Should I be ignoring my NET calories?

Hoshiko

So, I think I mostly understand how NET calories work, but I'm a bit confused about what they mean for someone who exercises a lot (6+ hrs a week).

My daily goal is 1600, for ~1lb weight loss a week. I seem to be pretty on-track with this so far. Let's say I work out 2 hours in one day, and MFP says I burned ~1850 calories. Now, I know that is a very high estimate, but some days I do intense kickboxing training with a heavy bag and it honestly doesn't seem that far off. Just in case I usually only average eating only half of my calories back, though. On those days my NET calories reflect a very low amount.

It's even worse on days when I do a very long run or hike in addition to kickboxing, and MFP estimates my calorie burn 2900+. So, even if I eat back half of those calories, the overall NET calories reflected will be very, very low or even negative. In other words, because MFP is overestimating my calorie burn, the more activity I get in the more skewed those NET calorie numbers are. I'm worried about this becoming an issue once I ramp up my running training and start logging more miles.

Am I overthinking this? I weigh and record all of my food so I just want to make sure I'm not under-eating on those days when my NET calories reflect a number way lower than my BMR.

__TMac__

The only way to know for sure how much you're burning and should actually eat is this: How much are you actually losing per week? If you're on track for 1 lb per week, keep doing what you're doing. If you're losing more, you should eat more of your exercise calories until you reach 1 lb. You're a science experiment of one, so use your data.

Edit: MFP is set up for you to add intentional exercise calories to your amount eaten, but because it's an estimate, the numbers are fuzzy.

GottaBurnEmAll

Agreed that if you're on track with weight loss, ignore net calories since the calories out figure added for exercise is obviously in error/the estimate is off.

kshama2001

So you are eating back half your exercise calories and are losing a pound a week as planned? In this case if you don't want to see your net number be so low you can manually change your exercise calories to be half of what MFP wants to give you.



If in time you start losing faster than planned, eat back a higher percentage of your exercise calories.

Hoshiko

Oh my gosh, thank you! It drives me crazy to see the numbers so low (or even negative) and everything that I've read about net calories also has a warning about under-eating and water retention masking excessive weight loss. Was starting to freak me out.

I'll manually edit from now on and chill out unless something seems off.

Thanks guys!

Christine_72

OP are you losing more than 1lb a week?

Hoshiko

No, but my weight is often all over the place due to water retention and strenuous workouts.

I just downloaded the app Libra and have been tracking my trend for the past two weeks to get a better picture of how much I was losing. So far it seems to be relatively on target.

TimothyFish

If MFP is overestimating your burns, then figure out what the correct number is and put that in instead. If half is right, then maybe just log half of your workout. Now that I'm on maintenance, I'm not as convinced that the calorie burns are as far off as people think they are.