exercise calories explained

great post! it covers everything. thank you!

So after eating well throughout the day and exercising, my net is normally around the 600 mark daily, which means I'm under-eating? :S

Eating back the calories burnt will seem like I'm over-eating...


Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Nutrition Facts For Foods

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Makes total sense. Thank you for taking the time to explain it!

I'm sure you got it, but I just want to check. When you say you are active that means your body burns those calories in a normal day for you. If you do nothing your body is still going to burn around 2000. I am 6'0" and weigh 199lbs. I go to school most of the day and work in an office so I sit around and do nothing most of the day if I don't work out. So I choose sedentary. Doing NOTHING, my body will still burn over 2000 calories just to sustain my life. Those 2420 calories in your example are being burned just doing whatever. I am going to say that if you sit in bed the whole day you will still burn close to 2000 just because of your body's metabolism. You burn almost 500 calories during 8 hours of sleep.

You should not consider time spent in the gym as part of your lifestyle if you are also tracking your workouts with this app. You should leave it as "how your day is without the gym." If you are a mailman and walk around every day a lot then you have a highly active lifestyle. If you are saying you are highly active because you go to the gym AND track your individual workouts, then you are double counting calories.

The safest bet, if you use the app to keep tabs on your exercises, is to just leave it as sedentary. This essentially puts the number of calories your body will burn just keeping you alive and awake with minimal activity. For me, 2410 calories is a "net zero" meaning I will neither gain nor lose weight. That is what I would burn if I sat on this forum all day and did nothing else. From there I can adjust my calorie goal for how many lbs I would like to lose or gain, and tracking my workouts will not count double into the equation. I do not live a sedentary life, but I feel that doing it this way is much more accurate. Changing to higly active will bump me to a 2990 allowance before weight goals. So that assumes I am burning an additional 500 calories than I would just sitting around all day, but I don't always burn 500. I may burn more or less depending on the day. Since your activity level is really all relative it is best to just say you are sedentary and go from there.

The only real way to know what you can burn in a day is to go and have tests done on you. Your body's metabolism adjusts to your activity level. So if you are highly active you are going to burn more calories even on days you don't do anything.

Thank you!!!

Quick question: I set mine as active, I work out 6 days a week doing weights and cardio.

If for some reason I miss a workout, does that mean I should eat less that day?

Assuming you set it to active BECAUSE you workout 6 days a week, then it kind of depends how often it happens. If it's only every once in a while, then no, I wouldn't worry about it. If its every week, then yes (and you should probably change it from active to something less active).

If you set it to active because you have an active job/life, but log your workouts separately, then no you don't. MFP will adjust automatically based on your logged workouts.

thanks for this explanation!

yeah i would so but resting day should be light cardio like just pop in do 20 mins it wont hurt

Thanks for a clear explanation. Now I wont guilty when I eat back my exercise calories in my sedentary life.

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What is this "exercise" you speak of? :huh:

It's a variable some people choose to bring into the weight-loss equation which impacts quite heavily on the error margin - best not to bother.

What is this "exercise" you speak of? :huh:

It's a variable some people choose to bring into the weight-loss equation which impacts quite heavily on the error margin - best not to bother.

Bleah. I was never a stellar algebra student, I'm certainly not going to throw another variable into my equation. :drinker:

Good post.

Another thing to add about setting your weekly goal, most MFP users set their weekly loss goal much to aggressively say 2 lbs/week when it should really only be 1lb.

Not to hijack the thread, but to add to it, the following pertains to goal setting based on how much you have to lose:
If you have 75+ lbs to lose 2 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 40-75 lbs to lose 1.5 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 25-40 lbs to lose 1 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 15 -25 lbs to lose 0.5 to 1.0 lbs/week is ideal, and
If you have less than 15 lbs to lose 0.5 lbs/week is ideal.

Tks for this!!

What is this "exercise" you speak of? :huh:

Let me 'splain.

No, there is too much, let me sum up.

Exercise** is something people do so they can rationalize eating more, and then express righteous indignation when their weight loss stalls, which allows them to follow further anonymous advice to eat even more.

**MFP Edition

It All Makes Sense Now™! :drinker:

Just a quick question.... I'm 6ft5 215lbs and go running 2-3 times a week and burn off 600 cals a time as well as doing weights on the other days. I have set my fitness level as active even though I have a desk job and I have it also set that I want to lose 1.5lb a week.

So, I've put all that into to MFP and it's come up with 2,230 a day. As I've put active as my fitness level am I right in thinking I shouldn't be logging exercise? So I aim for 2230 cals a day, shouldn't this vary between the days I run and the days I don't? Or does it take into account the non running days.

I love running and don't want to give it up.