Please Help!

alesha20

Hi everyone! I just started MFP a little over a month ago. So far I've lost 6 pounds. I work as a hostess at a busy restaurant so I'm running around CONSTANTLY. I used my new Polar F4 all day at work yesterday and it told me that I burnt 2389 calories in a 6.5 hour shift. Does that seem right? My understanding is that what MFP gives me as a base amount of calories is what I would need to eat to lose 1.5 pounds per week without exercise. Then whatever I burn as exercise calories I should be eating on top of that and in the end I should be taking in at least 1200 net calories. So that would mean that on days that I work, I would need to eat 2389 or so exercise calories PLUS 1200 additional calories. Is that the right way to be thinking? If so, how can I eat THAT many calories without excess sodium, etc? And I'm only working like this 5 days a week so I feel like I would be starving the other two days? Please help!! Thanks!

HonestOmnivore

The HRM is really only accurate for actual aerobic exercise - so even though you're active all day -it's just a guestimate on how many calories you burned in 6.5 hours. The best use of that data would be to track day to day activity not ness. to see how many calories you burned.

How did you enter your daily activity in MFP? I am "Inactive" because I work at a desk job, my sister in law is moderately active because she walks to work where she's a kindergarten teacher who's up on her feet a lot. If you entered moderately active, your daily calorie burn is probably already taken into account with your calorie allotment.

If you entered moderately active - just eat your calories as given (no exercise calories). Only count exercise calories for aerobic activity where you are working out and breathing hard (I use the "must be sweating" rule for my eating calories). You can add info about your daily activity into the "comment" area of the "Exercise" page to track it for yourself. I enter how many steps I climb each day (800 yesterday!) and I also enter my Blood Pressure that I take every morning.

alesha20

OK, great! Thanks! I'm glad I asked because I'm back at work today. So just continue eating my 1200 - 1570 calories and then if I do any ADDITIONAL exercise, use the HRM and eat those exercise calories. Sounds good to me! Thanks again