Burned calories Vs. Daily calorie goal

vivakatie

So I am semi new to MFP and have set it up to sync with my FitBit and add in calories burned. I can see it then changes my daily goal from day to day by either adding or subtracting calories depending on how active I was. I have lost about 5lbs so far but want to make sure that I will continue to lose to reach my goal of losing 60lbs. Here is my question: If I start out my day with my set goal of 1650 cals and burn 300 cals it ups my calorie goal to 1950 because I 'earned' those 300 back, but isn't the point of 'dieting' or 'eating clean' to eat less than your daily allotted calories? I'm worried that by 'earning' those extra 300 calories from working out that it could cause me to over eat.

Ready2Rock206

MFP already figures you're going to be burning calories during the day when it calculates your goal. When you burn extra it lets you have some of those back so you're not sacrificing nutrition or burning muscle because your deficit is too large. It's not giving you those calories to trick you or to sabotage your efforts. You don't need to starve yourself to lose weight.

cwolfman13

vivakatie wrote: »

So I am semi new to MFP and have set it up to sync with my FitBit and add in calories burned. I can see it then changes my daily goal from day to day by either adding or subtracting calories depending on how active I was. I have lost about 5lbs so far but want to make sure that I will continue to lose to reach my goal of losing 60lbs. Here is my question: If I start out my day with my set goal of 1650 cals and burn 300 cals it ups my calorie goal to 1950 because I 'earned' those 300 back, but isn't the point of 'dieting' or 'eating clean' to eat less than your daily allotted calories? I'm worried that by 'earning' those extra 300 calories from working out that it could cause me to over eat.

Your daily calorie target is your deficit...that's why you put in your stats and desired rate of loss in so that the calculator can calculate your deficit. Your calorie target isn't a maintenance level of calories...

For example, if you said you wanted to lose 1 Lb per week, MFP is giving you a 500 calorie deficit from your non-exercise maintenance calories...so MFP would be estimating your non exercise maintenance level to be around 1650+500=2,150 calories. Obviously, the more active you are, the more your calorie requisites are...if you did 300 calories worth of exercise, your maintenance would rise to 2,150+300=2,450...and 2,450-1950=500 calorie deficit still.

vivakatie

Ah, that all makes sense. Thanks guys! I feel a lot better now