PLEASE someone help me understand..

MacMadame

Eating your exercise calories is tricky. For one thing, it's very hard to know how many you've actually burned. The machines at the gym use a very crude formula and don't use your heart rate.

The online databases use averages which may or may not apply to you. Then, there are all these shades of gray. Like today I went swimming and running. I swam 1.2 miles in 47 min. Is that vigorous freestyle or moderate freestyle? (The two choices MFP gave me.) I didn't swim as fast a pace as when I do 100 yards, but I didn't stop and rest either. In fact, I swam that 1.2 the fastest I've ever swum it. (I picked vigorous after much back and forth.)

For my run, I had a slow pace but that's because I was running in the hills -- which burns a lot more calorie than running that same pace on a treadmill. Then again, I also did a lot more walking (I got lost and off the official path) and that burns less. I went back and forth on that one too and ended up going with the choice closest to my actual pace.

A good Heart Rate monitor with a chest strap is going to be more accurate than either of these two methods, but even it isn't 100% accurate.

The other thing is... if you do some immense exercise one day and burn 1000 calories or more, you very well might not be able to eat them all that day. One day I burned 4000 calories (7 hour bike ride) and could only eat 3000. So I ate some of them the next day. :laugh: It worked just fine.

Anyway, when I was losing, I never "ate my exercise calories". Instead, I upped my protein goals and my calorie allotment overall as my exercise load increased. That worked a lot better for me than micromanaging what I ate every day trying to end the day exactly in balance.

arewethereyet

Here is my take on the exercise calorie dilema here at MFP:

Most web sites take your info, including the exercise you promise to do each day, and come up
with a minimum caloric intake per day.

On those sites I am at approx. 1500 cals a day. Now they assume you will actually DO the exercise,
but we all know we do not always, right?

So here at MFP they use your daily deficit on calories, give you minimums that are lower because
it doesn't include the exercise, and then you have to EARN those calories each day.

I love it this way because when I go down to minimum....I am at 1200....I know I HAVE to
exercise for my 300 cals or I will be hungry.

When I have to EARN it, those calories mean more to me.

I am ready to embark on the last 10 pounds and we shall see what happens!

:flowerforyou: Jeannie

arewethereyet

Oh a few other things. I have a chest band HRM and I deduct my normal daily living cals from that number when I am done. So if I burn 400 cals in an hour at the gym, I deduct the 90 cals I would have burned if I was just hanging around.