MFP's Calories Burnt

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KMA1973
KMA1973 Posts: 10
in Health and Weight Loss
I have entered my food and exercise honestly, and have not cheated. Afterall, I am only cheating myself if I am not honest about what I have eaten or done.

I am amazed at how many calories this program says I am burning. Is it accurate? I think it seems very generous or I have spent my life under-estimating how easy it is to burn energy. I have joined my local PCYC and do boxing sparring three days a week, and a toning class once a week, and I also include incidental exercise such as the walking I do all day long.

My calorie intake is coming in less than my daily allowance. I always thought dieting and exercise was something you had to work hard at, and starve. But yesterday's end of day report told me if everyday was like today (yesterday) I would be down to 93kg in 5 weeks time.

Have you found this to be quite accurate? I am yet to finish a week, I only started this 3 days ago.
Cheers :)

Replies

  • habu68123
    habu68123 Posts: 78 Member
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    I'm still pretty new at this but I've found that the MFP calories burned is much higher than what my monitors are reading so I go with those when available and cut any MFP calories for things like swimming by at least half. So far it's been working for me as I've lost 4 out of 5 weeks and the 1 week of a gain was only 0.2 which could easily be a normal change. Even with the lower burned numbers I've found this program to be much easier than others. Best of luck to you!
  • weefreemen
    weefreemen Posts: 652 Member
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    HI, I also find the calories burnt with MFP very generous. Because of bad knees and asthma I am only able to walk, but I walk about 7 km daily, I use a pedometer and use that for calories burnt which is always about 3/4 of the MFP ratio.
  • BrienJD
    BrienJD Posts: 541 Member
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    Some say they are way higher than they should be. I'm of the opinion that if I lose weight then what of it? When and if I stop losing weight I might pay a little more attention. I've been on this since January and have lost 44 pounds going by what MFP and the Machines at the gym say. Just my 2 cents.
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,554 Member
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    I don't know - I lost weight last year using the cals from MFP or from Runkeeper app - which are usually pretty similar.
    Those numbers have worked out fine for me.

    And the good news is that "dieting" doesn't have to be torture! If you eat at a moderate deficit and exercise regularly it is possible to lose weight without feeling too deprived. I certainly have.

    We are all different though, and all the numbers we are working with are estimates (yes, even if you get an heart rate monitor, it is still an estimate!). The only way to know what is best for you is to follow one set of numbers for a month or so and see how your body responds.
    My suggestion is to start out by eating what MFP recommends, including those exercise calories, and see how you respond after a month. If you find you are losing weight faster or slower than you expect after that time, you can change things around if you need to.
  • LovelyNFit
    LovelyNFit Posts: 92 Member
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    Yes MFP is very generous. I always enter my own b/c I know I don't burn 300+calories walking for 2hrs. I would estimate that as 130cals.

    You are new so expect to loose more lbs at first then that of after 2 mnths. (depending on your starting weight) just a heads up.
    -(most of us here use lbs)

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