Calories... the more we work out the more we can eat?
beautyzlight
Posts: 23
I dont think I'm understanding this properly... When I input calories that I've burned exercising, my calorie intake number gets bigger?Like I usually eat before I work out, then as soon as I insert my exercising calories, it goes back up like I never ate my breakfast and or more calories Can anyone explain why this is, and is this right and why....?????
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Replies
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There are a zillion threads on this. The bottom line is that MFP calculates your daily intake at a deficit that is designed for you to lose weight based on your energy needs without any extra exercise. So any exercise calories you add on top of that are supposed to be eaten to keep your daily calorie deficit at the proper level (to lose, say 1lb a week, or whatever you set it to).0
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There are a zillion threads on this. The bottom line is that MFP calculates your daily intake at a deficit that is designed for you to lose weight based on your energy needs without any extra exercise. So any exercise calories you add on top of that are supposed to be eaten to keep your daily calorie deficit at the proper level (to lose, say 1lb a week, or whatever you set it to).
So should I input my daily exercise and will I lose more if I don't?
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beautyzlight wrote: »There are a zillion threads on this. The bottom line is that MFP calculates your daily intake at a deficit that is designed for you to lose weight based on your energy needs without any extra exercise. So any exercise calories you add on top of that are supposed to be eaten to keep your daily calorie deficit at the proper level (to lose, say 1lb a week, or whatever you set it to).
So should I input my daily exercise and will I lose more if I don't? I mean is it a bad thing too lol
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You have to be somewhat careful about the stated amount of calories burned while exercising. Many of the machines and even the database from MFP estimate higher than what may be true. I take my calories burned reported using a heart rate monitor. For me that seems to be pretty accurate as I'm consistently and steadily losing weight. Others will take the number reported and maybe eat back half of those calories reported. Personally, the calories burned from exercising is a motivation for me to exercise. I enjoy the extra calories gained from working out as a treat for the day.0
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You have to be somewhat careful about the stated amount of calories burned while exercising. Many of the machines and even the database from MFP estimate higher than what may be true. I take my calories burned reported using a heart rate monitor. For me that seems to be pretty accurate as I'm consistently and steadily losing weight. Others will take the number reported and maybe eat back half of those calories reported. Personally, the calories burned from exercising is a motivation for me to exercise. I enjoy the extra calories gained from working out as a treat for the day.
Right.... I totally hear you. So now with that being said I should probably get myself a heart rate monitor, and record. I see a lot of people with that at the gym, but my thought was why because they have them on almost every machine ya know.
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The main focus of the way MFP tells you to eat is by "net calories." This means that the amount you eat, MINUS the amount of calories you get through exercise, is your net calories. If you don't exercise, your net calories is your net.
Say your calorie goal is 1800, and you burn 400 doing some exercise. Your new calorie goal for the day is 2200 calories, because you still need to eat 1800 NET calories. You don't have to eat back all of your exercise calories, and a lot of people don't. But you need to eat back some; it might put you below your BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) and cause you to binge, or eat uncontrollably, in the future.
Personally I love when I do a big workout, because it means I can eat something awesome like fried foods and not go over on my calories
Bwahaha!
Best of luck!0 -
You want to eat back some of your exercise calories. I know many people on here eat back half of them since, as it's been explained, MFP has a tendency to overestimate the calorie burn. For example, say your daily calorie goal is set to 1450. If you burn 300 calories from exercise after consuming 1450 calories, your net calories are 1150 which is TOO LOW. You don't always have to eat back exercise calories, but make sure your net calories are at a healthy amount.0
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I actually don't know if the calories from exercise are inflated or not - I log all my exercise in the FitBit app (step and non-step) and it ports over to MFP. I have set a small deficit with the goal of 1-2# a month. My monthly net CICO according to FitBit is almost equal ... yet I have lost 2-3# during the past 6 weeks or so. I think the best practice is to adopt a strategy, be consistent with it, and then look at your data. If you are are not losing weight at a rate that you intend, then adjust something. I would suggest adjusting one side of the equation at a time and then seeing what the result is.0
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The main focus of the way MFP tells you to eat is by "net calories." This means that the amount you eat, MINUS the amount of calories you get through exercise, is your net calories. If you don't exercise, your net calories is your net.
Say your calorie goal is 1800, and you burn 400 doing some exercise. Your new calorie goal for the day is 2200 calories, because you still need to eat 1800 NET calories. You don't have to eat back all of your exercise calories, and a lot of people don't. But you need to eat back some; it might put you below your BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) and cause you to binge, or eat uncontrollably, in the future.
Hahaha thanks!!!0 -
BODY WEIGHT IS INVOLUNTARILY REGULATED. OBESITY IS NOT A SIMPLE CONDITION OF MERE OVEREATING. LOTS OF THIN PEOPLE OVEREAT.....
BODY FATNESS IS A BIOLOGICALLY REGULATED PROCESS, NOT the passive result of eating and exercise behaviors......-1 -
Oh dear....0
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DrSolomonFan wrote: »BODY WEIGHT IS INVOLUNTARILY REGULATED. OBESITY IS NOT A SIMPLE CONDITION OF MERE OVEREATING. LOTS OF THIN PEOPLE OVEREAT.....
BODY FATNESS IS A BIOLOGICALLY REGULATED PROCESS, NOT the passive result of eating and exercise behaviors......
So it's just a coincidence that I stopped exercising and being active and overate and got fat...and then when I started to exercise and eat according to my stats and activity I lost weight...and then maintained that loss?
Please do tell...0 -
I gave up on trying to figure this out. I just use the TDEE - 20% method. I set mine to lightly active 60lbs ago and never bothered again with trying to figure out how many calories I burned and trying to eat them back.0
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Also, OP...if you set up your profile according to the MFP method, your activity level is only your day to day hum drum without any exercise...suffice it to say, exercise would then become and additional and unaccounted for activity that would increase your daily calorie requisites.
Let's say you maintain weight without any exercise on 2000 calories per day...this would mean to lose 1 Lb per week you would need to eat 1500 calories per day (in order to create a 3500 calorie deficit over the week). Now, you decide to exercise because it's really good for you and stuff...and lets say you burn 350 calories per day...your new calorie goal to still lose that same 1 Lb per week would be 1500+350 = 1,850 calories...but you continue to have that same 500 calorie deficit because now your maintenance calories would not longer be 2000...they would be 2350 and 2,350 - 1,850 = 500 calorie deficit still.
As to why you wouldn't want to just forgo those calories to potentially lose faster? Well, part of being healthy and fit is actually learning how to fuel your body and your activities. Underfeeding your body can lead to recovery issues and injury while training...you shouldn't underfeed and train.0 -
DrSolomonFan wrote: »BODY WEIGHT IS INVOLUNTARILY REGULATED. OBESITY IS NOT A SIMPLE CONDITION OF MERE OVEREATING. LOTS OF THIN PEOPLE OVEREAT.....
BODY FATNESS IS A BIOLOGICALLY REGULATED PROCESS, NOT the passive result of eating and exercise behaviors......
Can you please explain?
I have been dealing with obesity from the time I was an infant and the doctor told my mom to stop feeding me so much because I was getting fat. I was fat my entire life until I was 40 and decided to lose weight. I stopped paying attention and eating more and gained some weight back. Then, two years ago I said enough, dieted in a way I'd never done before (eating all foods I love in moderation), lost 44 pounds and have kept it off for well over a year.
Setting underlying medical issues aside, it's the simple fact of eating too much that makes us fat.
If thin people are under eating, then they are not doing to the degree that they gain weight. If they were, they would gain weight.
I vehemently disagree that body weight is involuntarily regulated.0 -
Both my dietician and weight doctor (he's an endocrinologist specializing in weight issues)
say to ignore exercise calories. They're a bonus toward losing weight.
That's been working for me.
Most people underestimate what they eat,
and most machines (including MFP) overestimate calories burned.
For most people, most of the time, those errors more or less cancel out.
If you're really hungry at the end of the day once in a while, eat 1/3 to 1/2 of your exercise calories.
.
I've been eating below my BMR for over a year now (minus a few days here & therewolfman wrote:As to why you wouldn't want to just forgo those calories to potentially
lose faster? Well, part of being healthy and fit is actually learning how to
fuel your body and your activities. Underfeeding your body can lead to
recovery issues and injury while training... you shouldn't underfeed and train.
like Thanksgiving) and my doctors are happy with both my overall health &
my progress in losing weight. That's considerably below the TDEE/MFP method.
Things might be different when someone is close to or at an ideal weight.
.
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Because "net", that's why.0
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beautyzlight wrote: »There are a zillion threads on this. The bottom line is that MFP calculates your daily intake at a deficit that is designed for you to lose weight based on your energy needs without any extra exercise. So any exercise calories you add on top of that are supposed to be eaten to keep your daily calorie deficit at the proper level (to lose, say 1lb a week, or whatever you set it to).
So should I input my daily exercise and will I lose more if I don't?
Sure. You'll also wind up under-eating and potentially worsening your gym performance.
Seriously, not a race...0 -
Both my dietician and weight doctor (he's an endocrinologist specializing in weight issues)
say to ignore exercise calories. They're a bonus toward losing weight.
That's been working for me.
Most people underestimate what they eat,
and most machines (including MFP) overestimate calories burned.
For most people, most of the time, those errors more or less cancel out.
If you're really hungry at the end of the day once in a while, eat 1/3 to 1/2 of your exercise calories.
.
I've been eating below my BMR for over a year now (minus a few days here & therewolfman wrote:As to why you wouldn't want to just forgo those calories to potentially
lose faster? Well, part of being healthy and fit is actually learning how to
fuel your body and your activities. Underfeeding your body can lead to
recovery issues and injury while training... you shouldn't underfeed and train.
like Thanksgiving) and my doctors are happy with both my overall health &
my progress in losing weight. That's considerably below the TDEE/MFP method.
Things might be different when someone is close to or at an ideal weight.
.
Please stop advising people to ignore exercise calories when the MFP method is designed as net (non-exercise) + logged exercise for caloric intake. Unless one is doing TDEE (in which case exercise calories would be included, not ignored, in daily average intake), exercise calories should be eaten back in order to maintain a healthy deficit.
You are under doctor supervision. Even if I were under doctor supervision, my goal would not be to lose weight in such a way that means eating the LEAST amount of food. Who wants to eat the least amount of food? I love food, I want to eat as much as I can. I'd be a seriously unhappy camper if I ate your caloric intake levels (since I'm eating more than you do, even if I take a break from exercise and lower my calorie intake accordingly, and I weigh less while likely being about as active in day to day activities) and most likely others would not want to be around me either. I'd never recommend someone on MFP or in life lose weight by failing to utilize a recommended deficit size and thus eating way less than they actually could eat to see results.0 -
Both my dietician and weight doctor (he's an endocrinologist specializing in weight issues)
say to ignore exercise calories. They're a bonus toward losing weight.
That's been working for me.
Most people underestimate what they eat,
and most machines (including MFP) overestimate calories burned.
For most people, most of the time, those errors more or less cancel out.
If you're really hungry at the end of the day once in a while, eat 1/3 to 1/2 of your exercise calories.
.
I've been eating below my BMR for over a year now (minus a few days here & therewolfman wrote:As to why you wouldn't want to just forgo those calories to potentially
lose faster? Well, part of being healthy and fit is actually learning how to
fuel your body and your activities. Underfeeding your body can lead to
recovery issues and injury while training... you shouldn't underfeed and train.
like Thanksgiving) and my doctors are happy with both my overall health &
my progress in losing weight. That's considerably below the TDEE/MFP method.
Things might be different when someone is close to or at an ideal weight.
.
There is no TDEE/MFP method. The two methods are different, and neither has anything to do with not eating below BMR. (Not undereating means not having too extreme a deficit, which MFP caps at 1000 and TDEE method usually makes 20%, although I cut 500 calories off when I started doing it.)
My first several months here I routinely lost 2 lbs/week (sometimes up to 3 lbs) while eating back a good portion of my exercise calories. Yet according to you I should have eaten less because I must have been underestimating my calories eaten and overestimating my calories burned. I disagree and would suggest that aiming for a greater weight loss with the level of activity I was doing would have been underfeeding my body.
Your doctors' approach seems to work if someone really doesn't do a good job estimating calories, and maybe that's common (I've been half***ing it lately and am not doing a good job or losing, but I'm also 5 lbs from goal). However, some people fall on the other side of the scale and might habitually overestimate their calories or underestimate their activity. A good way to check on this is to look at how much you are actually losing per week. (As a personal matter, I'd be bothered by my doctors assuming I was too incompetent to count my calories properly, but then there's a reason I am not a good person to do a doctor managed approach and did this on my own.)
I don't think it's responsible, though, to tell a population at MFP who commonly are eating at 1200 and the maximum recommended deficit (1000 calories) that they should also exercise vigorously and not eat any extra calories to account for it. Unless you are regularly losing more than 2 lbs/week, you aren't doing that yourself, yet you consistently recommend it to people.0 -
beautyzlight wrote: »There are a zillion threads on this. The bottom line is that MFP calculates your daily intake at a deficit that is designed for you to lose weight based on your energy needs without any extra exercise. So any exercise calories you add on top of that are supposed to be eaten to keep your daily calorie deficit at the proper level (to lose, say 1lb a week, or whatever you set it to).
So should I input my daily exercise and will I lose more if I don't?
I input mine just to have an ongoing record of how I'm doing on exercising, but I do that more to stay on-track (not too hard though, I do exercises I love) and just to have a record of how much I'm exercising.
I generally don't eat back my exercise calories. My personal feeling is that MFP way overestimates calorie burn for a whole number of different exercises/workouts. On a very hungry day, I'll eat back some of them, up to about half.
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DrSolomonFan wrote: »BODY WEIGHT IS INVOLUNTARILY REGULATED. OBESITY IS NOT A SIMPLE CONDITION OF MERE OVEREATING. LOTS OF THIN PEOPLE OVEREAT.....
BODY FATNESS IS A BIOLOGICALLY REGULATED PROCESS, NOT the passive result of eating and exercise behaviors......
Wow! Really? So it wasn't years of overeating and being a lazy-*kitten* that got me to 364lbs! Totally not my fault then! So, I guess that means I can quit MFP, stop exercising, and stop watching what I eat then, cause based on what you're saying, that wont help me lose weight......
So... it's just coincidence that I've lost 30+lbs since I've been using MFP?
Thank you SO much!
</sarcasm>0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Both my dietician and weight doctor (he's an endocrinologist specializing in weight issues)
say to ignore exercise calories. They're a bonus toward losing weight.
That's been working for me.
Most people underestimate what they eat,
and most machines (including MFP) overestimate calories burned.
For most people, most of the time, those errors more or less cancel out.
If you're really hungry at the end of the day once in a while, eat 1/3 to 1/2 of your exercise calories.
.
I've been eating below my BMR for over a year now (minus a few days here & therewolfman wrote:As to why you wouldn't want to just forgo those calories to potentially
lose faster? Well, part of being healthy and fit is actually learning how to
fuel your body and your activities. Underfeeding your body can lead to
recovery issues and injury while training... you shouldn't underfeed and train.
like Thanksgiving) and my doctors are happy with both my overall health &
my progress in losing weight. That's considerably below the TDEE/MFP method.
Things might be different when someone is close to or at an ideal weight.
.
There is no TDEE/MFP method. The two methods are different, and neither has anything to do with not eating below BMR. (Not undereating means not having too extreme a deficit, which MFP caps at 1000 and TDEE method usually makes 20%, although I cut 500 calories off when I started doing it.)
My first several months here I routinely lost 2 lbs/week (sometimes up to 3 lbs) while eating back a good portion of my exercise calories. Yet according to you I should have eaten less because I must have been underestimating my calories eaten and overestimating my calories burned. I disagree and would suggest that aiming for a greater weight loss with the level of activity I was doing would have been underfeeding my body.
Your doctors' approach seems to work if someone really doesn't do a good job estimating calories, and maybe that's common (I've been half***ing it lately and am not doing a good job or losing, but I'm also 5 lbs from goal). However, some people fall on the other side of the scale and might habitually overestimate their calories or underestimate their activity. A good way to check on this is to look at how much you are actually losing per week. (As a personal matter, I'd be bothered by my doctors assuming I was too incompetent to count my calories properly, but then there's a reason I am not a good person to do a doctor managed approach and did this on my own.)
I don't think it's responsible, though, to tell a population at MFP who commonly are eating at 1200 and the maximum recommended deficit (1000 calories) that they should also exercise vigorously and not eat any extra calories to account for it. Unless you are regularly losing more than 2 lbs/week, you aren't doing that yourself, yet you consistently recommend it to people.
very much love for you.0 -
MFP is designed to eat back exercise calories. Remember, most are overestimated, so most eat about half back, to account for miscalculations.0
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DrSolomonFan wrote: »BODY WEIGHT IS INVOLUNTARILY REGULATED. OBESITY IS NOT A SIMPLE CONDITION OF MERE OVEREATING. LOTS OF THIN PEOPLE OVEREAT.....
BODY FATNESS IS A BIOLOGICALLY REGULATED PROCESS, NOT the passive result of eating and exercise behaviors......
Hey, you're back dude! It's been a while!
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I'm so bloody confused now reading this post. I walk around 15kms a day and MFP has me at 1200 calories and I burn between 500-700 average calories a day which brings my net down to approx 700-800, some people tell me I'm not eating enough , others tell me to eat more, others tell me I'm fine....... reading this post .... has made me more confused !0
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lemurcat12 wrote: »There is no TDEE/MFP method.
Sure there is. Just set a custom goal for whatever your TDEE-% calories are, and don't log exercise calories.
Tons of MFPers do it that way.0 -
tracetraceau wrote: »I'm so bloody confused now reading this post. I walk around 15kms a day and MFP has me at 1200 calories and I burn between 500-700 average calories a day which brings my net down to approx 700-800, some people tell me I'm not eating enough , others tell me to eat more, others tell me I'm fine....... reading this post .... has made me more confused !
What are you confused about?
MFP says if you do know exercise you should eat 1200
You go out and walk for 15kms and burn an extra 500-700 calories now MFP says "oy, you said you weren't exercising and now you've used an extra 500 calories ...eat them please"
So you eat them, and they make you happy because you expand your diet and fuel your body for your next walk
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tracetraceau wrote: »I'm so bloody confused now reading this post. I walk around 15kms a day and MFP has me at 1200 calories and I burn between 500-700 average calories a day which brings my net down to approx 700-800, some people tell me I'm not eating enough , others tell me to eat more, others tell me I'm fine....... reading this post .... has made me more confused !
My net calories are 1430 a day, I earn say 300 calories running for 30 minutes. So I can eat 1730 that day and still lose my target 1lb per week.
As previously stated I try to not eat back all of my 300 calories that I have earned as MFP over estimates.
If I'm right in saying it's not healthy to go under 1200 calories per day, which it looks like you are if you go for a long walk.
You net is 1200 + 700 calories walking - so on that day you can eat 1900 and still loose you target.
I hope this makes it clearer?
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