Calorie counting. . . HELP

Your body burns a set amount by just breathing/digesting/moving etc.

Then you burn a certain amount through daily activity. You specify your daily activity when you set a weight loss goal on the website (Sedentary, lightly active, etc.)

You then subtract some of those calories so your body isn't getting all the energy it needs to maintain weight. This causes you to lose weight to adapt to the lower energy consumption.

You only add more calories if you did something strenuous out of your normal activity (ie. you decided to go for a run), otherwise the website already takes into everything into account.

Well, MFP calculates your daily needs based on how fast you want to lose the weight, and sets it accordingly. It takes -3500 calories to equal a pound lost. Over 7 days, that's -500 calories per day cut.

So lets say you maintain weight eating at 1600. To lose a pound per week, you'd have to chop that back to 1100 (MFP doesn't set itself any lower than 1200 though).

So, MFP says eat 1200 per day. That will slice off a pound a week, but wait, you worked out! you busted *kitten* in the gym, and burnt 400 calories being a MONSTER on the eliptical..

Should you still only eat 1200 for that day?

That's why they add back exercise calories.

Which makes me scratch my head, since MFP also asks you if you are sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, or work in construction. It uses that activity factor to increase your daily energy expenditure (bear with me here). BMR is how many calories you burn by breathing and being a couch potato (Basal Metabolic Rate). If you are sedentary, the amount of calories you spend a day is slightly higher (by about 20%) than your BMR, since walking around spends energy (we all really don't sit all day).

Ok, so if you work out 3-5 times a week, MFP takes your BMR and multiplies it by the moderately active factor (BMR x 1.55). so why is it adding exercise calories on top of that?? isn't that what the factor is adjusting for? I think MFP double counts calories spent when you add exercise cals.

If you want to log your exercise cals and eat them back, just set MFP to sedentary and log all your workouts, and eat them

If you put sedentary as your daily activity level and are actually sedentary (desk job or whatever) then YES you do eat those.

If you put active and you're just maintaining that active lifestyle, then no you don't eat them because they've already been accounted for.

Given that your daily allowance is 1200 (which is really low in my opinion), I'd say that you should eat them.

A lot of this is guesswork since there's no real way to tell EXACTLY how many calories you're burning. You have to do some trial and error to figure it out for yourself.

If your goal is 1200 and you burned an extra 400 through exercise then you need 1600 to keep to the weight loss goals you set.

Without any exercise you'd lose 1lb? per week eating 1200. Since you exercised today, if you didn't eat that extra 400 then your body will have only received 800.

This is generally frowned upon since that's really way too low for the body to function.

It may seem like exercising more and eating less will make you lose weight faster (mathematically at least) but this isn't the case. Feeding yourself too little will only hurt your body in the long run and you'll end up right back where you started.

thank you all for trying to help me understand but I still don't get it :sad: for example my thing says goal:1200/ food:1288/ exercise:-409/ net=879. . . is this good or bad?

With MFP you set up with your information, job type activity, and how many pounds a week you want to lose. If it gives you an initial goal of 1200 calories that has your weight loss deficit figured in. So if you do nothing outside of the work activity you should lose that number of pounds or around that number just by meeting the calorie goal. That's why when you exercise your goal goes up. So if you exercise and burn 400 calories your new goal will be 1600 for the day. It's expected that you will now eat 1600 so the deficit doesn't get too large. This way you are still netting your original goal, not under it.

Wow! I am glad y'all posted so much on here. It has really helped all my questioning as well!!!!

That it how I understand it. I "don't" eat the extra calories I worked off. So far I've lost 16 lbs in 2 months so it seems to be working the way I do it. So if your goal is 1200 and you worked off 400 your total would be 1600. I would say still keep your eating at 1200 and have a +400 calories left at the end of the day and you should lose weight quicker. Hope this helps. Like I say it's working for me great!

Thanks!

o so if I eat 1200 calories a day, I'm fine? No matter how much exercise I do?

No! If you do more exercise than you allowed for when you signed up to MFP (you chose from sedentary, lightly active, active, very active...) you SHOULD eat at least half of the calories you've earned from doing that extra exercise, otherwise the deficit for that day is too big.

The easiest answer I can give is where it says "Your Daily Goal"..... eat that number. If you eat that number you're getting a 1200 calorie day regardless of what the actual number is.