Daily summary questions

melizerd

I'm looking at my daily summary.

It shows Goal+exercise-food=Net

My question is on net. Do I want to be at zero or slightly netting calorie to lose weight? Like today I'm 677 calories remaining for the day (I'll have a snack in a bit) but I want to know if there's a day (or week!) where I just end up with net zero if I should expect to lose weight or not. Does that question make sense?

I'm brand new here, I'm 28 and a mom to a 3.5 year old son and ready to get in shape. I have about 75lbs to lose so I really want to do this the right way and work it off! I feel better already counting my calories and paying attention to what I put in my body.

Help a n00b out!!

shipleyak

You want to eat back your exercise calories but you don't have to eat them all. The website already calculates a caloric deficit for loosing weight. The rest you need to maintain your body. It takes time but you will find a balance with your body. There are days that I exercise more than others and end up with extra calories but I try to keep it less than 200. Hope that helps

melizerd

Ok wonderful! I was just so confused about what my ideal day should look like.

I definitely don't want to be under eating (or over exercising if that's possible) but I wanted to be sure that I can still shoot for my goal of 2lbs per week that I put in when I started my profile. That means today I can have a snack in the evening and still net calories.

momma69

try hard to burn 150 to 300 calories a day with exercise and I usually have 400 to 500 calorie defict and I am loosing about 2 lbs a week which is still a healthly amount more than that might not be. It is hard to have that big of a deficit for me cause I have 4 kids I am very strict about what I eat every day all day.

zeala

I also don't think you should eat ALL the exercise calories back.
Lets say you burned 100 cal during exercise according to the mfp calculation, but if you didn't exercise you would have burned 35 during that time. Now if you didn't exercise, you would not have eaten the 100 calories , but still would have burned those 35.
So technically you should only eat in this case 65 of your calories.
As for exercise calories, I end up going more with what my body is telling me, without going over. If i stay under, and am absolutely not hungry, then I will not eat just because a program tells me so, and doesn't take into full consideration that everyone is different.

( I mean there is no way that absolutely EVERYONE needs to have a minimum of 1200 calories a day, which is where this site caps it off at)

momma69

I agree why do all the work of exercise if you are going to eat it all back....may as well have not eaten and not exercised!

abricklin

I agree why do all the work of exercise if you are going to eat it all back....may as well have not eaten and not exercised!

because some people, especially with less to lose or who have been losing for a long time and still have a lot to lose may need to/feel the need to eat more than 1200 calories a day. To do so and still lose the goal amount (say, 2 lbs) you need to exercise to "earn" your extra food.

Not to mention that I hope we are all exercising for our HEARTS and overall health, not just weightloss.
Exercise is a part of maintenance and is a huge downfall for people that lost without any exercise and then can't maintain.

melizerd

Well netting 582 calories at the finish of the day it told me that I need to eat more calories to lose weight or go into starvation mode (not after one day lol). So I think I'll shoot to net about 200 calories a day to maintain 2lbs a week loss.

It started my goal at 1330 if that matters.

countrymama08

I would say this. You told MFP that you wanted to lose 2lbs. MFP calculated calories based on that. You should eat that and get to 0 on the little summary thing. If you exercise, eat all or none, there are varying things. I would say again that if you said 2lbs then eat what you earn or at least some. The other of it can be to offset things like a little oil in cooking or mismeasuring.

I think many make it more complicated than it needs to be. I said 1.5 lbs. I aim for 0 or a little below but I don't get my deficit by looking at that summary. If I eat what it tells me then I have a deficit. I also figure if I go over a couple hundred a couple days and under a couple hundred a couple days then it evens out to an end of the week deficit. (But don't look at today)

In short....my limited understanding is aim for 0 or only slightly below.