Activity Settings vs "Eating Back" Exercise Calories

13»

Replies

  • SCoil123
    SCoil123 Posts: 2,108 Member
    I'm set to sedentary with Fitbit synced and negative adjustments activated. That works for me. My activity level varies a lot. Some days I earn 200 cals and others I earn closer to 1400 (typically boxing class and dog walk combo day).
  • mrstrod1
    mrstrod1 Posts: 17 Member
    Ok, so that makes a lot more sense to me. I was thinking that the calories MFP gave me each day were my calories to eat and that if I wanted to get a deficit, I had to leave some on the table. Then, I was adding exercise as extra deficit. I hadn't realized that a deficit was already figured in the MFP daily calories!

    I do let my fitbit log all of my exercise, but I have noticed that it doesn't seem to always recognize my crossfit activities that are not areobic.
    For instance Monday it only gave me credit for a 17 minute workout and a 11 minute workout (it labels these workouts as elliptical - but I was doing all sorts of things like burpees and 500m uphill runs).
    But in between those two - I actually did do about 30 minutes of back squats and shoulder presses. I know that weight training does not earn many calories but fitbit gives me none. That's another reason why I feel "lighty active" is more accurate since I weight train between 4 & 6 days a week.

    As far as keeping up this activity, I really love crossfit so I do see myself doing this long term but I anticipate dropping to only 4 days a week instead of 5 or 6 once I get closer to my goal weight. I started this journey because I was diagnosed with a breastt cancer that has a very high recurrence rate and weight is a big factor. So, I have been trying to set my goals for long term, not just fast weight loss - that's why I actually was trying to slow my loss a little so that I could be sure I wasn't losing any costly lean tissue. But now that I know, I have more calories to eat, I will probably be more successful at slowing my loss rate. And you know what, a small scoop of ice cream now and again sounds nice!
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    mrstrod1 wrote: »
    I do let my fitbit log all of my exercise, but I have noticed that it doesn't seem to always recognize my crossfit activities that are not areobic.
    For instance Monday it only gave me credit for a 17 minute workout and a 11 minute workout (it labels these workouts as elliptical - but I was doing all sorts of things like burpees and 500m uphill runs).
    But in between those two - I actually did do about 30 minutes of back squats and shoulder presses. I know that weight training does not earn many calories but fitbit gives me none. That's another reason why I feel "lightly active" is more accurate since I weight train between 4 & 6 days a week.

    Does your FitBit have a heartrate monitor? If not, it's just a pedometer so all it can recognize are step-based activities. If it does have a heartrate monitor, you may be getting credited for calories burned (due to elevated heartrate) despite the fact that it's not showing that as an official "activity". If you really want it to show up as an "activity", you can use the side button on your FitBit to tell it "activity starts now!" and tell it what you're doing. You then have to remember to tell it when you're finished, of course. :smile:

    For example, yesterday I got 32,049 steps and burned 3,359 calories. (This was not a typical day.) FitBit recorded 10 separate "activities" - 9 "walk" and 1 "sport". Those activities account for 23,553 steps, but I still got credit for the other 8,496 steps and the calories that they burned. They just happened in small enough bursts that they never turned into a full activity (and two of the walks plus the "sport" should all have been just one walk; not sure what happened there).
    mrstrod1 wrote: »
    But now that I know, I have more calories to eat, I will probably be more successful at slowing my loss rate. And you know what, a small scoop of ice cream now and again sounds nice!

    It is indeed! Good plan!

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited June 2017
    mrstrod1 wrote: »
    Ok, so I have read this whole thread and I am still confused. I still don't understand the "eating" back your exercise thing. If you are trying to have a deficit, how else would you get it? Seriously I'm not being a smart-alec, I just don't get how I'm supposed to use the numbers MFP gives me.

    This might help. (Edit: Oh, hahah, I missed that there was a page 2. This all may be moot! But maybe it will be useful to someone.)

    Before MFP I decided to figure out my calorie goal. At the time I wanted to lose 2 lb/week, and estimated my maintenance calories (based on what I was then eating) at around 2200 calories, even though I was (to my mind) sedentary, in that I did no exercise. I decided it made sense to cut calories by 500 and add exercise up to about 500 cal/day, which would have given me a calorie goal of 1700, and I would not eat back calories from exercise.

    With MFP, I went through the program and said sedentary (based on what it described for sedentary) and explained I intended to exercise and so on and got 1200 calories. Ugh! So I changed my exercise and did it again, same, and then I finally realized that it wasn't including the exercise. So to lose 2 lb/week while sedentary, I would have to eat 1200. If I wanted to do what I thought was good before (lose 1 lb through exercise and 1 lb by cutting calories), I would log back the exercise I did (the 500 per day, on average) and then end up with -- tah dah! -- the 1700 that the other method gave me.

    Cutting calories to the level I should eat if NOT exercising and then proceeding to exercise on top of that would not be healthy. And as you can see, adding back exercise does not interfere with having a deficit or weight loss -- does that make sense?

    Also, one thing I realized after doing it for a bit -- I was not sedentary, I was lightly active even without exercise, as I walk a decent amount. I changed my activity level, but you can handle this with a Fitbit if you have one, or some other activity tracker.
    This was yesterday (typical day for exercise cals is between 400 & 700)
    Goal 1660 - food 1574 + exercise 674 = 760 remaining (so am I not really supposed to have the 760 remaining? was I supposed to eat those too?

    YES, you do eat these too.

    The reason many people say eat 50% or 75% of them, to start, however, is because if you do not have an activity tracker that is reliable and if you are doing exercises like Crossfit which are extremely hard to measure accurately MFP often overestimates them. In particular, I think it overestimates "circuit training" or similar classes, at least for people who are still pretty out of shape, things like zumba classes or dancing, and the elliptical and spinning. Also people sometimes use outdoor biking entries for stationary biking and those are wrong and overcount. The big commonality in most of these is that how hard you feel like you are working doesn't necessarily tell you what the calorie burn was, and people who are out of shape think they are working really hard (and genuinely are) when doing less actual activity. The running entries are more reliable, because you base it on actual time and speed (so ultimately distance). (Running gets off if you run for longer, as it doesn't subtract out calories that would be burned anyway.)

    Big point is pick a method to start with and then go by results. Are you losing what you intended to over a month? Great? More or less? Consider adjusting.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    SusanMFindlay wrote: »
    It's also worth noting that if you have a lot of calories left at the end of the day because you were more active than usual, there's no rule that says you have to eat them on that same day. If you're not hungry and would prefer to save them for the next day (when you might be hungrier) or a special event a couple of days later, your body will not care. It will only care if you consistently undereat.

    This too, and this is why I tend to use TDEE method (that averages workout calories over the week).
  • Geocitiesuser
    Geocitiesuser Posts: 1,429 Member
    I have mine set to sedentary for max weight loss (1.5lb per week). I only eat part of my exercise calories, and most likely underestimate my calorie burn.

    Do not do what I'm doing. I'm trying to correct my behavior because I'm eating far too few calories. I know my problem is that initial goal of 1500 calories has me thinking that 1500 is the magic number when in reality it is just way too low. All of the aspects of weight loss I've struggled with in the past month or two are a direct result of method 1 as described in the original post.

    Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    WW merely doing what the people want - best potential for fast weight loss.
    Never mind what the weight actually is and how it affects maintaining.
    Must meet scale goal!

    And after you lose to goal weight, and then blow up in maintenance (figuratively and literally) - they got you hooked because you were successful once, and most programs like that squarely try to lay the blame on the person (which is many time true anyway), so they will come back and try harder next time.

  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    Yep, i think WW relies on repeat business.

Categories