Net Calories

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jco03
jco03 Posts: 14
in Health and Weight Loss
If I want to lose weight, should I look at the Net calories or should I just not eat the calories I burned and look at the regular calories?

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  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
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    You should eat to your goal.

    If you have a 1lb/week goal that sets you to eat 2000 calories a day without exercise, then eat 2000 calories when you aren't exercising. If you exercise and log 300 burned calories, then eat between 2150-2300 calories (50-100% of the exercise calories).
  • bigd66218
    bigd66218 Posts: 376 Member
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    No, eat below goal and you will lose weight.
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
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    bigd66218 wrote: »
    No, eat below goal and you will lose weight.

    This is incorrect. Unless you set your goal to "maintenance" and want to lose weight, whatever goal MFP gives you is your caloric deficit. You do not eat further below your existing deficit.

    If doing TDEE, then you'd subtract 10-20% from your maintenance. After which you would not eat below your deficit goal.
  • mzdondiva718
    mzdondiva718 Posts: 2
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    I honestly aim to eat less than what I was given maybe I'll leave over 200 also when I work out and burn my 400 I leave it back I don't use it again so that is usually there so some days my remaining calories is pretty high. If I burned it I don't think I would want to put it back.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
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    ana3067 wrote: »
    You should eat to your goal.

    If you have a 1lb/week goal that sets you to eat 2000 calories a day without exercise, then eat 2000 calories when you aren't exercising. If you exercise and log 300 burned calories, then eat between 2150-2300 calories (50-100% of the exercise calories).

    BAM!
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
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    mzdondiva718 wrote: »
    I honestly aim to eat less than what I was given maybe I'll leave over 200 also when I work out and burn my 400 I leave it back I don't use it again so that is usually there so some days my remaining calories is pretty high. If I burned it I don't think I would want to put it back.

    You're doing MFP wrong.
  • higgins8283801
    higgins8283801 Posts: 844 Member
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    I don't follow mfp anymore. But when I did I always aimed for my net to be my calorie goal, minus half to account for errors.

    So if i used mfp today for me would have looked like this

    Start with being able to eat 1530. I went to the gym and burned 332..so that brought me up to 1862. To account for error I would only act like I burned 166. So at the end of the day I would have ate 1696.

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