I don't see muscle building in my goals

junkmail4379

Hello,
I swear to God I added muscle building as one of my goals, but I don't see it in my goals:



Furthermore, I don't know how to add it. Please help.

Lietchi

Building muscle isn't a goal you can set. The weekly goal can be set to (different rates of) weight gain or weight loss, or weight maintenance.
You can also adjust your macros if you feel it's necessary for building muscle, for example increase your protein intake.

Sissylynn1979

Well... You likely DID set muscle-building as a goal. But the app can't track that specifically! However, if you go here:

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/my-goals/fitness (sorry I haven't been on the app since changes were made) you can set your goals specifically for:

-Calories per week you want to burn
-Workouts per week you want to do
-Minutes you intend to workout during each workout

as well as choosing whether you want the app to factor that into your calorie goals.

Then you have to choose to do exercises/workouts which will build up the muscle groups you want. The "Fitness and Exercise" category on these boards is probably the best place to find help deciding what to do with that!!

Lietchi

Sissylynn1979 wrote: »

Well... You likely DID set muscle-building as a goal. But the app can't track that specifically! However, if you go here:

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/my-goals/fitness (sorry I haven't been on the app since changes were made) you can set your goals specifically for:

-Calories per week you want to burn
-Workouts per week you want to do
-Minutes you intend to workout during each workout

as well as choosing whether you want the app to factor that into your calorie goals.

Then you have to choose to do exercises/workouts which will build up the muscle groups you want. The "Fitness and Exercise" category on these boards is probably the best place to find help deciding what to do with that!!

The exercise goals in the setup are pretty much useless though, they don't influence the calorie goal or do much of anything really.

Sissylynn1979

Lietchi wrote: »

The exercise goals in the setup are pretty much useless though, they don't influence the calorie goal or do much of anything really.

That's... really a matter of opinion. A lot of people are helped by tracking their exercise, and it *does* affect the calories if you set it up to do so.

There's no "build muscle" goal that's going to appear under that tab. If OP wants a way to track muscle-building activity in the app, how else would they do that?

They can track macros, and upping the protein will *help* in muscle building, but protein doesn't magically make muscles appear either. Still need to workout, right?

Lietchi

Sissylynn1979 wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

The exercise goals in the setup are pretty much useless though, they don't influence the calorie goal or do much of anything really.

That's... really a matter of opinion. A lot of people are helped by tracking their exercise, and it *does* affect the calories if you set it up to do so.

There's no "build muscle" goal that's going to appear under that tab. If OP wants a way to track muscle-building activity in the app, how else would they do that?

They can track macros, and upping the protein will *help* in muscle building, but protein doesn't magically make muscles appear either. Still need to workout, right?

I stand by what I said: the exercise info in the goal setup doesn't do anything.

I didn't say tracking exercise is useless, that's a different thing altogether. Exercise when logged in the diary does influence the calorie goal.

Sissylynn1979

Lietchi wrote: »

I stand by what I said: the exercise info in the goal setup doesn't do anything.

I didn't say tracking exercise is useless, that's a different thing altogether. Exercise when logged in the diary does influence the calorie goal.

Okayyy... and I stand by what *I* said. This OP wants to see something in their "Goals". What I said is the *only* option to show that in their "Goals".

Not sure why you want to debate what it *does*, as that has nothing to do with the topic of this post.

Lietchi

To me the idea of setting muscle building as a goal would imply it actually changes your goals on the app, whether in calories, macros, etc. Hence why I mentioned that entering exercise goals doesn't do anything, unlike the activity level setting, weight loss/ gain rate setting etc.
Also, it's a very common misconception that the exercise goals influence the calorie goal (some newbies don't enter exercise in their diary, figuring it's not necessary since they entered it in their goals).

The exercise goals also don't relate to muscle building necessarily, just exercise in general, which could be anything (not necessarily exercise that builds muscle).

If OP gives some more details on what they're expecting, it might make it easier to give further info.

Sissylynn1979

Lietchi wrote: »

To me the idea of setting muscle building as a goal would imply it actually changes your goals on the app, whether in calories, macros, etc. Hence why I mentioned that entering exercise goals doesn't do anything, unlike the activity level setting, weight loss/ gain rate setting etc.
Also, it's a very common misconception that the exercise goals influence the calorie goal (some newbies don't enter exercise in their diary, figuring it's not necessary since they entered it in their goals).

The exercise goals also don't relate to muscle building necessarily, just exercise in general, which could be anything (not necessarily exercise that builds muscle).

If OP gives some more details on what they're expecting, it might make it easier to give further info.

That makes sense. I didn't think about people neglecting to enter the exercise!

junkmail4379

Thanks both for your feedback.

My experience with the app so far shows that while you can't add muscle building as a goal in the goals section, you can add exercise (even specifying that it's "weight" and # of sets and repetitions and lbs per set, etc.) in the daily diary section. However, it doesn't let you log how many calories you burn (how would you measure that anyway?) and therefore doesn't contribute to your calorie goal for the day.

Lietchi

junkmail4379 wrote: »

Thanks both for your feedback.

My experience with the app so far shows that while you can't add muscle building as a goal in the goals section, you can add exercise (even specifying that it's "weight" and # of sets and repetitions and lbs per set, etc.) in the daily diary section. However, it doesn't let you log how many calories you burn (how would you measure that anyway?) and therefore doesn't contribute to your calorie goal for the day.

Counterintuitive, but you need to look under the category 'cardiovascular' to enter strength training with a duration to get calories for it.

lynn_glenmont

Edited to delete -- the point I made was acknowledged further down the thread by the poster who appeared to be making a false claim about how MFP works.