Do you have to log your exercise daily (as I already put it in my settings for my goals)?

Options
vickihelyar
vickihelyar Posts: 8
edited October 2014 in Health and Weight Loss
When I set up my profile and set my goals, I put in my settings that I would be exercising for 60 mins 6 days a week. However, I'm logging in my exercise every day too. Is this wrong? Should I be doing this or are the settings I saved enough? I obviously don't want to lose out on calories and be feeling hungry after a hard workout. If anyone could help, that would be great. Thanks.

Replies

  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,725 Member
    Options
    It depends. What activity level did you use to setup your account, and does it reflect how you spend the majority of your day?

    Sedentary ride a desk
    Lightly active: on your feet most of the day
    Active: on your feet working with your hands all day
    Very active: strenuous work all day
  • vickihelyar
    vickihelyar Posts: 8
    Options
    I clean houses to earn part of my wage, but is only 5 hours per day, on average. I initially put it under 'active' - which it is, but it's obviously not full time. I have today changed it to 'lightly active' to account for this.
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
    Options
    The exercise goals aren't included when MFP calculates your goal. Now, if you decide to use the TDEE method, exercise calories are already included in that and you wouldn't need to log.

    Do you eat all your exercise calories back? You may want to cut back to 50-75% to account for overestimations.
  • vickihelyar
    vickihelyar Posts: 8
    Options
    How do I know whether it's TDEE? What does that mean?
  • loulamb7
    loulamb7 Posts: 801 Member
    Options
    On exercise, yes you log it under exercise. MFP will then give you those calories to eat back.

    Regarding your activity level, gauge how much you lose as "likely active". If you lose more than expected you may want to change it back to active. I would consider your job as active even if you are only doing it 5 hours a day.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    Options
    TDEE is total Daily calorie Expenditure

    You would have manually adjusted your goals to be using this method. If you just let MFP decide your goals, then you are not doing the TDEE method.
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
    edited October 2014
    Options
    TDEE=Total Daily Energy Expenditure. You go to a website such as scoobysworkshop.com and figure out how many calories you would approximately need a day, combining your daily activities and exercise. You would generally eat at about a 20% deficit from that number depending on how much you need to lose. MFP runs of the NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) system, which does not add in exercise until you log it.
  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,725 Member
    edited October 2014
    Options
    vickihelyar wrote: »
    I clean houses to earn part of my wage, but is only 5 hours per day, on average. I initially put it under 'active' - which it is, but it's obviously not full time. I have today changed it to 'lightly active' to account for this.

    Lightly active plus logging your exercise sounds perfect! Now just be careful cos MFP can give inflated exercise calories sometimes. What are some examples of the burns you get from exercise? A lot of people only eat a portion of it like 50-75% of exercise calories :)
  • vickihelyar
    vickihelyar Posts: 8
    Options
    I've just looked it up. It calculated my bmr as 1249 and tdee 1882. Myfitness Pal gave me the goal of 1730, but that goes up when I add in the exercise.
  • vickihelyar
    vickihelyar Posts: 8
    Options
    That's really helpful everyone, thanks. I'll re-do the calculation using that website just to check. I workout really hard - 4 days of 40 mins intense strength training (with gains every week) plus 10 mins cardio. Also 2 hours of badminton and a one 30 min hiit session. Plus walking my dog, but that's gentle. I admittedly, once mfp has calculated how many calories I'm allowed back, eat up to the goal because I love food and feel hungry quite a lot. Don't know if I've gained a lb due to muscle, constantly hear you cannot gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
    Options
    Yeah, with the overestimation on exercise calories, try to cut back to only eating 50-75% of them. That pound definitely isn't muscle...it may be fat, or it may be water weight.
  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,725 Member
    Options
    vickihelyar wrote: »
    That's really helpful everyone, thanks. I'll re-do the calculation using that website just to check. I workout really hard - 4 days of 40 mins intense strength training (with gains every week) plus 10 mins cardio. Also 2 hours of badminton and a one 30 min hiit session. Plus walking my dog, but that's gentle. I admittedly, once mfp has calculated how many calories I'm allowed back, eat up to the goal because I love food and feel hungry quite a lot. Don't know if I've gained a lb due to muscle, constantly hear you cannot gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

    Since you strength train the TDEE calcs may be quite important for you, as I hear that can be the hardest to estimate calories burned. There's rest periods, so many different formats, etc. So a lot of folks prefer to eat a fixed number daily. If you're not losing after one month or six weeks, reduce by 50-100 calories per day. Losing too fast? Increase

    Also since you're eating right at your target it's important to log your food accurately. A gap of a couple hundred calories or more per day could put you into maintenance possibly or a surplus

    Read these:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1296011/calorie-counting-101/p1

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1
  • vickihelyar
    vickihelyar Posts: 8
    Options
    Thanks again - really appreciate your responses. I'll look into all this and make some changes.
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,268 Member
    Options
    Try IIFYM.com for a TDEE calculation I found scooby to be higher than my real TDEE.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
    Options
    If you're at lightly active (which you are) you log exercise separately. I would only add half as MFP has the tendency to over calculate and this gives you more room for error on miscalculations in other areas.
  • consideritdonemi
    consideritdonemi Posts: 88 Member
    Options
    Do you also log your cleaning as exercise, OP? MFP has a designation on their list for it. Though the end calculation seems super high for logged minutes. I clean houses part-time (and do active organizing jobs), too. However, I feel like I break more of a sweat with "real" exercising vs. cleaning. Maybe that's just mental, dunno. So if I clean for 4 hours, I will log only 60 minutes of it on MFP, 5 hours or so 90 minutes, over that then 2 MFP cleaning hours max. I believe I have my profile set at lightly active as well.
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
    Options
    JaneiR36 wrote: »
    vickihelyar wrote: »
    That's really helpful everyone, thanks. I'll re-do the calculation using that website just to check. I workout really hard - 4 days of 40 mins intense strength training (with gains every week) plus 10 mins cardio. Also 2 hours of badminton and a one 30 min hiit session. Plus walking my dog, but that's gentle. I admittedly, once mfp has calculated how many calories I'm allowed back, eat up to the goal because I love food and feel hungry quite a lot. Don't know if I've gained a lb due to muscle, constantly hear you cannot gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

    Since you strength train the TDEE calcs may be quite important for you, as I hear that can be the hardest to estimate calories burned. There's rest periods, so many different formats, etc. So a lot of folks prefer to eat a fixed number daily. If you're not losing after one month or six weeks, reduce by 50-100 calories per day. Losing too fast? Increase

    Also since you're eating right at your target it's important to log your food accurately. A gap of a couple hundred calories or more per day could put you into maintenance possibly or a surplus

    Read these:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1296011/calorie-counting-101/p1

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1

    TDEE can definitely be easier for strength training. However, I switched to net and almost only strength train, been having success with it! But my net and exercise cal consumption add up to close to what my TDEE-20% should be, so that might be something to keep in mind if you want to use net method.

    Otherwise, haven't read through the thread but if you want to use TDEE then you can just set your fitness level to match your TDEE demands. So if you feel you are moderately active, you can use the MFP equivalent and just not log exercise. It will give you a similar number to other TDEE calculators. If you want to calculate it yourself though using a calculator like at exrx.net or health-calc.com, realize that strength training includes your rests between sets, but not rests between exercises. Log your exercise in a paper journal and jot down the time you spent from start to finish of an exercise, do this for each exercise, add them all up and that's your number for how long you worked out. I enter that into MFP and eat back all the cals personally.

    Logging accurately is very very important as well! Weighing helps a lot.
  • stacyjh1979
    stacyjh1979 Posts: 188 Member
    Options
    You are doing it correctly. The info you put in your profile is your goal but it's not calculated into anything. For example if you plan to exercise 6 days a week burning 200 cal each time your goal is to burn 1200cal/week. Kind of like your calorie of macro goals, you may have a goal of 100gm of protein per day but when you log your actual food it tells you what you actually consumed versus what your goal was. Same thing with exercise, logging your actual exercise tells you what you burned not what your goal was. Hope that makes sense lol

Categories