.
Your goal 1500 calories to lose weight. With or without exercise.
You get 500 calorie burn from exercise. Even if you ate them, you'd still be at 1500 calories at the end of the day and STILL losing weight.
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rileysowner wrote: »So did you enter you activity level as Scooby at the same level you have set here at MFP?
I did. I used slightly active for both. This accounts for most of my routine daily activities. Additional exercises I log and then eat back. I do try to leave a 100 cal surplus (on average) at the end of each day regardless if its been an active day (3500+ cal TDEE) or a lazy day (2500 TDEE). With a 1lb/wk deficit that means my intake varies accordingly (3000 to 2000 respectively).0 -
That is why your numbers were the same. Scooby is supposed to have intended exercise included as it is a TDEE calculator. MFP doesn't care about exercise and does not factor it into their equation since it is a NEAT calculator.0
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