Am I going far enough to underestimate my exercise?

piejin

Hello! I've been using MFP for a little more than a month. I need to lose about 5 pounds. I set my goal to 1 lb/week, have been staying on track for weekly averages for my calorie goals, and I exercise hard 6-7 days a week. I haven't made any progress yet, and I know my food calories are on target since I track everything religiously and weigh out food/measure out serving sizes, so the only thing I can think of keeping me from making any progress is my exercise calories not being good enough. I have seen many people say that MFP overestimates calories burned by a lot, so I've been intentionally underlogging my exercise time/type/intensity, but I'm worried that I am not going far enough and am still logging my exercise as too much. Do you think this is adequate underlogging, or do I need to go even further?

I often walk 1-2 hours at 3mi/hour, but I will log it as 30-45 minutes at 2 mi/hour. I do Beachbody's Insanity workouts, which are about 40-45 minutes of high intensity high impact cardio, but I will label it as only 30 minutes or log it as low impact. When I lift weights or do strength training, I usually go for an hour, but I will only mark it as 40-45 minutes. When I do high intensity bodyweight exercises/circuit training, I will label it as light/moderate effort calisthenics even though that's definitely not the case. And for most other kinds of exercise, I try to shave off 15-20 minutes of my actual exercise time and/or mark it as a lower intensity exercise than what I'm actually doing.

Do I need to go even further and mark down my exercise as even less than that? How do you guys deal with MFP overestimating how many calories you burned/is there a good way to know just how much it's overestimating? Please keep in mind that I can't afford a good heart rate monitor right now, or I would be able to use that to get more accurate calorie readings for myself. Thank you in advance for any helpful information you might have! :flowerforyou: