Exercise Doesn't Count?

Amy4President

So I am doing this challenge through my local Jazzercise center... one of the requirements is that we track what we eat using something like MFP. I have been under my calorie goal for the entire week. Then I'm told that I cannot add the amount I burn off to my overall intake during the day. For example, my daily allotment is 1350. If I burn 700 at the gym, MFP says I have 2,050 left for the day. I generally can't eat all of that, but I do tend to go over 1350, so I'm still under my calorie goal. I was told this is wrong. That I'm only supposed to eat 1350 no matter what I burn off. First I was discouraged, but now I'm pissed. It doesn't make any sense. Anyone else have advice?

kcoftx

The easiest way to do this, and satisfy people looking at it, is to up your activity level. I am assuming you go at regular intervals.

Edit to add: If you look at most calorie calculators, this is how they do it. It is already figured in. Setting it to sedentary and then adding it is relatively the same math as just upping your activity level. The caution is hat if you count the exercise instead of just bumping it up, don't count every one of them. The exercise calories tend to be too high. I count about 70%.

JustPeachy044

^^^This. It depends on your settings. To me, 1350 seems to be a basic number without exercise. I try to eat back some of my exercise calories...sometimes do all, sometimes half, sometimes less. It varies.

Amy4President

I wear a heartrate monitor that tracks what I burn. It's pretty handy and more accurate than a treadmill or MFP. I switch up my exercise quite a bit (the same routines bother me). So should I just bump up my activity level to "moderate" and stop adding in the burns?

tryclyn

You can adjust your goals for 1 pound/week since you don't have so much to lose.

Or read a bit more and adjust manually.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/975025-in-place-of-a-road-map-short-n-sweet
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/952996-level-obstacles-lose-weight-target-fat-easy
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

Amy4President

That's guys. I was pretty discouraged last night. Weighed in this morning with a 2lb loss despite eating back some of my exercise calories. I feel better!

Francl27

That challenge group is full of idiots. Sorry.

Amy4President

That challenge group is full of idiots. Sorry.

That actually makes the most sense. I kept telling her that it did not make any sense and she finally conceded that I could have an extra 100 calories on the days I work out as long as I did not eat extra on my days when I don't workout. I get 2 rest days a week and netting 600 the rest of the week sounds dangerous and unhealthy.

lina1131

I would just get out of the challenge and start a challenge with myself. What is your overall goal here...to win a challenge or to win at life?

Tell them to suck it. :bigsmile:

Amy4President

I would just get out of the challenge and start a challenge with myself. What is your overall goal here...to win a challenge or to win at life?

Tell them to suck it. :bigsmile:

I'm already winning!

carolyn0613

Why not just up your activity level to high as you suggest, that way you are logging your exercise calories (indirectly) and eating to your goal calories?

Roughgalaxy

I can use myself as an example if you like. When I entered my FB challenge group They suggested calories that were way different than MFP. Fitnesspal had me and over 3000 but my group put me at 1800.

With my workouts, my net calories sit around 1100-1200. As you can see below this post. My weight loss really never slowed down (down 51) They put me on what we call the Fat Shredder diet. For you they would suggest 1200-1500 cals a day intake with a 50% protein, 30% carb, 20% fat ratio. (The calorie goal is more important than the ratio but try to get it close).

Excercise only counts if you don't eat the calories you burn. (this is why I never have cheat meals)

Hope this helps. ^.^ If I can help any more you are welcome to message me.

Amy4President

Why not just up your activity level to high as you suggest, that way you are logging your exercise calories (indirectly) and eating to your goal calories?

I don't exercise every day, so I want to make sure I'm staying under the 1350 on those days. Some days I burn 300, others 1,000. Once I get the hang of it, I might up it, but not sure I'm there yet.

Amy4President

I can use myself as an example if you like. When I entered my FB challenge group They suggested calories that were way different than MFP. Fitnesspal had me and over 3000 but my group put me at 1800.

With my workouts, my net calories sit around 1100-1200. As you can see below this post. My weight loss really never slowed down (down 51) They put me on what we call the Fat Shredder diet. For you they would suggest 1200-1500 cals a day intake with a 50% protein, 30% carb, 20% fat ratio. (The calorie goal is more important than the ratio but try to get it close).

Excercise only counts if you don't eat the calories you burn. (this is why I never have cheat meals)

Hope this helps. ^.^ If I can help any more you are welcome to message me.

If I burn 800, I won't eat all 800 back, but I may eat 200 in a protein shake. Should I include that in my usual 1350? I guess I'm more concerned about my big workout days and nonly netting 600 a day if I don't include the workout and only eat 1350. Make sense?

JessiBelleW

Yes! You need to net at least 1350 each day! Every day! Not doing so is dangerous to your body. If you only do a little work out - say 200 calories you may only want to eat most of it back 150-180 say, but if you burn 600 calories I would be aiming to eat most of those back!

palmerar

It is my personal opinion that Heart Rate Monitors are for steady state cardio only, basically running or walking at the same pace for an extended period of time, not for jazzercise or any other activity where the heart rate/ level of intensity varies greatly from start to finish. Even at that point just measuring heart rate to calculate calorie burn can be quite inaccurate.

I think you are doing the right thing by not eating all exercise calories back, because your numbers could be off by a lot. So basically you could add 100-200 to your goal, or just eat back 100-200 of your exercise calories.

Amy4President

It is my personal opinion that Heart Rate Monitors are for steady state cardio only, basically running or walking at the same pace for an extended period of time, not for jazzercise or any other activity where the heart rate/ level of intensity varies greatly from start to finish. Even at that point just measuring heart rate to calculate calorie burn can be quite inaccurate.

I think you are doing the right thing by not eating all exercise calories back, because your numbers could be off by a lot. So basically you could add 100-200 to your goal, or just eat back 100-200 of your exercise calories.

Thanks for the advice! I've found that the HRM is fairly close to what MFP says I burn - only off by 30 or so calories - sometimes more/sometimes less. I trust MFP when I do things like swimming. I use a polar watch that syncs online for my stats. It might be wrong, but then again the treadmill could be wrong and so could MFP! Gotta trust it I guess.

luckynky

I just switched to the TDEE method because all of this roller-coaster eating is driving me nuts, and I never eat back my exercise calories, which occur in the evening. So, knowing that I'm doing a minimum of 4 hours of cardio/week, I did all four methods of TDEE using moderate activity, then reduced by 20% (the max for weight loss) and then took an average of the four methods. This actually turns out to be very close to MFP, if you take the regular calories, then factor in the exercise calories, then average it out over the week (to get a daily calorie average). Anyway, I wanted to have a set number of calories each day, which makes it so much easier to eat sanely, IMHO. So now, when I log exercise, I just put 1 calorie burned and I'm only logging to keep myself honest about my goals.

I also decided to go with this method because I've been reading and hearing a lot about metabolism damage, and I know I wasn't eating enough with the default method. I've started thinking about long-term, and dropping too much weight too fast can really screw up long-term goals.