NEW Member - calorie intake/exercise question
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This thread is really stressing me out. Literally, I'm getting all clammy and tense.
OP, as you can see you will get a lot of conflicting advice on this. Some of it is because people have no idea what they are talking about and some of it is just that this is not an exact science and there are different ways to do it.
I don't think anyone can really give you advice without more information like height, current weight, and goal weight. However, it's important for you to understand how MFP is set up so you can make an informed decision about how to use it.
MFP calculates your daily maintenance calories with no exercise and subtracts a deficit from that based on how fast you want to lose weight. When you exercise, to keep the deficit the same, it "gives you calories back" and expects you to eat them. Understand that eating them will do nothing to change your deficit that MFP has set, while not eating them will increase your deficit, which may or may not be a good idea, depending on your initial deficit and your maintenance requirement. If your initial deficit is 1000 calories based on a 2 lb per wek goal, by not eating them back you are extending this to 1400 which is too high for most people. Keeping your deficit between 500-1000 cals per day is generally safe.
But it is often NOT setting your deficit at 500-1000. If her TDEE is 1800 and she wants to lose 2 lbs/week it sets her to 1200. That's 1.2 lbs/week. If she eats back exercise, that's 1.2/week. There's no reason she can't aim to lose 2 lbs/week by not eating back all her exercise calories.
I understand what you're saying. That's why I did not say she should necessarily eat them back. However, you are making two assumptions -- that her maintenance is less than 2200 and that her typical calorie burn will not be so great as to extend her deficit beyond what is reasonable. Advising to eat or not to eat exercise calories are both based on assumptions when all of the information is not provided like in this case. Advising a person to stay within a certain deficit makes more sense.
The problem is the majority of people using this site don't know their deficit in the first place so can't make an informed decision about replacing exercise calories. I lean towards the conservative end of things, just follow MFP's recommendations and eat the calories it tells you. You may lose some potential for more rapid weight loss for a time but you don't risk going too low. I know you feel differently, and that's cool!0
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