Confused about relationship of nutrition and fitness goals on the site

jlcnuke

My nutrition goal is set at 1660 calories/day, with a fitness goal of 1,240 calories burned/week.

However, when I log my exercise I then get credit and "more calories" for the day even if I haven't reached my goal for the week for exercise. Are they not related? I.e. is the fitness goal just a "get in shape" goal and completely separate from the calculated caloric goals? I don't want to splurge on some extra calories and find out I'm not losing weight because I needed to ignore those extra calories...

Nicklebee93

What happens is you get "net" calories. That means you burned off extra calories and you then can have the option to eat more. Just note that MFP seems to over calculate exercise. I'm 140 pounds and 45 minutes of cardio tells me i burn 300 calories, which is way more then i probably am. So if i actually ate back 300 calories i'd be way over my calorie intake for the day. I pretty much ignore it. And since you're eating at a very reasonable calorie deflect i wouldn't add it back in.


Stick to 1,660 calories a day. And ignore the net calories you gain back.

jlcnuke

Thanks for the insight

lemurcat12

jlcnuke wrote: »

Are they not related? I.e. is the fitness goal just a "get in shape" goal and completely separate from the calculated caloric goals?

Right. Once you actually do them the calories get added in, but the calculation assumes that you haven't done them, whatever the plan is, until they are logged. You can see this by calculating your goal with no exercise and with your exercise goals, and you will see the number is the same. (I found this confusing at first too.)

sijomial

The exercise goal is just that, a goal. No functionality.

MFP sets a calorie goal that is "Plus exercise calories".

There's pervasive group think that MFP over-estimates but that's based more on following the herd than actual science let alone measurement.
Some are going to be high, some close, some low, some really difficult to estimate, some really easy, some based on tried and tested measures which may or may not be accurate for a particular individual.

In the end exercise calories are estimates, food calories are estimates, activity setting are estimates etc. etc....
It's far more important for vast majority of people to put their accuracy efforts into food logging than worrying too much about exercise calorie accuracy.

Time, consistency. plus trial and error required.