A little confused about calorie burn...

Angelz23
Angelz23 Posts: 40 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Ok, so I understand the concept of exercising to get in shape. I understand that MFP calculates daily calories at a deficit. But when I don't understand is when people say to exercise TO BURN CALORIES, but then eat them back. If one is exercising merely to burn calories, why eat them back? And if the daily calorie limit is already at a deficit, why bother exercising merely to burn off calories?

Replies

  • arethaholly
    arethaholly Posts: 9 Member
    So MFP is set up so that if you DID NOT exercise for that day, you would eat your daily allotted calories & still "lose weight." Your daily calories are set up at a deficit based on the goals you entered into MFP.

    However, if you were to do that, you would not become FIT, necessarily, because you're not exercising & training your body to be physically stronger. You might become what people call "skinny fat", which is where you are at a much lower weight, but you still have a lot of fat because you didn't change your body composition (ratio of muscle + fat) through exercise.

    You exercise to become fit & truly healthy. You "eat back" your calories so that you still hit that original number that MFP gave you for the day. Otherwise, you're not giving your body enough calories to keep up and you could send your body into starvation mode, where it basically shuts down.

    So, for example, MFP gives me a calorie goal of around 1420 (I'm 5'7"). This is reasonable, and on days that I don't exercise, I try to watch my calories a little more carefully so that I hit around there. On days that I exercise, I usually eat around 1800 calories or so, and burn 350-400 through exercise, bringing me back down to the 1400ish range.

    Does this make sense?
  • Angelz23
    Angelz23 Posts: 40 Member
    Absolutely, thank you.

    So on the exercises....say on leg day, I do 3 sets of each at 10-12 reps per set, leg extension, leg curl, donkey press and leg press....HOW do you calculate the calories burned on those?? It's not like I'm going to have a stop watch and time how long it takes me to do each set...
  • arethaholly
    arethaholly Posts: 9 Member
    Hi!

    Sorry, I never saw this reply. I don't have a good answer for how to calculate that calorie burn either, unless you got a heart-rate monitor (HRM) so you would know exactly what your body is burning & then just entered the calories burned total for the day.

    I'm considering getting a HRM because I want to know how much I'm REALLY burning, but I haven't bit the bullet yet.

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