Someone explain this to me.

LorinaLynn

What is the point in working out to just eat back what you worked off????

You answered this question with your first post.

I was tinkering with the setting on here, and now I am really confused...If i set my goals with no workouts and 1 pound a week OR with 7 days x 30 mins a day, i get same amount of calories....

There's two ways to calculate your calorie goal. One is to take an average of the total amount of calories you'll burn - your BMR, your normal daily activity and what you burn when you exercise, then take your deficit off that. I typically burn about 2200 calories a day, so if I wanted to lose a pound a week, I'd knock 500 calories off that and eat around 1700 a day, and not count my exercise at all.

MFP doesn't factor your exercise into your calorie goal unless and until you do it. So rather than give me 1700 calories to lose a pound a week, MFP would calculate my daily calories based on my BMR and normal daily activity, then subtract 500 calories from that, and give me around 1300 calories. Then I'd go for a 45 minute run and burn about 400 calories, and MFP would add that back on and I'd end up with... the same 1700 calories a day.

It's the same math, just with numbers added in at different times.

MarincicS

Why would you stop exercising when you get to goal?

Because I HATE exercising.
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I'm not a big fan of exercising either, but i'm told the more you do it, the fitter you get, the less you will hate it and the more your body will crave it.

After dedicated exercising since December (at least twice a week with a personal trainer and 3-5 times a week on my own), i still find it boring. But every time, absolutely every time no matter how hard it is or how much i hate it when i'm doing it or how much it makes me want to cry, i feel GREAT after doing it. I just hope some time i feel great about the prospect of doing it!

LizKurz

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss.

Weight loss is all about diet.

Exercise is for fitness and health.

They are two different things.

THANK YOU THANK YOU!! This is exactly what i thought.

No no no. Please don't believe the quote above yours. Please, it's completely not based on any truth whatsoever and is way out there. Exercise is absolutely about weight loss and about fitness and health. Diet alone cannot bring you results that you can sustain because a) you need to BURN calories, not just take in less, and also, if you only diet, you are guaranteed to burn off more musle than you would have to if you were to continuously work out your muscles, by tearing and rebulilding them.

Actually they were right.

Weight loss comes due to a caloric deficit, you can achieve this said deficit from diet alone, of if you like eating more from diet and exercise. The benefits of exercise are far more then weight loss as you can do that from diet alone, but you cannot get fit from diet alone.

Agreed. So, not weight loss is all about diet, but diet is all about weight loss. They are two very different things.

No, weight loss is all about diet, exercise is all about fitness. You can lose weight perfectly fine without gaining fitness, and you can gain fitness perfectly fine without losing weight. They are two completely different activities, one has nothing to do with the other.

Weight loss and body composition are two completely different things, and are totally unrelated. You don't NEED to lose weight to get fit, and you also don't NEED to get fit to lose weight. Everyone has their own specific goal in mind.

If weight loss were all about diet, then how did I drop weight by exercise alone? You don't need to get fit to lose weight, that's correct. However you will not always lose weight with diet alone, and in almost every case, those that try diet alone, will stall out and have lost so much musle mass that they will have to stay at a lower cal rate to maintain.

Simple diet alone is not smart, and does not always work.

erickirb

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss.

Weight loss is all about diet.

Exercise is for fitness and health.

They are two different things.

THANK YOU THANK YOU!! This is exactly what i thought.

No no no. Please don't believe the quote above yours. Please, it's completely not based on any truth whatsoever and is way out there. Exercise is absolutely about weight loss and about fitness and health. Diet alone cannot bring you results that you can sustain because a) you need to BURN calories, not just take in less, and also, if you only diet, you are guaranteed to burn off more musle than you would have to if you were to continuously work out your muscles, by tearing and rebulilding them.

Actually they were right.

Weight loss comes due to a caloric deficit, you can achieve this said deficit from diet alone, of if you like eating more from diet and exercise. The benefits of exercise are far more then weight loss as you can do that from diet alone, but you cannot get fit from diet alone.

Agreed. So, not weight loss is all about diet, but diet is all about weight loss. They are two very different things.

No, weight loss is all about diet, exercise is all about fitness. You can lose weight perfectly fine without gaining fitness, and you can gain fitness perfectly fine without losing weight. They are two completely different activities, one has nothing to do with the other.

Weight loss and body composition are two completely different things, and are totally unrelated. You don't NEED to lose weight to get fit, and you also don't NEED to get fit to lose weight. Everyone has their own specific goal in mind.

If weight loss were all about diet, then how did I drop weight by exercise alone? You don't need to get fit to lose weight, that's correct. However you will not always lose weight with diet alone, and in almost every case, those that try diet alone, will stall out and have lost so much musle mass that they will have to stay at a lower cal rate to maintain.

Simple diet alone is not smart, and does not always work.

You didn't, if you increased exercise and didn't eat more to compensate then you essentially ate less Net calories, it was the deficit that caused you to lose weight, not the exercise, the exercise just helped create the deficit.

tigersword

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss.

Weight loss is all about diet.

Exercise is for fitness and health.

They are two different things.

THANK YOU THANK YOU!! This is exactly what i thought.

No no no. Please don't believe the quote above yours. Please, it's completely not based on any truth whatsoever and is way out there. Exercise is absolutely about weight loss and about fitness and health. Diet alone cannot bring you results that you can sustain because a) you need to BURN calories, not just take in less, and also, if you only diet, you are guaranteed to burn off more musle than you would have to if you were to continuously work out your muscles, by tearing and rebulilding them.

Actually they were right.

Weight loss comes due to a caloric deficit, you can achieve this said deficit from diet alone, of if you like eating more from diet and exercise. The benefits of exercise are far more then weight loss as you can do that from diet alone, but you cannot get fit from diet alone.

Agreed. So, not weight loss is all about diet, but diet is all about weight loss. They are two very different things.

No, weight loss is all about diet, exercise is all about fitness. You can lose weight perfectly fine without gaining fitness, and you can gain fitness perfectly fine without losing weight. They are two completely different activities, one has nothing to do with the other.

Weight loss and body composition are two completely different things, and are totally unrelated. You don't NEED to lose weight to get fit, and you also don't NEED to get fit to lose weight. Everyone has their own specific goal in mind.

If weight loss were all about diet, then how did I drop weight by exercise alone? You don't need to get fit to lose weight, that's correct. However you will not always lose weight with diet alone, and in almost every case, those that try diet alone, will stall out and have lost so much musle mass that they will have to stay at a lower cal rate to maintain.

Simple diet alone is not smart, and does not always work.

'Because exercising burns calories and if you don't eat the extra calories, then you lose weight. Again, it's the diet half that is controlling the weight loss, not the exercise itself. Look at these examples, assuming a TDEE of 2000 calories.

A person eats 1500 calories a day with no exercise and will lose approximately 1 pound per week.

A person eats 2000 calories per day, but burns 500 calories exercising and loses a pound per week, as well as gains fitness from exercise.

A person eats 2500 calories a day, and burns 500 exercising. This person gets all the benefits of exercising, but maintains weight.

Now, notice which variable changed there? Diet. The amount of food being eaten changed, and that's what controlled the weight loss, not the amount of exercise being done.