Confused on what to enter for exercise cals?

Jolie1971

OK, I feel like a moron asking this question as I remember it being asked before. When I did the EM2WL the 1st time around, I used to enter my cals burned as 1. Then I just ate my 15% cut amount, which is 1844.

But as I am starting again with determination do better this time around and have more patience, I started thinking that if I only entered a 1, then I was eating not the right amount after all?

So should I just let MFP calculate my cals from exercise and eat the total amount they give me then? Like today it is 2200 something.

Sorry for sounding so stupid with this. You'd think with all my reading on this, I'd know what I am doing

DaniH826

I finally came to the conclusion that the best way for me to go was to eat at goal weight maintenance according to Fat2Fit Radio. I settled at a happy medium between light and moderate activity and that's what I'm going with.

I figure once I reach goal weight, I'll be already in the groove of things and won't have to drastically change anything but rather it will be a smooth transition and I won't yo-yo back up again. I also figure if it takes me 2 years to get there, who cares? I'm looking for something that's sustainable for the rest of my life, so a couple of months right now are meaningless to me. Let the scale do what it's gonna; my focus is developing lean muscle, eating right and learning portion sizes and eating in a way that makes me happy and that's realistic for me. Life is imperfect, and there are no perfect solutions; only realistic ones.

Other things have worked for me before when it came to losing, but it's always crept back up again as soon as I quit what I was doing. Losing isn't the trouble; keeping it off is. I need a long-term solution that's doable and sustainable for years to come, and shooting for at-goal calories with reasonable macros seemed the most viable and simple option.

Keeping track of every little exercise got too tedious, and it's enough for me to track calories as it is. If you can keep that up, great for you, but I'm not going to. Everyone is different, of course, and so you have to come up with a system that's going to work for you.

You're most certainly not a moron. It can get very confusing with all these methods out there and all these plans people use and whatnot. I'm a simple gal who prefers simple, practical and reasonable solutions and I found the one that works for me.

heybales

OK, I feel like a moron asking this question as I remember it being asked before. When I did the EM2WL the 1st time around, I used to enter my cals burned as 1. Then I just ate my 15% cut amount, which is 1844.

But as I am starting again with determination do better this time around and have more patience, I started thinking that if I only entered a 1, then I was eating not the right amount after all?

So should I just let MFP calculate my cals from exercise and eat the total amount they give me then? Like today it is 2200 something.

Sorry for sounding so stupid with this. You'd think with all my reading on this, I'd know what I am doing

If you picked an activity level that included your exercise already, then you already got a deficit from the total day, TDEE, on avg anyway - you do NOT eat back exercise, because already included it.

If you did MFP method and your activity level is without any exercise, and then just the deficit, then indeed you log and eat back. Take the same 15% off those calories too.

That way the day on whole, whether that is avg daily TDEE, or that day's actual TDEE, has the 15% deficit on everything.