working out cals

shakybabe

According to this site I should be on 1200.. I just did some exercise and burned 537 cals so food log now tells me I have 1,737 cals today... however I don;t want to maintain I'm trying to lose so I'd take 500 from that to get 1,237 is number I should eat today to get a deficit?

rockylucas

Nope... 1200 is your "net calories" to lose weight. If you exercised 537 calories, that means your "net calories" for the day would be 663. (Meaning starvation mode.)

MFP basically starts out by giving you what to eat if you werent exercising. If you then exercise, you get to eat those calories.

mroger801

I don't add in my exercise. Those calories are added benefit for the weight loss. It messes with every number, not just calories and makes things difficult to understand where you are and where you are supposed to be.

maemiller

Nope... 1200 is your "net calories" to lose weight. If you exercised 537 calories, that means your "net calories" for the day would be 663. (Meaning starvation mode.)

MFP basically starts out by giving you what to eat if you werent exercising. If you then exercise, you get to eat those calories.

i totally agree. you need to eat back those calories if not your body will go into starvation mode and youll gain weight. Thats what happened to me a few months ago. I thought by not eating my calories back i would lose weight, but instead gained. Started eating more of my calories back and in 3 months ive already lost 10 lbs

russelljclarke

You should eat back your exercise calories. If you're worried about maintaining weight, don't - see my blog (link below

adross3

It seems like you are not sure if your cal intake is set for weight loss.

Go to the very top of the page and you will see HI,yourname : help : settings : logout

Click Settings
Near the bottom of the page it asks "What is your goal?
select your weekly pound loss.

Now your calories are pre set for you to loose weight.
Eat your exercise calories. That is why there is a pre set for weight loss
When you hit a plateau and you will, fine tune your eating habits or even cut back on your exercise cals then.

lizinspain

See I'm not convinced! Especially about the accuracy of MFP's calories used during exercise! I "earned" 1072 yesterday but I'm damn sure if I ate them I wouldn't lose weight! I did use a few of them but not even half.

engineman312

MFP already is giving you a deficit!! you should be re-eating some of your calories. some days i re-eat every calorie burnt, and some days i don't. listen to your body. you need the fuel to build muscles that are essential to wait loss.

abbie017

I'm on the side of eating back your exercise calories. If you are working out, you are burning extra calories just to get through the workout, so you need to replace those calories so you can fuel your body properly for routine tasks. That being said, you can always tweak your own system. If you notice after a month or so that eating the exercise calories isn't working for you, cut back to eating half and see if that makes a difference. The good thing about MFP is that it's entirely self guided, so you can determine what works best for you.

Personally, when I eat back my exercise calories, I lose weight a lot faster. You should try searching the forums and checking out some of the hundreds of threads that already exist on this topic. You'll get tons of advice from those.

meerkat70

See I'm not convinced! Especially about the accuracy of MFP's calories used during exercise! I "earned" 1072 yesterday but I'm damn sure if I ate them I wouldn't lose weight! I did use a few of them but not even half.

Well, I think it's well established MFP overestimates. And I doubt anyone would suggest you add in a thousand calories. However, if you get a HRM, you'll get a reasonable estimate of what you're burning. Or working without an HRM, my solution has been to roughly half the MFP estimates and see how I go. If you're exercising a reasonable amount, 1200 cals just won't cut it. Even if you're only burning, say, 600 cals rather than the 1000+ mfp estimates, it makes sense to eat into them a reasonable amount.

As for exercise 'messing with the numbers' - well, it's logical that if you're caloric expenditure increases, so too will your other nutritional needs. You *need* protein and micronutrients to feed your body and enable your exercise.

I don't come close to eating back *all* my exercise calories, but I do eat some, as without it I'd be hungry, my exercise would be less effective, and my weightloss would slow.

shakybabe

I'm having difficulty getting my head around this!.. maths never was my strong point!

so basically I should eat the 1200 plus a bit more if I exercises.... say 1400-1450? I want to create a deficit of 500 cals a day to lose a pound a week.. on my calculator that worked out at just over 1200? ... but its only worked it out that I should burn 300 and something a day.. can't find the page no but it was 1,100 cals a week and it should say 3,500 cals a week?

At minute on my page its saying Goal 1200, food 584, exercise -537, Net 47 ??? .. so this is saying even though I've eaten breakfast and lunch at 584 cals total my body only thinks its had 47 cals so far?

LickyNees

worth a read

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/243279-calculating-tdee-based-on-daily-activity

Eat at your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) - maintain weight
Eat at an amount below your TDEE but higher than your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) (calorie deficit - typ. 250-500 calories per day) - lose weight

SHBoss1673

I don't add in my exercise. Those calories are added benefit for the weight loss. It messes with every number, not just calories and makes things difficult to understand where you are and where you are supposed to be.

no they aren't a benefit for the weight loss, they are added to keep you at the current weight loss goal you are in, by eating them you KEEP your current weekly weight loss goal, they don't increase it.

SHBoss1673

I'm having difficulty getting my head around this!.. maths never was my strong point!

so basically I should eat the 1200 plus a bit more if I exercises.... say 1400-1450? I want to create a deficit of 500 cals a day to lose a pound a week.. on my calculator that worked out at just over 1200? ... but its only worked it out that I should burn 300 and something a day.. can't find the page no but it was 1,100 cals a week and it should say 3,500 cals a week?

At minute on my page its saying Goal 1200, food 584, exercise -537, Net 47 ??? .. so this is saying even though I've eaten breakfast and lunch at 584 cals total my body only thinks its had 47 cals so far?

when you exercise you burn EXTRA calories for the day, adding those calories back keeps you at that 500 calorie deficit, I.E. it keeps you at a 1 lb a week loss. By doing this, you maintain a healthy macro nutrient intake, which makes it easier to sustain long term weight loss by keeping your body healthy during the loss, by creating an extra large deficit (by not eating them) you're actually making it harder for your body to burn body fat. PM me if you have more questions, I've been on MFP for over 5 years, (mostly as a mentor and helper at this point) and have tried to help a lot of people, once you grasp the main concept, it's not that hard to understand, it's just a matter of grasping that 1 concept first.