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Extra calories

applebreeze
applebreeze Posts: 2 Member
in Food and Nutrition
You have an alloted amount of calories to consume. when you work out fitness pal calculates you together extra calories should you eat to match the extra calories or just stick with your alloted calries

Replies

  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,155 Member
    applebreeze wrote: »
    You have an alloted amount of calories to consume. when you work out fitness pal calculates you together extra calories should you eat to match the extra calories or just stick with your alloted calries

    My Fitness Pal is designed for you to eat the exercise calories. For some people, the estimated amount is too high and so they only eat some of them back. Others eat them all.

    I use a fitness tracker and eat back the calories it gives me from syncing to MyFitnessPal. Those include my everyday activity in addition to exercise, and I find it to be generally accurate, if even a little bit under given my rate of weight loss.

    I would stick with one method of counting for a while (as long as a month) and see if your average weight loss works out as you want it. If it works, keep going, if not, you can adjust then. :)
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
    edited April 2021
    The app is designed for you to eat those calories, but not everyone does.

    I eat about half of mine on average. Sometimes I eat them all, sometimes I don't eat any-- but it works out to about half.

    FYI, I've also found through experience that I'm a more efficient swimmer than MFP thinks I am, and so it overestimates my lap-swimming calorie burn by about 20-25%. If I swim 45 minutes, I log 36 minutes to help compensate for that--but it took me about 6-7 months to figure that out.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,105 Member
    Yes, the calories that mfp gives you are based on not exercising. That means the activity level you select needs to depend on your daily activity without exercise. If you sit behind your computer all day then you're likely sedentary, if you run behind children all day then likely rather active. Then you log your exercises on top and eat those calories back. In theory. As exercise calories can be very overstated. Starting with half of them and seeing what happens for a month or so might be a good idea.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Make them good estimates and eat them all back, they aren't really "extra" in the sense your daily goal is set only for a day with no purposeful exercise.

    The database here is just one option for estimating your exercise calories.
  • applebreeze
    applebreeze Posts: 2 Member
    Thank you all for responding

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