I don't understand cal count logic

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Replies

  • ilex70
    ilex70 Posts: 727 Member
    Don't worry about it OP. Calorie burn from exercise is very roughly estimated and not worth losing sleep over.

    Exercise for health, diet for weight loss.

    Eat the number of calories recommended by your dietitian. If you find that you are losing weight too quickly (more than 1% of body weight a week) then bump your daily calories by 100. Still losing more than 1% a week? Bump them 100 a day more, or reduce your activity.

    MFP AFAIK uses a formula based on body weight X volume to give a calorie burn estimate. Then some people will say "well I am accurate because I use a tracker", or "I use a heart rate monitor". But it is still just an estimate. Because an overfat unfit person will burn more calories for the same given volume of exercise vs. an leaner more fit person. The body adapts and becomes more efficient with training.

    It is the same as with diet. The estimate for maintenance/weight loss is a good place to start and works well for most. That doesn't mean it works optimally for everyone.

    I've seen plenty of post here with people saying "well I am shorter than you and weigh less than you and I lose weight eating more calories than you are eating". Great. But it is "one size fits most" not "one size fits all".

    Plenty of places you will find the formula for maintenance calories = body weight in pounds X 15. I gain weight at that level. I maintain around body weight in pounds X 11.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    paperbeagle wrote: »
    Ok so I am on a 1200-1500cal plan with a dietician. I just don't get how I can lose weight with the way mfp does cal counts. I did a big hike yesterday in very rough terrain. It comes up as 1400+ cals burned. Great right? No... because for every cal burned mfp adds those onto your daily intake. That's insane. If you go with that logic you can sit motionless each day and lose weight... which is onviously false except for loss of muscle mass. I get that the body needs a base amt of cal just to function but it just doesn't make sense to me as it is. Lil help appreciated.

    Oh... i should say that I have had thyroid issues over the years and even at 1200cal i don't lose weight. My body will lower my metabolism instead of burning fat. So if i am upping my intake of cals I'll never lose anything.

    Anyone got clarity on the cal add up?

    Working with a dietician is a great idea! I recommend giving them feedback about how you are feeling on whatever calorie level they recommend. Many of them recommend MFP and understand it very well (it is based on well known calorie burn formulas).

    Hiking is great exercise, is fun, and burns significant calories, because you are typically doing it for an extended time and often on a grade. MFP has only three hiking entries (climbing with/without weight and cross country). Those numbers are only rough estimates. It would totally depend on how hard you hike and over what grade, for example.

    If you hike, walk, and/or run for exercise, you can either use an app like MapMyFitness, which takes into account your weight, the grade, and your speed to do a calorie estimate, or you can get a fitness monitor like Fitbit Charge 2, which also monitors your heart rate. In either case, it pays to be a little conservative in eating back exercise calories.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited April 2017
    paperbeagle wrote: »
    Ok so I am on a 1200-1500cal plan with a dietician. I just don't get how I can lose weight with the way mfp does cal counts. I did a big hike yesterday in very rough terrain. It comes up as 1400+ cals burned. Great right? No... because for every cal burned mfp adds those onto your daily intake. That's insane. If you go with that logic you can sit motionless each day and lose weight... which is onviously false except for loss of muscle mass. I get that the body needs a base amt of cal just to function but it just doesn't make sense to me as it is. Lil help appreciated.

    If your calorie goal was set with a dietitian and you were honest with the dietitian about your activity level and you two came up with a plan to include that (upfront or eat more if you exercise a lot or eat more if hungry), stick to that. When you log exercise on MFP (which you don't have to do, I usually don't since I track it elsewhere), just change the calorie count to one calorie.

    However, you CAN lose not exercising (not recommending this, but people obviously do and some have no choice).

    The MFP goal is calculated (if you don't imput a goal calculated elsewhere) by estimating maintenance IF you don't exercise and then subtracting enough to meet your goal (or to get to 1200, whichever is higher). Then when you exercise you eat it back. It should end up the same.

    1200-1500 seems kind of low, so I will assume you don't normally exercise that much or you have a lot to lose and the dietitian thinks a big deficit is fine, or both. If this is a situation (exercising this much) you didn't talk about with the dietitian and it's not just a one time thing, talk to her (or him) about it, and how you feel in general.

    If a one-time thing, eat more if hungrier, but don't worry about it if you aren't.

    If I was doing MFP method and eating back calories (but you are not), I'd probably eat back only part of them until I knew loss rate. I eventually found that my losses were pretty consistent with eating back most of them for biking and running, as I calculated them, but for other people or exercises they can end up covering for logging errors or just were more overstated. Main thing is if losses are consistent with a reasonable goal -- if they are off expectations over time (not just a week or two) then things should be looked at again.
  • Running_and_Coffee
    Running_and_Coffee Posts: 811 Member
    I don't eat back more than 100-200 calories that I burn. I can't. When I train for a half-marathon, I'll burn 800-1400 calories during a long run (about 100 calories a mile). When I have EATEN that back (tempting to do--I get rungry) I gain. Not a lot, but enough that my weight is 2-4 lbs heavier the weeks before a race, and a week after the race, I'm back down to normal. So if I am trying to lose weight, it doesn't make sense for me to eat the calories back.
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,128 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    storyjorie wrote: »
    I don't eat back more than 100-200 calories that I burn. I can't. When I train for a half-marathon, I'll burn 800-1400 calories during a long run (about 100 calories a mile). When I have EATEN that back (tempting to do--I get rungry) I gain. Not a lot, but enough that my weight is 2-4 lbs heavier the weeks before a race, and a week after the race, I'm back down to normal. So if I am trying to lose weight, it doesn't make sense for me to eat the calories back.

    If eating back your exercise calories makes you gain, then this means your estimates for your calories burnt are probably off. Not that important because you've found a way that works for you, but assuming we could perfectly understand our calories in and our calories out, eating exercise calories would never result in weight gain.

    Possible that it could be water gain from a combination of more intense workouts and altered macro/micros.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    paperbeagle wrote: »
    Ok so I am on a 1200-1500cal plan with a dietician. I just don't get how I can lose weight with the way mfp does cal counts. I did a big hike yesterday in very rough terrain. It comes up as 1400+ cals burned. Great right? No... because for every cal burned mfp adds those onto your daily intake. That's insane. If you go with that logic you can sit motionless each day and lose weight... which is onviously false except for loss of muscle mass. I get that the body needs a base amt of cal just to function but it just doesn't make sense to me as it is. Lil help appreciated.

    Oh... i should say that I have had thyroid issues over the years and even at 1200 cal i don't lose weight. My body will lower my metabolism instead of burning fat. So if i am upping my intake of cals I'll never lose anything.

    Anyone got clarity on the cal add up?

    Study after study shows people are terrible at estimating how much they are eating. Even with a thyroid issue, f you're not losing weight while eating 1200 calories, you are either a Little Person or are like the many, many people who need help calculating how much they are eating.

    For starters, are you using a food scale to measure your food?
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    MoiAussi93 wrote: »
    Eat what YOU feel you need. You know your body much better than mfp does. ANd keep in mind, those calorie count estimates are not very accurate. SO if instead of 1,000 calories, you only really burned 700...if you eat an extra 1,000 you will actually be OVER your targeted calories for the day. You need to keep a cushion to account for this.

    My apologies in advance for focusing on your post; the position you take is one shared (and posted) often and by many.

    "eat what you feel you need. You know your body much better than..." <-- Nope: for a significant number of people on MFP this hasn't worked so well... that's why we are on MFP.

    Unless you've been successful in the past with "intuitive" eating, I see nothing magical about your body now that makes it all of a sudden more trustworthy than it was when you were gaining weight.

    "You need to keep a cushion to account for this" <-- That's one way of doing things. Another way is trusting the numbers and comparing your actual and expected progress 4-6 weeks later. And adjusting as per your actual progress.

    The value judgement that losing faster is a smaller problem than losing slower is implied in the "keep a cushion" attitude; yet depending on individual circumstances it is far from a universal truth.


    All of this applied and still applies to me in maintenance. I have calories creeping up that I am unconscious of, I can eat more calories than mfp has me set at for maintenance, but even at that, I will go over and eventually have to pull up my socks and get real again. Best wishes on reaching your goals, its pretty simple, and after some trail and error for a week or two you can settle in to what works for you.

  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    Let me add that, when I have a big calorie burn day (such as a hike), I don't try to eat all those calories back in the same day. It pays to spread them out a bit.

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