Question about additional calories for exercise

MFP calculates your deficit based on your base metabolic rate, which is the number of calories you burn every day without exercise. for example, if your BMR is 2000 calories a day and you want to lose 1 pound a week, you need a daily deficit of 500 calories. So, MFP will tell you to eat 1500 calories a day. If you then go to the gym and burn an additional 500 calories, you can eat those calories back and still be at a 500 calorie deficit for the day. So, you can eat 2000 calories and still be on track to lose a pound a week.

When I work out, I want to make it worth my while so I usually burn a lot. I don't always eat every single one of my exercise calories back but I know that I can if I feel like my body needs (or I just want pizza) it and still be on track to meet my goals.

Hope this helps!!

Depends on what exercise.

Walking and running with very specific speeds, if you actually did that speed the WHOLE time you logged, is more accurate than HRM.

Biking is rather wide ranges, and again avg for the whole time, as long as up/down hill cancel each other out, and head/tail wind do to. But you'll usually burn more than given if you had lots of stops lowering your average speed.

Other stuff with no description of intensity - who knows if you are doing it the same level as the studies that gave those burns.

Strength training is actually pretty good estimate - seems low but that is true.

And strong concept to get down, which MFP supports.

Diet is for weight loss - done right just fat loss, done wrong includes muscle mass loss. Bummer.

Exercise is for heart health and body improvements - done right can support fat loss, done wrong can help muscle loss. Body improvements is usually weight gain, water mostly.

Only thing exercise helps with weight loss is causing your daily burn to be higher, so that when you eat less than that higher amount, you'll hopefully adhere to the diet.

Would you be more apt to adhere to eating 2000 if you burned 2500 daily which includes exercise, or eat 1500 with burning 2000 with no exercise?

Both are 500 cal deficit, both lead to 1 lb weekly loss if done daily.

Don't think bigger deficit is better, it's not. Especially not for exercise you want improvements from. And why else do the workout if no payoff.

I hardly ever eat back my exercise calories. Only when I feel I need to. I find those estimates to be wildly inaccurate. Even the heart rate monitor ones. I had a friend hop on my stationary bike for 50 minutes and her HRM said she burned 1200 calories.... And she insisted on eating back all 1200. :noway:

I never eat back my exercise calories, there is no way to know how many you have burned since there are so many variables. It is very easy to overestimate, especially by methods like MFP. I have read a lot of posts from people who are not being successful and a lot of times is from overestimating their calories and being on actual surplus when they think they are at a deficit.

What I suggest is upping your daily calories by a few hundred or adding about 200 on days you do exercise. What I did while cutting was to have an extra protein shake after my workouts. You get the protein you need to build and restore muscle while adding additional calories.

By the way burning 1,000+ calories is hard to do, I see so many people log that almost on a daily basis, there is no way they are burning that many calories. They would be pretty burned out after a week or two.

When I log exercise like the gym I manually half the calorie burn before entering it

The rest of my activity is picked up by my fitbit and on a non gym day I will take 350-500 calories for that as during the day the fitbit extrapolated estimates are too high (I tend to take longer dog walks first thing) I will only complete my journal the next day when fitbit burn is accurate for the previous day

It's working so far but to be honest I've generally under-eaten by about 1000 cals per week to date ...this week I have started eating much closer to the actual allowance so I'm interested to see if I drop a lb or not

Why don't you just turn off the Setting option for Calorie Estimation, so you don't get those inflated daily calories?

Start's your eating goal based on sedentary, and then only increases it when you actually burn more.

I divide Aikido time by 2, personally. We get pretty tired in our Dojo. Soaked in sweat.