How do you log calories from exercise?

hikeout470

This morning I downloaded my caloric expenditure from my body bugg arm band during my social dog walk and it showed 500+ calories for the time 2 plus hours. Since I normally burn 1.1 calories per hour resting I subtracted that amount since the MFP program seems to add your exercise calories to the overall amount. Since they tell you to eat your exercise calories, it seems a good idea to do this or the difference built into the program? Anyone ever wonder about this?

alifer

MFP estimates your BMR (the calories you need to survive doing nothing but lying in bed all day), then gives you a calorie deficit from that when you set your weight loss goal per week. if you say you want to lose 2 lbs per week the deficit is 500 calories, if you set your goal at 1/2 per week it gives you a 250 calorie deficit, therefore you don't need to subtract your resting caloric burn from your exercise.

adhillman01

MFP estimates your BMR (the calories you need to survive doing nothing but lying in bed all day), then gives you a calorie deficit from that when you set your weight loss goal per week. if you say you want to lose 2 lbs per week the deficit is 500 calories, if you set your goal at 1/2 per week it gives you a 250 calorie deficit, therefore you don't need to subtract your resting caloric burn from your exercise.

This is wrong. MFP estimates your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) and subtracts off calories from that. TDEE is the number of calories you actually burn in a day which depends on your activity level. And if you want to lose two pounds per week it creates a 1000 calorie per day deficit. I think what the OP is talking about is that the calories that she would have burned during that time she was exercising have already been accounted for with her daily calories that MFP allows. So it would be like double counting calories by including all of the calories she burned while exercising because she's already been given calories to eat for that time for whatever her normal activity level was. I personally don't subtract those off, but I know many people do.

ShannonMpls

I put my activity level as sedentary, and only log purposeful exercise using my HRM. So when I walk my dog, walk with my toddler around the block, go shopping for longer than usual, etc - that doesn't get logged despite the fact that it's beyond sedentary. I figure it all evens out.

(and, I rarely if ever eat more than half my exercise calories because I'm just not that hungry!)

hikeout470

Well, then I will only add the exercise calories above and beyond what the sedentary burn would have been based on my training device (body bugg). I like to keep all of this logged to calculate how my fat loss is going. I have not yet been able to eat all of my exercise calories either now that I have cut out all of the bad stuff. (fast food, desert, alcohol units, etc)