Logging calories

jasonfruen9699

Question for those of you who use an Apple Watch. The watch logs active and total calories burned during a workout. I’ve just been logging my active calories in the MyFitnessPal App. I allow MFP to give me calorie credit for workouts.

Am I doing this correctly or should I log total calories?

Thanks,

Jason

springlering62

Have you set Watch and MFP up to sync? If so, it will report the calories automatically.

Be sure to set your activity level under your MFP profile.

If you have negative calorie adjustment set, expect to see some calories actually subtracted. It’s not perfect (can be maddening, in fact, if you’re extremely active), but it’ll help keep you from overeating earned calories by accident.

There’s a learning curve.

And if you compare Apple Watch calories burned to, say, those shown on gym equipment, you’ll be shocked at how gym equipment over-credits you calories. I’ve found the Watch to be pretty accurate.

springlering62

This is a sample day (yesterday) for me. Apple Watch automatically transferred all the data, and then MFP calculated a negative calorie adjustment.

My vague understanding of that is that they deduct for calories you would have earned anyway, using “highly active” as the profile setting. I can’t “earn” both highly active and exercise calories at the same time.

BTW, two caveats with this sample. Don’t undereat like I did yesterday. I had a 5,000+ calorie day at Bunco with the gals the day before, and treated it as a much needed refeed. I wasn’t very hungry yesterday as a result, and made myself eat what I did eat. Consistently undereating is a path to poor health NOT quick weight loss. I’ve been at this for several years and know what I need to do to maintain, and know when I need to top off some calories.

Second caveat, I’m not happy with how Apple health records gym sessions, so I don’t record those. I just notate them in the log so I know what days I’ve been lifting. That’s why you’ll see an entry showing 1 lift for 1 minute. My personal shorthand there.

Finally, you do, I assume, know that you have to both start and end a workout by pressing the little green running man to earn exercise calories that will transfer.

springlering62

Little green running man in case you haven’t found him yet. I’m always surprised at people who think you can just have at it, and Apple know what you’re doing. It doesn’t. Stop and start those workouts with Ampfelmann there.

jasonfruen9699

I’ll look into linking them. Thank you. Mainly I just wanted to decide if I should log active or total calories? I think active makes sense because they’re the above and beyond calories burned, that were earned due to exercise.

Regarding food- I definitely eat at a calorie deficit as I’m still in a weight loss phase. I take breaks here and there but I’ve got it dialed in well. Over the last 14 months I’ve lost 115 pounds and I’m on my way to 150. Almost there. I can’t wait to eat at maintenance levels again for good. Especially with my knowledge of food and nutrition now. This app sure helps a lot as well. I wish I had adapted to it much sooner.

I also exercise for an average of 75 to 80 minutes a day 5 to 6 days a week. It’s become my lifestyle. I see that time cutting back a bit once I reach my goal but you never know.

Thanks for the input.

Jason

springlering62

You know what? You’ve done spectacularly well doing what you’re doing. Why mess with success?

It was when I changed my settings to “experiment” with negative calories that I lost track for a couple months of what I could eat.

I’ve just now gotten the rhythm back. And apparently, once you enable negative calories, it won’t let you go back.

It’s overthinking that messes us up!

KimiAR

I do it manually and don’t have MFP linked to my watch. Then if I have a 200 calorie work out I just add in anywhere up to 200 (depending on what it was I don’t always eat back the calories it says I’ve expended so for me this is easier).

wakegrrl

My watch is set up to automatically load the workouts into MFP and it only logs the active calories. So I'd stick with that.