deficit?

yeah i dont really understand this either. Is that what the NET is supposed to be on the MY HOME ?

(Calories your burn through daily living + calories burned through exercise) - calories consumed = deficit.

So, a number example. Let's say you burn 1600 through sedentary, every day activity. Then you work out and burn 200 calories. That's 1800 calories burned that day. You eat 1500 calories that day, so, your 1800 burned - your 1500 consumed = 300 calorie deficit for that day.

Exactly. The simple way to view it is how many calories your body is pulling from your fat stores on any given day. So, if you have a deficit of 300 today, 500 tomorrow, etc... once you get to around 3500 calories worth of deficit, that's about 1 pound of fat lost. Of course, weight loss isn't linear in that fashion but that's the gist of it.

As for net calories, that's your calories consumed minus your exercise calories for the day. So, let's say I've eaten 2000 calories worth of food but I burned 1000 calories doing cardio, my net calories for the day are 1000 calories. If my target is 1500 calories for the day and I burned 1000 calories doing cardio, I would need to eat 2500 calories in order for my net calories to be 1500 (my goal).

Note that when you put in you build your profile in MFP, MFP gives you a calorie goal that is already a deficit from your theoretical maintenance. The calculator is doing all of the work for you...you don't have to eat under MfP's calorie goal.

Net gets a little confusing because MFP works this out differently than other calculators. With other calculators you would include an estimate of all of your daily activity, including exercise in your activity level...then the calculator would determine your theoretical maintenance calories based on statistical averages for people of your similar stats. From there, the calculator would then take it's cut for you to lose weight and you would just eat those calories.

With MFP, your activity level is just supposed to include your day to day hum drum...work, cooking, cleaning, etc. You are supposed to log exercise after the fact with MFP...with MFP, you account for that activity after you do it rather than having an estimate included up front in the equation. This is why when you exercise, MFP gives you additional calories. I'll use my numbers as an example:

MFP net goal to lose 1 Lb per week: 1,850 calories. This means that MFP is estimating that my theoretical maintenance calories if I were to do ZERO exercise whatsoever to be 2,350 calories. 2,350 - 1,850 = 500 calorie deficit to lose 1 Lb per week (3,500 calories per week)

Now...let's say I exercise and burn roughly 400 calories per day. I will now gross 1,850 + 400 = 2,250 calories but my net deficit is the same..because now instead of maintaining on 2,350 calories I would maintain on 2,350 + 400 = 2,750 calories. 2,750 - 2,250 = 500 calorie deficit to lose 1 Lb per week.

Because I am consuming 500 calories less per day than my body requires, my body must make up the difference...it does so by pulling from my fat stores. Over the course of a week, I'm in an energy (calorie) deficit of 3,500 calories...which requires 1 Lb of fat to make up that difference.