Question about exercise.

If you're following MFP's recommendations then you're supposed to eat them back...that is the way this tool is designed. When you set your activity level, you do NOT include exercise...exercise is then extra activity. Here's how the numbers/math looks.

Let's say your day to day is lightly active without deliberately working out and you say you want to lose 1 Lb per week and MFP spits out a calorie goal of 1,500 calories. This means that MFP is estimating your theoretical maintenance WITHOUT deliberate exercise to be 2,000 calories (because 500 calories per day deficit = 1 Lb per week).

So now let's say you go workout and burn a very solid 300 calories and you log this...MFP will up your calorie goal because again, this is activity in addition to the activity level you stated in your profile...it is extra and it is thus far unaccounted for. So now your calorie goal is 1,800 calories...but you still have that net deficit of 500 calories because your new maintenance with this extra activity would be 2,000 + 300 = 2,300 and 2,300 - 1,800= 500 calorie deficit still.

With MFP you're not trying to create the deficit with exercise and make your deficit bigger with exercise. It is set up this way to help people understand that, by and large, you use your diet for weight control and you exercise for fitness.

Be very careful in you estimation of burn. Do not just put in some number from the database...it is likely very inflated. I always took off around 20% of what my HRM told me I burned to account for estimation error...then I would compare that number for reasonableness to a factor of whatever I my perceived level of effort was...basically 5 calories per minute if I was out for a moderately paced walk and up to 10 calories per minute if I was really working hard and at a level to where I could not hold a conversation. It's really hard to burn more than 10 calories per minute with sustained activity, so I let that be my max..you will burn a bit more if you're heavier, but it's pretty negligible and you want to be conservative in your estimations anyway.