New to this with questions

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Hello,
So, everything I eat, I log into MFP. All my exercise also gets logged as well as the calories my Fitbit says I burned. How many calories a day should I burn? I am to eat about 1270 calories (which I honestly struggle with) and curious as to how many I should burn a day? Should I in essence burn all 1270 to lose weight?

Thank you!

Have a great weekend!

Sharon

Replies

  • erinsueburns
    erinsueburns Posts: 865 Member
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    You have a "goal" set of calories determined buy the amount of weight you wish to lose per week-this takes into account, roughly, your TDEE. The exercise calories are added to this total. You should eat the total INCLUDING the exercise calories.

    I may be misunderstanding you, but are you having trouble staying under your goal, or getting to your goal calories?
  • sassy15241
    sassy15241 Posts: 46 Member
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    I'm struggling to stay under my goal. MFP set my calorie goal based on the weight I want to lose. If I eat the total plus the exercise calories, how do I lose weight?

    Thanks!
    Sharon
  • ubermensch13
    ubermensch13 Posts: 824 Member
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    Search the forums for "in the place of a roadmap 2" post. Read it, it will explain everything.
  • acaj13
    acaj13 Posts: 3
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    If I understand how this app works as I'm quite new to it, you have a target number of calories a day goal which should mean you lose the weight over whatever time scale you set. This daily calories will be less than the normal 2000Kcals usually needed each day for a woman.

    The exercise you do daily adds "free" calories onto this daily allowance because every time you exercise you burn OFF calories so you can replace these with food. You will still lose weight just the same as you have already burned off these additional calories but the bonus is you will will be healthier too :-)
  • erinsueburns
    erinsueburns Posts: 865 Member
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    I'm struggling to stay under my goal. MFP set my calorie goal based on the weight I want to lose. If I eat the total plus the exercise calories, how do I lose weight?

    Thanks!
    Sharon

    Your "GOAL" calories is already taking into account all the "deficit" you need. So when you add exercise, you need to eat those calories too to maintain the appropriate caloric deficit. The "trick" to this is be accurate on how you log your exercise, and if the numbers seem to be too good to be true, it probably is, like 750 calories burned doing 30 minutes on an elliptical, yeah not true. This is why some people use heart rate monitors and such to get more accurate calorie accounting.