Profile setting questions

RobBasss

For the section "How would you describe your normal daily activities?" Do I take into account I work out 5x a week or is this simply I sit most of the day in my office therefore I am Sedentary? I ask because right below is the section about exercising. Keep in mind I do workout 5x a week, so I put sedentary, 5x workout @ 45 mins each. It set my daily calorie goal at 1500 which is MUCH lower than all other websites that have a similar calculator. The other websites say roughly for me to lose 1lb a week with being fairly active I should eat around ~2000 calories.

Tacklewasher

MFP doesn't take exercise into consideration in your base calories. It uses your Non-Exercise activity thermosomething. So, in what you describe to use MFP as intended, you would set it to sedentary and then eat back you exercise calories. So you would eat 1500 plus whatever you exercise.

If you are consistent with your exercises, then you could use the TDEE method, which include exercise calories, and eat that much. In that case you could change your activity levels until it gives you 2000 calories, but not put your exercise in.

I'm not that consistent with what I do but am just using MFP to track what I eat, I aim for 2000 per day and let the weight loss fall where it may, but I won't eat back any added calories MFP gives me for exercising unless I have a real active day (today may be one of those, 5K run, going to the dump and have a whack of yard work to do).

Nikion901

^ this ... ^^^^

Use one method or the other, but don't combine them. Also, exercise calories are frequently overstated, so if you do eat them back, consider only eating a portion of them back.

RobBasss

Intersting, most websites must use the TDEE method then, I usually pick moderately active and they spit out this:

You need 2,572 Calories/day to maintain your weight. 2,572
You need 2,072 Calories/day to lose 1 lb per week. 2,072

I will just use MFP to track the 2000 calorie number and not put in exercise. Its easier to stick to a consistent number than try and adjust when I workout since I do take off a couple of days a week.

It is a little deceiving though, I do eat back the calories as I thought I earned N number of calories back from exercising, turns out I was over-eating on most of those days... grrr... explains why at times I saw little to no progress. FUDGE no wonder i can't drop these 15 pounds I gained.

nowine4me

If you use TDEE, I would suggest turning OFF the feature to "add back exercise calories." You can still log your workouts --for the record-- if you wish. But it doesn't add the calories back.

CyberTone

nowine4me wrote: »

If you use TDEE, I would suggest turning OFF the feature to "add back exercise calories." You can still log your workouts --for the record-- if you wish. But it doesn't add the calories back.

Turning of Calories earned from logging exercise in MFP is available to Premium subscribers only; that is why you can do that.

Those without Premium have to log the exercise, then edit the estimate Calories to 1 or 0,1 Calories.

malibu927

If you're following TDEE, don't log your exercise