Help to understand this program

Do you have the correct settings? Maybe you put kilos instead of pounds?

I was a bit confused by the numbers when I first started, but one must realize the general formula. To lose weight, one must have a calorie deficit. One's body burns a certain amount of calories per day to stay alive; one eats to provide the body with these calories. Losing weight requires one to burn more calories (via being alive and exercise) than they consume. Your daily calorie goal is already a deficit compared to what you burn by just being alive. This is why the site states that exercising allows one to eat more calories, and still stay in a calorie deficit. To lose more weight, we can increase the calorie deficit, but we need to eat enough, no matter the calories, to fuel our body with protein, other nutrients, etc. Overall, calories burned via living and exercising must be greater than calories consumed. Anyone please feel free to jump in if I am incorrect.

I was a bit confused by the numbers when I first started, but one must realize the general formula. To lose weight, one must have a calorie deficit. One's body burns a certain amount of calories per day to stay alive; one eats to provide the body with these calories. Losing weight requires one to burn more calories (via being alive and exercise) than they consume. Your daily calorie goal is already a deficit compared to what you burn by just being alive. This is why the site states that exercising allows one to eat more calories, and still stay in a calorie deficit. To lose more weight, we can increase the calorie deficit, but we need to eat enough, no matter the calories, to fuel our body with protein, other nutrients, etc. Overall, calories burned via living and exercising must be greater than calories consumed. Anyone please feel free to jump in if I am incorrect.

He's simply asking how the heck he's supposed to eat his 9000 cals today is all! lol Which is is daily allotment PLUS his workout cals from today. :drinker:

Oh, found a pretty source for a list to get more cals in our meals to be sure we get enough in each day.

Step 1
Sprinkle nuts on your cereal. Nuts, particularly almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts, peanuts, pecans, walnuts and pistachio nuts, help lower the risk of heart disease. Nuts are also high in calories. Placing 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts on your cereal will add 200 calories to your daily intake.

Step 2
Dress your pasta and salads with olive oil. Olive oil is high in calories--just 1 tablespoon contains 120 calories--but olive oil does not carry the same risk of heart disease and stroke that butter, lard and vegetable oil do. Instead, olive oil contains HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, which lowers bad cholesterol, decreasing the risk of heart disease.

Step 3
Mix wheat germ into your meals. Wheat germ is a powdery substance, derived from wheat kernel embryos that is high in folic acid, but contains only half a gram of saturated fat per serving. Stirring 1/4 cup of wheat germ into pudding or yogurt will add 120 calories to your meal.

Step 4
Eat avocado once a week. Avocado is a fruit high in vitamin K, dietary fiber and potassium. Although a medium avocado does contain over 4 grams of saturated fat, take advantage of its dietary benefits by eating it occasionally. One medium-sized avocado contains 161 calories.

Step 5
Add a baked sweet potato as a side dish. Sweet potatoes contain far more vitamins than its plain, white counterpart. One large baked sweet potato, eaten plain with the skin, contains 162 calories. Adding low-fat yogurt or a dab of butter to the potato will increase the calorie count.

Step 6
Eat eggs, but not too many. According to the Mayo Clinic, some cholesterol is necessary, even some bad cholesterol. Although eggs are high in cholesterol, they can be eaten occasionally and in moderation as part of a healthy diet. One egg contains 70 calories.

Bumped for GREAT list of calorie dense foods.

And a question for the original poster -- what kind of workout are you doing to get 3000 workout calories a day? Is this a typical day for you? If so, you may want to change your activity level to active. I'm not sure how that will affect your daily calories but it would probably lower them a little bit, I'd think.

And, I agree that 9000 is A LOT of calories, which is why I am wondering what your activity level is set at now and what your exercise on top of that is to get recommended calories that high! As for your question on burning calories, you (and your dietician) are correct that calories in has to be less than calories burned. MFP recommends eating at least some of calories burned through exercise because a deficit is already calculated into your daily calorie goals (not including exercise)... so eating exercise calories is simply replacing some of what you burned but still having a deficit.

With all respect to all of you. I speak with dietitian and she told me simple formula. You have to eat less calories a day then you burn and then you'll lose weight. Here I have to eat a lot more calories (my daily calories + exercise calories) put together and the I will look like my refrigerator Can any one imagine eat 9000 calories a day? Even half of that is still 4500 plus your daily calories. I just don't get it... sorry but that doesn't make any sense.
Best wishes to all of you
NoLife1980

My boyfriend is using this site an weighs about 30 lbs less than you. He is supposed to eat about 2200 calories a day with a goal of losing 2 lbs a week. I would assume you would be close to that. If you are saying you need to eat 9000 calories a day that means you would have burned 6000-7000 calories through exercise. That seems like more than is possible unless you are training for the olympics.

I feel like I would need more details about your goals and settings before I could give any advice.

Just a quick question, how do you know for sure your workout burned 3000 calories? Are you wearing a heart monitor, and if not how are you measuring them?

I'm just asking because I am thinking that's a lot of calories for one workout, and I think you said you sometimes burn more that. I know for me, a 5'3" woman of 170 lbs, I'd have to put in 7 hours walking on the treadmill to burn 3,000 calories. I'm just concerned that you are overestimating the amount of calories you're burning.

Just a quick question, how do you know for sure your workout burned 3000 calories? Are you wearing a heart monitor, and if not how are you measuring them?

I'm just asking because I am thinking that's a lot of calories for one workout, and I think you said you sometimes burn more that. I know for me, a 5'3" woman of 170 lbs, I'd have to put in 7 hours walking on the treadmill to burn 3,000 calories. I'm just concerned that you are overestimating the amount of calories you're burning.

I don't MFP is doing for me. I don't know how much calories I burn this site telling me that information.

After I got a Heart rate monitor I found that a lot of the calories burnt information that MFP has was overestimated. I think (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that calories is totally individualized based on weight/age and so on.

So if you and I did the same exercise our calories burnt would be different if our ages and weight are different.

Just my .02:)

I am kind new here only for few weeks, and I am confuse a little. I setup the information in the program and program figure out for me how many calories I can eat a day. But when I put some serious exercise the amount calories jump sometime to 9000 calories a day. I don't think I ever eat in my life 9000 calories a day. How I going to lose weight if I have to eat that much calories?
NoLife1980

Strewth! Even Olympic swimmers are not on that amount each day, I can see your predicament here :laugh:

If all the info you stuck in, re your weight, food and exercise is correct, there is no way you could stuff yourself silly like that everyday and lose any weight. Put it this way, you can simply eat what you want and still be in the required deficit to lose the lbs.

9000 calories!!! I can't get over that! :noway:

Just a quick question, how do you know for sure your workout burned 3000 calories? Are you wearing a heart monitor, and if not how are you measuring them?

I'm just asking because I am thinking that's a lot of calories for one workout, and I think you said you sometimes burn more that. I know for me, a 5'3" woman of 170 lbs, I'd have to put in 7 hours walking on the treadmill to burn 3,000 calories. I'm just concerned that you are overestimating the amount of calories you're burning.

I don't MFP is doing for me. I don't know how much calories I burn this site telling me that information.

After I got a Heart rate monitor I found that a lot of the calories burnt information that MFP has was overestimated. I think (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that calories is totally individualized based on weight/age and so on.

So if you and I did the same exercise our calories burnt would be different if our ages and weight are different.

Just my .02:)

Of course I agree 100% first of all you're beautiful young and female and your weight if much different then my. If karenmi 5'3" woman and 170 lb will put extra 160 lb weight on her self then she will not needed 7 hours on treadmill to burn 3000 calories. About MFP site I find out few more wrong information. I setup my site to show me Calories, Carbs, Sugar and Protein. And I put sweet tea in the morning. Site show me the sweet tea has no sugar, and no carbs.

Yes, you are right about that, there is a difference in weight, etc. (oh and thanks for the compliment!!). I would burn a lot more calories if I weighed more, 'tis true. But if you want to know exactly how many calories you're burning, don't go by the estimateson MFP, as I too have found they are way too high. Get a good heart monitor and use it every time you exercise, that way you will have an accurate measurement of your exercise calories and be able to calculate how much to eat every day.

Good luck with your journey!!!!

Sorry, I noticed one more thing....you had set that originally you had set your profile up as "sedentary" and then changed it to "very active". Now we'll need someone else's help here, but I work out at least an hour every day but my day-to-day life is an office job so I set myself up at the lowest level of daily activity. The workouts, gardening, etc. would get counted as exercise on top of that.

Perhaps that's where the bust is? If you have set yourself up as very active, then putting the exercise on top of that, maybe that's why it's telling you to eat 9,000 calories a day.

Comments anyone?

If you have yourself set up as very active I would only log exercise when it wasn't something in your normal daily routine. That's like counting the calories you burn twice (first with increasing activity level then again when adding exercise).

Listen to your body though. If you are eating plenty of fiber and protien but still getting hungry you might not be eating enough.

A HRM or a body bug might be a good idea for the OP. That way he could really see how many calories he was burning a day and what he should be eating to stay at a healthy deficit.