Daily Summary Confusion....HELP!!!?!?

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paulabanks77
paulabanks77 Posts: 10
in Health and Weight Loss
I am not sure if I am eating enough to keep up with my excersise routine. For example my goal is 1510 calories a day, I ate 1230 in food, burned 964 calories through excersising 90 mins at the gym and I have a net of 266. Can someone explain to me if I am on the right track? And I am not sure of the "net" part? The daily summary confuses me when I add the excersing aspect in. I think I would understand it better if it was broken down to me. Any feed back would be a blessing!!! ::glasses:

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  • Pandorian
    Pandorian Posts: 2,055 MFP Moderator
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    Daily goal is for calories before any exercise that's your 1510 for the day. Exercise adds to that, I don't have a heart rate monitor (HRM) so I go by the machine, and because I know its inexact I only allow myself half exercise calories to eat back. So for me your burn of 964 calories... call it 1000 just for simple math thats 500 more calories I'd have available to me. Which your original goal PLUS earned calories from exercise gives you 2010 calories for today.

    I do eat my exercise calories when I have them, at least some of them. MFP has already calculated a loss for you if your goal is to lose any weight in the week, so even with eating exercise calories you're still coming up with less through the week than needed to maintain your current weight.
  • paulabanks77
    paulabanks77 Posts: 10
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    THANK YOU!! SO much...I have clarity now!!!! :happy:
  • meggonkgonk
    meggonkgonk Posts: 2,066 Member
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    Ok so it works like this: If you go into your "goals" page (from your home page) you will see how much MFP estimates that you burn from daily activity- a combo of Age, Weight, Height and Activity level (what you filled out when you started). If your goal is 1510, than your daily burn is probably around 2010. So everyday, before exercise, you will burn 500 calories that you won't eat back. This is generally the safe amount for people, and roughly comes to 1lb loss per week.

    So your daily summary looks like this BEFORE any exercise Goal : 1510 Consumed: 1500 - Exercise: 0 = Net 1500
    Your goal is to try to get your NET to be as close to the GOAL as possible, with its minimum being 1200 if you are a woman and 1500 if you are a man (general guidelines).

    Now if you exercise more, you burn more- make sense right? But your goal number is still the same. So now you do 500 calories of exercise your equation would look like this: Goal : 1510 Consumed: 1500 - Exercise: 500 = Net 1000
    Because you burned off 500 of those calories you ate in exercise, you should eat most of them back to fuel your workouts.

    This brings me to two main points of calorie counting and using MFP: 1) your diet is far more decisive in weight loss 2) This way it feels like exercise is pointless, but it is important-for a healthy lifestyle NOT for weightloss. It's helpful, its good for you, but it's more for fitness, body shape/composition. It is NOT a reason to deprive your body of calories.
  • paulabanks77
    paulabanks77 Posts: 10
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    Thank you as well for your feedback...you really got this down to a science!!! Now I now who to come to when I have these types of burning questions!!! :flowerforyou:
  • meggonkgonk
    meggonkgonk Posts: 2,066 Member
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    It's a common question. If you are new you should also make sure to browse these threads some time soon. They will explain the importance of eating enough as well as not overeating:


    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/6556-the-answers-to-the-questions

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/9433-expectations

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

    I'm not the pro-est of pro's on here but I've been here for about 6 mo's so I got the basics down pretty well - Feel free to friend or PM me questions any time.

    Good luck!

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