Plateau - and exercise calories are sometimes 2000

silken555

Watts...can you give us your height and age please?

iwatts3519

hi
does Endomondo allow you to manually input burned calories? I manually input my calories on MFP based on my Polar HRM readings.

Yes it does - it would allow me to overide calories burnt.

iwatts3519

The Polar H7 works with Endomondo on my iPhone.

Shame I don't have an iPhone - I have a Nexus 4

iwatts3519

zephyr hrm works with Endo on android and iphone. I would suggest to drop some of the steady state cardio and add in some HIIT and/or weight training. It has definitely help me break through some plateaus while maintaining my lean mass.

I'm not sure if the Zephyr works with Android 4.3 - Android 4.3 seems to be waiting for apps to enable BTLE, but won't support the older Bluetooth specification. I have a Nexus 4 if anybody knows for certain. I would rather use endomondo, but would swap if necessary.

iwatts3519

Watts...can you give us your height and age please?

Hiya

5 foot 10 and 42 - just want to lose weight and get down to about 13-14 stone.

iwatts3519

My Food Diary is public - if anyone can make any suggestions to improvements it would be much appreciated.

PikaKnight

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/872212-you-re-probably-eating-more-than-you-think

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1105036-article-on-flexible-dieting-by-armi-legge?page=1#posts-17068746

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1122891-9-reasons-fat-loss-is-always-slower-than-you-d-like

iwatts3519

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/872212-you-re-probably-eating-more-than-you-think

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1105036-article-on-flexible-dieting-by-armi-legge?page=1#posts-17068746

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1122891-9-reasons-fat-loss-is-always-slower-than-you-d-like

Thanks - I have already read these, but surely the point of MFP is that it does the Maths for you. I use food scales as we are used to it anyway as my daughter is T1 diabetes so we have to count carbs.

I have used one of the calculators on the above links and:

BMR is 2276
TDEE is 3528

MFP has me on 1510 calories on a day with no exercise. I feel like the more I try and understand this the more confusing it gets. Am I really meant to eat 2000 calories extra etc if I do a 20 mile bike ride. I'd be stuffed.

silken555

I did two calculations for you based on two different levels of activity.

TDEE-20% at 5-6hours of strenuous exercise:
- BMR: 2279
- TDEE: 3913
- TDEE-20%: 3145
You would therefore set your daily calorie goal to 3100.

TDEE-20% at 3-5 hours of moderate exercise:
- BMR: 2279
- TDEE: 3532
- TDEE-20%: 2826
You would therefore set your daily calorie goal to 2800.

With TDEE, you do not eat exercise calories back...you don't need to log anything but food. You also need to recalculate every 10lbs or so lost seeing as, as you lose, your caloric needs will change. Keep the -20% as your loss percentage until you get to around 30lbs from goal. At that point reduce your loss pecentage to -15% and once you're within 10lbs of goal to -10%.

Good luck!

shapefitter

IMO, it's better to have a HRM (whether it syncs with your phone or not) for a better burn estimate. Until then, You should be eating at least the recommended minimum for men, which is 1800 calories. Which means, eat your exercise calories until you hit at least 1800 NET.

If the recommended minimum for men is 1800, why does MFP have me on 1510 at the moment

It is 2500 kcal for men. 2000 kcal for women. MFP has given me 2010 kcal a day.

silken555

IMO, it's better to have a HRM (whether it syncs with your phone or not) for a better burn estimate. Until then, You should be eating at least the recommended minimum for men, which is 1800 calories. Which means, eat your exercise calories until you hit at least 1800 NET.

If the recommended minimum for men is 1800, why does MFP have me on 1510 at the moment

It is 2500 kcal for men. 2000 kcal for women. MFP has given me 2010 kcal a day.

That's not the minimum. It's the recommended daily intake.

iwatts3519

I did two calculations for you based on two different levels of activity.

TDEE-20% at 5-6hours of strenuous exercise:
- BMR: 2279
- TDEE: 3913
- TDEE-20%: 3145
You would therefore set your daily calorie goal to 3100.

TDEE-20% at 3-5 hours of moderate exercise:
- BMR: 2279
- TDEE: 3532
- TDEE-20%: 2826
You would therefore set your daily calorie goal to 2800.

With TDEE, you do not eat exercise calories back...you don't need to log anything but food. You also need to recalculate every 10lbs or so lost seeing as, as you lose, your caloric needs will change. Keep the -20% as your loss percentage until you get to around 30lbs from goal. At that point reduce your loss pecentage to -15% and once you're within 10lbs of goal to -10%.

Good luck!

OK - when you say 5-6 hours of strenuous exercise, or 3-5 hours of moderate exercise, is that a day or a week. How have you worked this out. The calculator I used just asked how many times a week I worked out, not what sort of intensity the workout was, or how long it lasted. Is there a better calculator.

iwatts3519

You know what - I'm making this too complicated. I need to just enjoy a healthy diet and get out and exercise more. Once I start overthinking it I then convince myself I can't do it. I will then give up and pile the weight on. I'm going to chill.

cafeaulait7

Try to eat a lot on those huge exercise days, but I wouldn't worry about trying to hit any exact math with it. If you haven't eaten enough from those days, you'll feel it over the next couple of days, I would think. If you feel great, no worries.

You have a lot of mass to work with. It's the teeny tiny folks on low calories who run into not being able to get near enough what they need who need to be extra careful about too many exercise calories left over, imho. Or anyone doing very low nets for too long. I don't think twice a week would do it, but if you notice symptoms or are concerned, bump up the surrounding days' calories a bit and see if that helps. You don't have to eat them all on those big exercise days, just close by, in my experience.

silken555

Per week.

This is the calculator I used: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

It's a very good one and really isn't over-thinking it seeing as it takes less than 2 minutes to calculate.

Exercising more isn't going to help you as exercise is only about 20% of weight loss. It's mostly about food intake.

yarwell

My Food Diary is public - if anyone can make any suggestions to improvements it would be much appreciated.

less carbs - you're over 300 grams some days. If you have a T1 diabetic child you may be inclined to insulin resistance yourself and high carbs aren't the way to go. At your current weight insulin resistance is also likely.

MFP's maths does indeed suggest that if you were to actually burn 2000 calories extra (??) you should eat same extra food to cancel it out. This treadmill mentality isn't in my view appropriate to obese people looking to lose weight - they would be better off taking the extra burn as fat loss and saying thanks, rather than sticking their head in the trough. When you get closer to goal the "eating back the calories" approach becomes more appropriate.

iwatts3519

Per week.

This is the calculator I used: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

It's a very good one and really isn't over-thinking it seeing as it takes less than 2 minutes to calculate.

Exercising more isn't going to help you as exercise is only about 20% of weight loss. It's mostly about food intake.

It wasn't your suggestions making me think that I was overthinking it - glad to have your input. I presume then that if you use TDEE, which seems to make sense, especially at my weight, then you just use MFP as an overall calorie tracker without worrying about it's targets.

Ninkyou

It wasn't your suggestions making me think that I was overthinking it - glad to have your input. I presume then that if you use TDEE, which seems to make sense, especially at my weight, then you just use MFP as an overall calorie tracker without worrying about it's targets.

Yes. When using TDEE method, you would set (custom) MFP goal to your TDEE-20% number. You would then use that as your daily caloric goal. And then, when you exercise (if you want to log it), you add it in and put 1 calorie burned for your duration. This is how I've seen people do it, as I've several friends using the TDEE method. This method may be easier for you, in the long run. It's pretty simple, really, with no extra maths

Good luck getting things figured out and finding what works for you!

iwatts3519

It wasn't your suggestions making me think that I was overthinking it - glad to have your input. I presume then that if you use TDEE, which seems to make sense, especially at my weight, then you just use MFP as an overall calorie tracker without worrying about it's targets.

Yes. When using TDEE method, you would set (custom) MFP goal to your TDEE-20% number. You would then use that as your daily caloric goal. And then, when you exercise (if you want to log it), you add it in and put 1 calorie burned for your duration. This is how I've seen people do it, as I've several friends using the TDEE method. This method may be easier for you, in the long run. It's pretty simple, really, with no extra maths

Good luck getting things figured out and finding what works for you!

That all makes sense - it is basically spreading my exercise over the week, rather than having one day when I eat 1500 calories and another where I eat 4000. Two questions though.

1. When it says strenuous exercise, is that strenuous for me, or strenuous for someone of my weight, or strenuous my some sort of average definition. A 35 stone person would find walking upstairs strenuous. I can comfortable ride 20 miles, though some would find that strenuous. I rand for 30 minutes this morning which felt moderate to strenuous. How do you define it.
2. How do you manually set a custom MFP goal - I can't find out how to do it.

Tedebearduff

Change your routine.... that's #1 thing to do once you hit a platue of your not lifting .. .start lifting .. if you are lifting ... fine new excersizes.

I would stop all cardio as your body has adjusted to it and do something different... maybe do a body pump class or any type of class offered at your gym... that would be a good start.