Net Calories BAH!

RaeG84

I'm totally stumped about this! I've googled and tried to get my husband to figure it out and nothing seems to make sense.

For example, my "daily calorie goal" is 1200 calories. I burned 500 calories today doing exercise, and then also ate 706 calories. My "net calories" are at 206, which are the calories that I have eaten that I didn't get rid of by exercising.

When I researched on here, everyone seems to be using the term "net calories" different than what MFP actually is using it as.

Am I supposed to eat back my "net calories?" Doesn't that seem counter intuitive that I would eat back the calories that I lost exercising?
But I'm concerned that since I'm already at a calorie deficit by only eating 1200 calories a day, and then if I exercise (500) then I really would only have "consumed " 700 calories for the day and that is way too little.

Am I supposed to have a negative number or a positive number for my "net calories?"

I'm so confused! Help!

RaeG84

whoops. Never mind. I just figured it out. I want my overall calories to equal out to 1200. So if i exercise, I have to eat more to equal it out to 1200.

So If my goal is 1200 and I exercised and burned 500 calories, then I have to consume 500 extra calories to get me back up to 1200. And if I eat 1300 calories, then I have to burn 100 calories to get me to 1200.

The tracker they have on the home page is kind of confusing!

lunnay

Yeah, it's just as you figured out! However, MFP seems to over-estimate the calories burned by any exercise, so when possible, go off machine readings or preferably a heart-rate monitor.

nxd10

I disagree about how much it overestimates exercise.

2muchmusic

Thanks for this post because I was confused too!

bmesser14

also disagree about calories burned, i often wear a heart rate monitor and when minutes are typed in the calorie estimation is close to my HRM