Calorie burn

I wonder this too. I'm on a 1200 cal diet and I lose about 500 cal a day in working out but still cant seem to lose weight. What am i doing wrong?

1,200 calorie goal already has a deficit built in there as I assume you told MFP you wanted to lose weight when you set up. You need to eat back your exercise calories to net to 1,200 minimum...which is probably still on the low side. 1,200-500=700 net calories per day. I can guarantee you that is way below your BMR...your BMR is the bare minimum of calories your body needs to maintain proper organ function if you were in a coma. Netting below your BMR causes your body to do the exact opposite of what you want...it goes into metabolic stall and instead of burning your fat stores and calories, it puts everything into storage because your body thinks it's starving...which it is.

1,200 calories should be what you are netting, not grossing which means you need to eat back exercise calories to properly fuel your body. Like I said, that's still probably pretty low and you'd be doing yourself a favor by figuring out what your BMR is and maintenance TDEE is and netting your caloric intake somewhere between those two numbers for healthy and safe weight loss.

Thanks for that Ladyraven! I found a TDEE calculator and have discovered that I am about 40 - 50% under my expenditure, so it's all good! : )

40-50% of your expenditure is not all good...anything more than 20% of your TDEE is potentially dangerous and you should be under the close supervision of a physician. Anything more than 20% generally means you are netting well below your BMR unless you are seriously morbidly obese. If you continue down this path, metabolic stall will be the least of your concerns when your organs begin to fail and your body cannibalizes your lean body mass for energy

But I am eating three meals a day and snacks - not going mad in the gym either. My TDEE was 2100, my fitnesspal app said 1200 for daily calorie intake. I am by no means starving myself. I guess it is possible that the calculator (online) was wrong.

I think there may be some issue with the MFP app. I have put in several variations and it still tells me to put 1200 as my net calorie goal. I have put it up to 1400 as a result of the advice in this thread.

What did you put as your weight loss goal per week?

2lb a week, but I acutually just changed that to 1lb. I also read on another forum that a good way to calculate your calorie goal is to multiply your BMR by .2 then subtracting that from your BMR. Any advice on that?

I'm confused as to how to read the the diary. For example yesterday my cal coal was 1200, I ate 1095 and burned 462 cal, net was 633 and the remaining was 567. Should I have ate 567 cal more?

Here's how it works:

you set your goals to lose 2 Lbs per week and MFP gave you a goal of 1,200 calories. MFP will never give you a lower net goal than that as netting below that number is extremely unhealthy.

Your caloric deficit is already built into that number. In other words...and I'm assuming you set up as sedentary...you could eat 1,200 calories and lose weight with no exercise at all. MFP does not include exercise in it's TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculation so any exercise you do is outside of the parameters of your profile set up. Therefore, you would eat back those exercise calories.

You will notice that MFP will give you 1,200 calories...but when you log exercise, that goal goes up...MFP expects you to eat them back because not doing so creates an excessive and unhealthy deficit.

So...1,200-567=633 net calories THIS IS VERY BAD AND VERY DANGEROUS! You would eat back those calories or at least a good portion of them (calorie burn estimates can be off). This is why when you log your exercise you will see your goal go from 1,200 to 1,767...1,767 is your gross but your net is still 1,200. (1,767-567=1,200net)