confused about myfitnesspal need help?

stephywefy20
stephywefy20 Posts: 8
in Introduce Yourself
hi! I just joined 2 days ago and find the myfitnesspal extremely useful. however I'm confused about something...

when I log my food it subtracts my calories for the day.

when I add exercise, it gives me more calories to eat. am I supposed to eat the calories until it's used up for the day...? or am I not supposed to include those extra calories added from exercise in my diet?

thanks

Replies

  • sabrisuh
    sabrisuh Posts: 2
    You are supossed to eat the calories you burn, if you don't you may lose some fast weight, but then your body is going to think that you are going under starvation and will keep every calorie and fat for as long as it can... So try to keep it balance and keep the number of remaining calories as close to "0" as you can!

    Good luck :)
  • srhershey
    srhershey Posts: 181 Member
    You will get mixed opinions on this topic. Some people eat their excerise calories back while others eat until they hit their daily goal of 1200. What I just recently figured out, is that it depends on what you have for your goals and your Daily Metabolic Rate. I have mine set at seditary since I work at a computer all day. I log in my excersices each day and if it says I need to eat a total of 1700 calories instead of 1200 because I worked out, I will try to eat 1700 calories. If you don't eat the calories that are added from working out, you will find that you're eating less than 1000 calories. In the Reports tab, you can pull up a report of Net Calories and you will be able to see just how much you are actually eating.
  • newcs
    newcs Posts: 717 Member
    People call it eating their exercise calories back...some do it, some don't, some only eat part of it. MFP is notorious for overestimating the calories you burn in exercise so many people only eat back some of them unless they're using a heart rate monitor or something more reliable. I have mine set so that my goal is to get to zero or close to it for my net calories each day.
  • lilgemforgets
    lilgemforgets Posts: 285
    You are meant to eat them back, however i quite often find it hard to. As long as you eat a minimum of your daily allowance and try to eat some of the calories back you will keep losing weight, slowly but surely. You will find though ALOT of people on here dont, its always personal choice, but the healthy option is to eat them!
  • Sunshnsmiles
    Sunshnsmiles Posts: 4
    I don't put in the exercise in fitpal, because I want to keep those claores burned to help with my weight loss. If you want to keep track of your exercise use additional apps, so you can figure it out. A heart montior watch is great for that. Good luck!
  • stephywefy20
    stephywefy20 Posts: 8
    mixed messages ahoy
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    when I log my food it subtracts my calories for the day.

    when I add exercise, it gives me more calories to eat. am I supposed to eat the calories until it's used up for the day...? or am I not supposed to include those extra calories added from exercise in my diet?

    it's a my fitness pal because you get to eat more when you exercise.

    To arrive at your daily calorie goal, MFP took a deficit off your daily maintenance - without any consideration of exercise being done.
    When you selected activity level, no exercise mentioned. You may have entered a goal of exercise, but it's not used in any calculations.

    So to keep that same hopefully realistic deficit, if you burn more than planned, you eat more. deficit stays the same.

    Maintenance - deficit = daily goal
    Exercise burned + more eaten = 0
    Daily goal, with deficit, remains the same.

    It's the encouragement to get to eat more.

    Other methods usually have you estimate and include planned exercise in the daily maintenance.
    Maintenance (including exercise) - deficit = daily goal
    Better do your planned exercise, or eat less that day.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,422 Member
    mixed messages ahoy

    This sums up the Myfitnesspal forums.

    I lost 55 lbs. I ate every one of my exercise calories. I only used the numbers this site gave me. It took me 7 months.

    You're gonna do what you're gonna do.

    Keep it simple. Try it the way the site wants you to - eat them. Do it for a month If you aren't losing, change something.
  • mommie55
    mommie55 Posts: 23
    thank you I was wondering the same thing....just joined the site and discovered ....I was in starvation mode.....no wonder I got heavy!!!...now I am struggling to eat what they say I should eat for calories ....and hoping I do not gain!!!
  • HolyPeas
    HolyPeas Posts: 71
    Well, you are getting mixed messages because no one is going to tell you what to do, and certainly you realize that there is more than one way to go about weight loss ;)

    For now, don't sweat the small stuff. Do you want to lose weight or maintain? If you want to lose maybe you shouldn't eat all of them, but for every person that says that there will be a person that lost weight while eating all of them.

    The bottom line is this, you will not lose everything you want in one night or even one week, don't sweat the small stuff, just hop aboard and see what works best for you.
  • tlcampos
    tlcampos Posts: 31 Member
    Ok wait I thought the first rule if dieting is eat less exercise more , so so I'm not understanding why you should eat the calories you burn ..anyone explain please ...
  • Sunshnsmiles
    Sunshnsmiles Posts: 4
    you don't want your body to go into starve mode it will make you gain more weight. You need to calculates your calories determining your wieght, heigth and age. Try Harris Benedict Equations (its on the internet) its good also adds in your workouts so you can put the right calories in for food.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    you don't want your body to go into starve mode it will make you gain more weight. You need to calculates your calories determining your wieght, heigth and age. Try Harris Benedict Equations (its on the internet) its good also adds in your workouts so you can put the right calories in for food.

    Not hardly starvation mode.

    You can also just use MFP - Tools - BMR calc. Newer and found to be more accurate.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Ok wait I thought the first rule if dieting is eat less exercise more , so so I'm not understanding why you should eat the calories you burn ..anyone explain please ...

    Eat less than what?

    Than what you were eating before that made you gain or maintain at higher weight.

    Any idea what that was? Ever logged typical days of eating at old-self to know?

    To great a deficit and your body will adjust. Exercise more and create bigger deficit and it will adjust more.

    Go read all the threads about stalled weight loss for 3-6 months and see how well the body can adjust.

    And the common solution given by those already there?

    Eat more for the activity level you are at. You will still be under the level of eating to maintain your weight, when your metabolism goes back up.

    You should also reread the thread, because you missed several posts about how MFP works, and why you get credit for calories burned.
  • mrramsey
    mrramsey Posts: 49
    mixed messages ahoy

    Howdy I just started as well and had some of the same concerns. Here is what I figured out based on my exercise of Tae Kwon Do because the number that MFP gave was not realistic. MFP told me I had 768 cals to eat based on a 45 minute workout which would be true if my target heartrate was at the maximum end of the spectrum from the mayo clinic. The only real accurate way seems to be a heart rate monitor however it's kind of hard to wear one when you are fighting lol

    See below:

    I did find two sites that allowed me to put a better generic snapshot together.

    http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/target-heart-rate/SM00083/
    and
    http://www.calories-calculator.net/Calories_Burned_By_Heart_Rate.html

    I used the Mayo Clinics target heart rate calculator for my age and weight - this gave me a range of 125 - 151 BPM for exercise.

    I then used the calories burned calculator set to my lowest target range for exercise at 125BPM - this gave me a more acceptable calorie burn for the Tae Kwon Do class at 370cals instead of the MFP estimate of 768cals. I will eat back the 370 - 400.

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