I'm confused re calories

palomalou2

I've been logging, exercising, and losing for 36 days. % weeks, 5 pounds, so good! Today I went to some calculators and tried to narrow down a TDEE. Then someone had suggested trying to figure out from your deficits and your weight loss whether the estimated TDEE seemed reasonable. The estimated TDEE seemed to be what happened--so yay. BUT when I went into the "Goals" tab and tried to increase my net calories to TDEE-500 calls, it said that I would slowly GAIN weight--not at all the idea! What am I possibly missing?

rileysowner

TDEE includes all your daily calories including exercise. MFP does not include exercise, only Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) for short. That is why MFP has you eat back exercise calories to keep your deficit moderate. If you do a lot of exercise or high intensity exercise that burns a lot of calories, that would explain MFP saying you will gain weight. There are other factors as well such as which formula is used for calculation of calories as well.

Frankly, it is difficult to say what will happen. All of the formulas are based on averages so for the vast majority of people they are accurate enough. However, there are people who are outliers who don't fall within the average being either above or below it. Try the numbers you figured out for 4 weeks and see what happens.

cwolfman13

That is because you are utilizing a different method of calorie counting (TDEE) with a NEAT method calculator. The you will lose X Lbs doesn't work anymore because your new TDEE calorie goal includes exercise and MFP's does not.