Exercise and calories

wunderkindking

AnnPT77 wrote: »

wunderkindking wrote: »

a method I'm using right now that I don't often see - even for those with only a little left to lose - is to set your calories to maintain and then just let your exercise create the deficit.

This is obviously a terrible idea if you're doing a ton of exercise but for me it's working out fine and it's easier than tracking the activity and estimating the actual burn compared to MFP estimates.

That method can be fine, yes.

It can fail, too, if MFP mis-estimates one's pre-exercise maintenance calories. Rare for it to materially mis-estimate those, but possible and it does happen.

When someone doesn't lose as expected here, they often blame the exercise calorie estimate. Sometimes that's right, of course. But any (or all) of the estimates can be wrong: Food, BMR, daily life calorie expenditure, exercise calorie expenditure.

For most people, exercise calories are the numerically smallest thing on that list, but that exercise estimate's nearly always the one blamed for unexpected loss rate. It's odd.

It's a strange thing.

On the other hand if they're making an adjustment somewhere - exercise calorie estimates, the activity level setting, food scale, deficit size - to get to the results they intend it probably doesn't much matter on an individual basis.

Giving the advice that NO ONE eat exercise calories is, however, downright dangerous.

KNoceros

wunderkindking wrote: »

It's a strange thing.

On the other hand if they're making an adjustment somewhere - exercise calorie estimates, the activity level setting, food scale, deficit size - to get to the results they intend it probably doesn't much matter on an individual basis.

Giving the advice that NO ONE eat exercise calories is, however, downright dangerous.

This. Especially the last sentence. There are days where if I didn’t “eat back” I would net less than 500cal, which is clearly not a good idea.