Still confused about eating back calories

crittergirl222

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.

janejellyroll

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.

TeaBea

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.

crittergirl222

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.

crittergirl222

TeaBea 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.

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!

janejellyroll

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.

rileysowner

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 CALORIES

ModernRock

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.

crittergirl222

So based on the link in scoobysworkshop I should be eating 2100 cal/day, as opposed to MFP 1500. That's quite a difference!

janejellyroll

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?

TeaBea

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).

rileysowner

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.

rileysowner

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.

cwolfman13

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.

d_thomas02

@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.

janejellyroll

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.

rileysowner

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?

srecupid

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.

ninerbuff

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.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

d_thomas02

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).

rileysowner

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.

crittergirl222

ninerbuff 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.

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.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

This. Is. Brilliant. Thank you!!

d_thomas02

rileysowner wrote: »

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.

I don't know who is more confused now; you, me, or the OP.

I really think we are on the same page, its just hard for me to tell.

MFP does care about exercise as it asks you your activity level (to estimate your TDEE) in addition to your weekly weight loss goals so it can adjust your intake calories to match. It does care so that, when you log additional calories due to exercise, it adds them into you daily calorie allowance.

IMO, that was the OP's cause for confusion. Whether or not to eat back her exercise calories. The ones not in MFP's base calculation.

callsitlikeiseeit

you can not compare scooby and mfp as they use different models.

those you see entering '1' for their workouts are often going by the TDEE method, which gives you more calories, because you do NOT eat back your exercise calories). this is how i do it now, but for the first year i used mfp's model- NEAT- where you DO eat back your exercise calories (or roughly half to compensate for miscalculations).

1500 on scooby and 1200 on mfp are the same, when you factor in on mfp you eat back.

crittergirl222

And then when I just added a snack to today, it changed my "You would weigh X in 5 weeks: by about 8 lbs." This makes me think that if I didn't eat this snack my weight loss might be quicker. Which puts me back to the original confusion (like others)-if I worked so hard to exercise them off, why would I want to eat them back (barring light headedness, fatigue etc). If I feel good, wouldn't a greater negative in daily calories be better???

d_thomas02

@crittergirl222, ignore the '5 weeks'. I stopped completing days 'cause that is just nonsense.

What you do is up to you, of course. I choose to maintain a 500 cal deficit at the end of the day. That means If I burned an additional 600 cal in exercise and logged it as above and beyond my normal activities in MFP, I eat them back. I still maintain my original 500 deficit as my TDEE has increased with the extra exercise burn.

Example:
MFP says your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is 2500 calories based on input you gave MFP.
you also told MFP that your weight lose goal was 2 lb/wk
MFP does the math and subtracts you daily deficit (1000 calories) to achieve your weight lose goal of 2 lb/wk from your TDEE (2500) or

2500 (TDEE) - 1000 (deficit) = 1500 calories (your intake goal).

If you do not log any additional exercise, you can eat 1500 calories to lose 2 lb/wk.

Now say you log an addition 600 calorie exercise. This adds to your TDEE for the day.

TDEE = 2500 + 600 or 3100

MDF subtracts your daily deficit from your TDEE for this day

3100 - 1000 = 2100

to give you a specific calorie intake for this day of 2100 cal.

You still have your 1000 calorie deficit. you still maintain your weight lose goal of 2 lb/wk.

If you do not eat back your exercise calories, your deficit would be 1600 calories for that day (1000 for your weight lose goal of 2 lb/wk plus the 600 exercise calories you did not eat back). If you did this routinely, you would be over the safe 2 lb/wk maximum lose recommended by MFP.

kiara1066

I personally eat back half of my workout calories because the machine kinda overestimates as well as MFP often. I used to feel hungry after working out, and if I didn't eat back anything felt like starving and would binge eat (not healthy). 50% works for me, and I still am losing weight.

callsitlikeiseeit

crittergirl222 wrote: »

And then when I just added a snack to today, it changed my "You would weigh X in 5 weeks: by about 8 lbs." This makes me think that if I didn't eat this snack my weight loss might be quicker. Which puts me back to the original confusion (like others)-if I worked so hard to exercise them off, why would I want to eat them back (barring light headedness, fatigue etc). If I feel good, wouldn't a greater negative in daily calories be better???

no because your body needs fuel (food) to function properly and to maintain lean muscle.

rileysowner

d_thomas02 wrote: »

rileysowner wrote: »

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.

I don't know who is more confused now; you, me, or the OP.

I really think we are on the same page, its just hard for me to tell.

MFP does care about exercise as it asks you your activity level (to estimate your TDEE) in addition to your weekly weight loss goals so it can adjust your intake calories to match. It does care so that, when you log additional calories due to exercise, it adds them into you daily calorie allowance.

IMO, that was the OP's cause for confusion. Whether or not to eat back her exercise calories. The ones not in MFP's base calculation.

Actually MFP does not care about exercise, at least not in terms of setting your daily calorie goal which is why calories are added to your goal when you log your exercise.

Do this little experiment. Change your information and enter no exercise. Then do it again and only add exercise. Your calorie goal will be the same.

rileysowner

crittergirl222 wrote: »

And then when I just added a snack to today, it changed my "You would weigh X in 5 weeks: by about 8 lbs." This makes me think that if I didn't eat this snack my weight loss might be quicker. Which puts me back to the original confusion (like others)-if I worked so hard to exercise them off, why would I want to eat them back (barring light headedness, fatigue etc). If I feel good, wouldn't a greater negative in daily calories be better???

That looks so good, but is so deceiving. Sure in some sense you could lose faster, but there is a big down side.

People can only burn a certain amount of fat per day. The amount they can burn is related to how much total fat they have. Thus, a person who is morbidly obese with 100 or more pounds of fat to lose could quite easily lose 2 pound per week, or if really fat, perhaps even more.

People who have less fat to lose cannot burn off as much fat per week, if they tried to lose 2 pounds a week or more by making their deficit bigger what happens is this . . . they lose more weight, but that weight is made up of less fat and more lean mass. In other words, to make up for their bigger deficit that to chose to speed up getting to their goal, instead of losing mainly fat, they start losing muscle, and organ tissue and other lean mass. That is a bad thing. It results in a body that weighs more, but still has a lot of fat, which by the way is what skinny fat is talking about.

Assuming you don't want that to happen, still with a good moderate calorie deficit. If you have 100 or more pounds to lose 2 pounds per week is just fine. If you have less than that to lose, lowering your goal to 1.5 or even 1 pound a week we be advised. If you only have 10-15 pounds to lose 1 pound per week or less would be advised.

Taking all this into consideration you can see how the temptation of that quicker weight loss is not really a good thing to give into. Stick to how MFP works or recalculate your calorie goal with Scooby including your intended exercise and make that your goal logging your exercise as 1 calorie.

d_thomas02

rileysowner wrote: »

Actually MFP does not care about exercise, at least not in terms of setting your daily calorie goal which is why calories are added to your goal when you log your exercise.

Do this little experiment. Change your information and enter no exercise. Then do it again and only add exercise. Your calorie goal will be the same.

Your experiment makes no sense. One's MFP calorie goal is based, in part, on the routine activity level one selects; 'sedentary', 'lightly active', etc., not on any additional (i.e. out of the ordinary) exercise one may log on a particular day. Changing one's activity level will change one's calorie goal. (Note: MFP will limit how low the calorie goal may go, so if a woman is showing a 1200 calorie goal at 'slightly active', changing to 'sedentary' will not lower her goal below 1200.)

While I agree that one's calorie goal will not be changed by adding or deleting additional logged exercises, the number of calories one may eat without going over budget, as set up by MFP and shown as one's "remaining" calories, is affected by additional logged exercises.

Determining whether one is under, on, or over their calorie budget on a particular day is shown only in MFP's calories remaining, not the calorie goal. Thus MFP does indeed care about both routine (activity level) and additional (logged exercises) calories burned when calculating one's remaining calories.

One may choose to ignore the additional exercise and eat just the goal calories (risky, but acceptable as long as one does not routinely exceed a 1000 calorie per day deficit). One may choose to eat the goal and a percentage of the additional exercise calories. One may choose to eat the goal and all of the additional exercise calorie (i.e. all the remaining calories).

As I stated previously, I have chosen to leave, on average, 100-200 calories remaining in my MFP budget uneaten, regardless of my additional logged exercises. I eat back most of my exercise calories. Since I also have chosen a 500 a day weight lose deficit (1 lb/wk), my deficit may go as high as 700 calories, still well below MFP healthy weight lose max of 1000 calorie a day deficit (2 lb/wk). Thus, while my daily calories eaten may be as low as 1800 or as high as 2500 calories (dependent on additional logged exercises for any particular day), I maintain a 500-700 daily calorie deficit.