Question about calories....

kvsmith59

I have a friend who has lost quite a bit of weight over the last year. When she was told about this website, her comment was you can't deduct exercise calories from the food calories. Basically I think she was saying that you have to limit your calorie intake period, and not take into consideration the calories you burn while exercising. Doesn't make sense to me, but she's the one who is ultra thin and I'm overweight....what do you think?

yesthistime

She may not know that MFP sets you at a calorie deficit so that you lose weight without factoring in exercise. Even if you eat your exercise calories back, you will still have the calorie deficit needed to lose the amount of weight you set per week.

deniserenee_02

http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/

stuey39

She may not know that MFP sets you at a calorie deficit so that you lose weight without factoring in exercise. Even if you eat your exercise calories back, you will still have the calorie deficit needed to lose the amount of weight you set per week.

I agree 100% (now) it took a while but finally I get it. There are literally hundreds of threads on MFP which can explain a lot easier than I can

LaurenAOK

http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/

Dang, beat me to it

kbf2107

hmm, I guess I could understand where your friend is coming from. Theoretically, if you burn the same number of calories that you consume, you wouldn't lose any weight. So in that sense, if you eat back all the calories that you burned while exercising, you wouldn't lose any weight. With that said though, it's important to remember that your body burns calories even when you aren't exercising -- it needs the energy to do basic functions like breathing or heart beating. Also, you need a bit more calories when exercising to give you energy. So I guess my point is that your friends is right to a point. You want to reduce your calorie intake if you're trying to lose weight, but you still need to eat a certain amount to get you through work-outs and everyday bodily functions.

stuey39

I had this explained to me yesterday:-

Because of the deficit allowed in our goal by MFP we will lose weight and if we eat back all of our exercise calories we are still going to lose the same amount of weight but by eating them back we can not only eat more but our bodies are fuelled properly so we will get better results/perfomances and an altoghether more enjoyable experience when we do work out.

Hope this makes sense cos it confused the s### out of me to start with.

AntWrig

i find it funny that the same rules are not applied to cardio based activities. There is no difference in factoring in calories for general exercise. Yet, people use cardio as means of calorie reduction.

Cardio is in efficient as a means of weight loss.

Pebble321

She's right in one way - to lose weight you need to create a calorie deficit, whether that is from food or exercise or a combination of both.

What she doesn't know is that MFP uses a different system to other calorie calculators to determine your daily calorie goal. It works out how many cals you need in a regular day (including basic body functions plus regular activities like walking around and talking and working) and then deducts cals to create a daily calorie allowance with a deficit so you can lose weight.
Then when you actually exercise you can add those cals in, eat them and you still have a deficit.

Other systems ask you how many times you think you might exercise and allows for them up front.
Whether you actually do that exercise or not doesn't make a difference in other systems.

I prefer the MFP system (and yes, I have lost weight eating those calories!)