Adding calories earned through exercise

amjenkins2447

I am curious on the thoughts of increasing the daily calorie intake based on exercise activity. MyFitnessPal automatically adds extra calories for each day based on how many calories I burn. How is this helpful? I thought the point was to burn the calories that you take in?

Please help me understand.

janejellyroll

If your calorie goal comes from MFP, a deficit -- without exercise -- is already built in. If you increase the size of your deficit (through exercise), it may be helpful for your health and fitness to eat those calories back. If you aren't eating much or if you are exercising a lot, it may even be essential for your health to eat some of those calories back.

You burn calories doing everything -- just laying in bed all day. The point is to burn more than you consume -- but over the course of an entire day, not just exercise.

juggernaut1974

amjenkins2447 wrote: »

I am curious on the thoughts of increasing the daily calorie intake based on exercise activity. MyFitnessPal automatically adds extra calories for each day based on how many calories I burn. How is this helpful? I thought the point was to burn the calories that you take in?

Please help me understand.

Because MFP's calorie goal it gives you assumes you are doing no exercise. So if you're burning more calories than MFP assumes you are, you need to account for it in your daily goal.

stroutman81

It's simply MFP's unique way of going about things. It's not my preferred method at all. But the way they see it is they calculate the calories you need to maintain your weight BEFORE factoring in exercise. So the deficit is built in. Then, as you exercise and burn additional calories, you're meant to eat them back simply because the deficit was already factored in. If you didn't, you'd be double dipping into deficit and arguably making a larger deficit than need be.

Make sense?

For calorie counters, I prefer to keep it much simpler and start with a reasonable calorie target that's based on norms. Most active people will lose fat when they eat 10-12 cals/lb total each day. And it's just a loose target. So the point is... target this range and work on consistency. Monitor from there and then every 2-4 weeks adjust as necessary.

It's not The Way. But it's definitely a lot cleaner in my mind.

clark614

So for example if you weigh 200 lbs? You can eat 2000 calories and still maintain a deficit ?

juggernaut1974

clark614 wrote: »

So for example if you weigh 200 lbs? You can eat 2000 calories and still maintain a deficit ?

Maybe. Your starting weight isn't the sole criteria for determining a proper calorie consumption goal.

janejellyroll

clark614 wrote: »

So for example if you weigh 200 lbs? You can eat 2000 calories and still maintain a deficit ?

This would depending on how many calories you were using each day. It is certainly possible that someone who weighed 200 pounds could eat 2,000 calories and still be in a deficit.

ModernRock

For example, I have a calorie goal of around 2000 losing about 1 pound a week. That means I would neither gain nor lose if I ate 2500. If I were to burn 500 additional calories through additional activity/exercise, I could eat 2500 calories (2000+500) and still have my 500 calorie deficit. Following this approach, I control weight through food. I control fitness through exercise/activity. If I want to eat a greater number of calories, but still lose weight, then I could simply exercise more (within reason).

Jruzer

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1

amjenkins2447

Thank you for the information! This makes sense and helps me to know that my exercise is in addition to my weight loss by calories. I was diagnosed with hypothyroid last August and have been loosing weight slowly. The exercise is to help me work on my core strength but I find myself frustrated when I don't see more than 1-2 lbs weight loss per week. I know 1-2 lbs is good, but feel like exercising and burning 500-1200 calories in a day would make a bigger difference. MFP put me at 1450 calories per day, my exercise is approx 500 calories most days, but one day per week it is 1200 calories because of bowling. I wanted to be sure that eating more than the 1450 calories wasn't damaging everything else I was doing. I have 100 lbs to go, down 26 so far since August.