Question about the myfitnesspal app

mcsnoogins

Hello folks!
I have the app on my phone and it's helped me keep track of all the ins and outs which is helping me shift fat. I have a question that i couldn't word in a way that i could search to see if it's been asked before so i hope i'm not wasting everybodys time.
Here's it:
To lose a pound and a half a week the app tells me i need to stick to 1730 calories a day. I'm a 5ft 11 male age 29 and weigh 180lbs. Does the app know what my body burns just being? I worked it out to be around 3000 calories in an average 24 hours (200 an hour when awake and moving, i know i'm using specific numbers and it won't be as straight cut as that, up and down depending on activity and sleep etc). If i was to work out for an hour and my heart rate monitor tells me i've burned 1000 calories (for the sake of this conversation). Do i need to take into account that i would have burned 200 anyway and enter 800 into the app or does it know all this already meaning i should tell it the full 1000?
Further more should i actually be inputting an exercise called "living/going to work etc." and typing in that i burned 3000 calories every day? Or is it that it DOES know i'll be burning around 3000 and that's why it's telling me to eat about half that for a 1.5 lbs loss a week? I'm close to speaking in circles here. Been thinking in them for about a week trying to sus this one out
Also, will it eventually change the calories i need to be eating as i input my weight loss to it or do i need to tell it manually i want to stay the same weight when i have reached my goal?
Hmmmmm more than one question in there. Sorry about that keep up the good work though, being able to track things so easily and being able to quantify my progress better has given me the motivation to keep at it this time Thank you so much for your efforts
Chris

JimLeonardRN

Wow! Where to start.......When you set up your goals you input your height weight and activity level as well as age. Your activity level sets your calories burned at rest during the day. So if you are extremely active during the day you burn more calories. Then anything you input on top of that as activity adds to the amount of calories burned. Of course when you input what youve eaten it adds to your calories. So you end up with a balance between what youve eaten and what youve burned. hope I didnt muddy the water too much for you.

littlemegzz

Hey Chris,
Firstly, I will just say I am no expert. Best place for your question would probably be in the General Diet and Weightloss board, or the Fitness and Exercise one.

In regards to your question(s), as far as I am aware, mfp bases its stats on the average person of your height, weight and age. Then depending on what you put as your daily activity level, it adjusts the calories needed per day by that. If you are always walking around at work and have put in "active" into that setting, then it will automatically give you extra calories you can eat per day and you do not have to log "living/going to work". If you do a lot of activity at work, but only put "not very active" in your settings, then it will not account for the extra energy burnt at work.

Just remember that these are all averages that MFP gives.


When you do exercise, you do not need to worry about taking away the 200 normal burnt calories each our. Just plug the 1000 straight in.

I hope this helped a bit. Repost your questions in one of the other boards and someone who has more knowledge will hopefully reply.

JimLeonardRN

And as your weight decreases your amount of calories needed decreases. This is adjusted at about every 10 pounds lost. Also feel free to add me if you want as a friend.

ecw3780

For me personally, I do not have a "work/living" category but I do have my activity level set at "sedentary". Then I wear my fit bit all day, let it sync with MFP and just let it tell me if I need to eat less or more. For you, I would just enter in any readings you get off your heart rate monitor. Don't try to adjust them down or up, let MFP do that. If you are very active at your job (like, not a desk job) make sure your MFP settings aren't set to sedentary.

MFP has an algorithm it uses based on your profile. It may not be 100% accurate, but it is pretty close. In general, you want to eat 1000 calories less than you burn to loose 2 pounds a week, or 750 calories for 1.5 pounds a week. If you burn 3000 calories a day (based on your heart rate monitor), you should be eating 2250 every day. Based on the goal of 1730, MFP seems to think you only burn 2480 a day. I would wear your heart rate monitor all day, every day for a week and then take the average of those numbers to figure out how much you actually burn a day. You can also use the BMR calculator (under tools) to figure out your BMR. Then just stay between that number and 1200 calories and you will be just fine.