Calorie intake vs excercise

jhyde78

If MFP has given me a 1230 calorie a day goal, but I burn 500 calories, do i have to eat those calories back? If i dont, it tells me im not eating enough...

Panini911

yes mfp assumes no purposeful exercise. so you need to eat a reasonable estimate of your exercise calories burned

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation/p1

jan110144

I typically eat back about 50% of my exercise calories (I don't really trust exercise calories as many of them are pretty significantly over-stated ... particularly coming from the fitness watches). This strategy has worked well for me ... 50 pounds lost in 6 mo and holding consistently in maintenance for another 6.

corinasue1143

Depends. Is the 1230 calories to lose 2 pounds a week? Or 1/2 pound a week? How much are you really losing?
If you want to lose 1 pound a week and your tdee is 1730, you can either eat 1230 calories a day (a deficit of 500 calories a day) and eat back all your exercise calories, or you can eat tdee - 250 (1480) calories and exercise 250 calories worth, or you can eat tdee - 250 calories (1480) and exercise 500 calories and eat 1/2 of them for a total of 1730 calories a day.
Each way gives you a deficit of 500 calories, but allows you to eat more or less, depending on your exercise.

NorthCascades

Yes.

People who don't exercise can still lose weight. MFP is set up this way, it gives you a calorie goal with the assumption that you'll do no exercise. That goal is small enough - 1,230 kCal in your case - that you'll lose weight even if the only walking you do is to the bathroom.

But since you're exercising on top of dieting, you need to eat more. Nobody is going to hold you down and force feed you, so I'm that sense it's optional, but you need to trust that this was set up correctly, and eat more. I used to fill my gas tank every 2 weeks to drive to work and back, but when I started driving to trails on weekends, I had to start buying more gas. Same thing. You move more, you eat more. You'll have to once you get to your goal weight, you should start now.

But there's one caveat. Most of the popular ways to ballpark how many calories you've burned are "generous." If it said you burned 500, many people assume they really burned 250. You might want to do that, you might not; in about a month you'll have enough data (calories in, calories out, weight) to know the truth.