Do I eat back the calories I burn? confused by the app

annamonster
annamonster Posts: 9
in Health and Weight Loss
I have a daily calorie goal of 1300. Its not as difficult as espected, especially now that Ive stopped drinking Coke:blushing: and eating a good breakfast every day. My blood sugar is much more stable.
But when I work out and logg inn lets say 550kalories burned, the app says I can eat that as well? Feel confused, hehe

Replies

  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    It depends on how you set up your profile to begin with. If you set your activity level to sedentary or lightly active, then you need to eat them back. If you set it to active or highly active, then you probably don't need to.

    MFP takes the information you input and figures out how many calories your body is burning before exercise. Let's assume this is 2000 calories a day you'd need to maintain your current weight. It then subtracts 500 from this for you to lose 1 pound/week. When you add exercise on top of this (let's say you burn 500 calories in exercise) you'd now need to eat 2500 calories a day to maintain. At 2000 calories a day you'd now be losing about 1 pound a week.

    MFP is designed for you to log that exercise and eat the calories so that you lose weight as safely as possible. We lose weight by creating a deficit between what our bodies need to maintain and what we're actually eating. When you eat slightly less than you need your body breaks down your fat stores in order to get the energy it needs (this is good). When you eat at too large a deficit, though, your body also breaks down your muscle mass to get that energy. Not only will that slow down your metabolism and make you look less toned, but you also risk a host of health problems (remember, the heart is a muscle too) if you eat very little for a prolonged period of time.
  • annamonster
    annamonster Posts: 9
    Thank you for such an informative answer :smile:

    So then I should eat some more on the days I work out if I understand you correctly?

    I have set my profile as LIGHTLY ACTIVE because of my job. I only work at nights wich mean I leave for work at 9.15pm. Home at 8.30 am. Sleep until approx 4pm. Pick up the kids from daycare, they are in bed by 7.30 and I leave for work at 9.15 again. This goes on for a few days, so its very little activity. But then I have a week off from work wich means I walk the kids too and from daycare, I can work out and I do a bit more stuff in general.
    Im getting a fitbit to help me monitor my activity level.

    So its hard to know how I should eat to meet my goals and still keep my metabolism going.
    Also working only nightshift is in general very unhealthy,:frown:

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