Calories Burned

briegemcparland2096
briegemcparland2096 Posts: 1 Member
in Getting Started
Hello, i am new here. My main query is do you have to burn more calories than what you eat, but i have an apple watch and i dont know if i should record the active calories or the kilo calories from my indoor cycle. Also I am wondering how many calories you should roughly burn in a day. I am 21 and trying to improve my fitness after an illness. How can you determind your fitness level?

Replies

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    briegemcparland2096 wrote: »
    Hello, i am new here. My main query is do you have to burn more calories than what you eat, but i have an apple watch and i dont know if i should record the active calories or the kilo calories from my indoor cycle. Also I am wondering how many calories you should roughly burn in a day. I am 21 and trying to improve my fitness after an illness. How can you determind your fitness level?

    Not sure exactly what you mean by the bolded...to lose weight, you need to consume fewer calories than you expend in a day...but that doesn't mean you eat 1500 calories or whatever and you need to burn that amount through exercise.

    You burn calories 24/7...most of your calorie expenditure is you merely existing and being alive...then your day to day activities. Unless you're training like an athlete, the calorie expenditure through deliberate exercise is typically just a gravy type of thing...it's not that much in the bigger picture of your overall calorie needs.

    When you put in your stats and desired rate of loss in MFP, the calculator will calculate a calorie target for weight loss...you should eat that plus some estimate of your exercise calories, as exercise isn't included in your activity level if you have set up your profile as MFP intends you to.
  • AsthmaticHippo
    AsthmaticHippo Posts: 62 Member
    Hi,

    If you go through the profile setup MFP will give you a calorie target. This target is a little below what your body will on average use before exercise. If you consume this number or a little below you will lose weight

    Doing exercise will burn additional calories which you can add to you daily total (again the diary logging will do this for you) but take care getting an accurate burn rate is hard (MFP suggested 300cals more than my Garmin for the same exercise).

    I would use the calories from your watch, as it has a HR reader and will be more accurate than the exercise bike

    Good luck, hope this helps. Feel free to friend me if you want encouragement.

Categories