Profile Page Set Up

donjtomasco

If I input '5 workouts per week', '60 minutes per workout', and 'lightly active', then during my day and week, as I exercise, do I only add exercises that EXCEED these profile page inputs?

I am trying to really understand what should be added as exercise in order to see if there are calories that I can 'eat back' over my daily MFP allotted set goal.

Thank you!

WorkerDrone83

The 5 x workouts per week @60 mins each is your goal setting. You'll still need to manually input your exercises once you finish them.

The 'lightly active' just tries to compensate for your daily activity and will slightly adjust your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, which may give you more calories.

kommodevaran

The basic calorie target MFP gives you, uses your selection of 'lightly active', which is "normal daily activity" like work, not your intended exercise - you are supposed to log the exercise and then eat back those calories.

malibu927

Exercise isn’t factored into your goal at all. You log what you do.

cmriverside

I always use the Activity to set my daily goals - stuff I do every day. The Exercise is purposeful additional exercise, and I add that to the Exercise tab and eat more for that.

Just be honest on your daily activity. Then add exercise you do that is above that. Keep good records, adjust in a month if it isn't working.

All these numbers are merely a starting point. As always the experiment is yours to run and the best results come to those who keep good data.

donjtomasco

So when MFP asks on the profile page setup info "How many times do you plan on exercising per week?" this has nothing to do with what we 'actually do' each day for calculating purposes?

What I am hearing from the first 4 comments is that for example, if I now go walk for 45 minutes and burn 300 calories, that those should be added today giving me 300 more calories to eat today if I want. Is this correct?

I guess my real world example is that I have 1,890 calories that I can eat today to hit my daily goal. I have plugged into MFP that I want to lose 1 pound per week, I am lightly active, I workout 5 times per week with 60 minutes per workout. So if I walk 45 minutes now, and burn 300 calories, do I input that for my day today, bringing my calories goal to 2,190?

malibu927

Yes. The exercise goal is just a personal goal, I guess.

I think you may benefit from reading some of the posts in the Most Helpful stickies at the top of this forum and General Diet just to refresh yourself on these things.

donjtomasco

Thank you mallbu. That really was my answer. I tried to keep it simple. I did try first to search for this simple answer but I keep reading more and more that was more complicated then I was looking for. I am not trying to be crazy calculating with my MFP. I am more setting a reasonable target, measuring food the best I can, and trying to input exercise that I 'should' get credit for that I can eat back.

But this calculation has always confounded me.

You gave the simple answer I have been looking for being "exercise goal is not an MFP calculation, it is what we put in as our own goal".

So we could put those numbers at -0- and -0- and it would not change anything. Or 7 and 7. We still add what our exercise for the day and can eat that back.

THANK YOU!