Dumb question - insanity recommended calories vs MFP recommended calories

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Sapphire_Elf
Sapphire_Elf Posts: 76 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi all

can anyone help, I have a question that I'm not about re calorie intake and Insanity....?

Tonight is the last workout of Week 1 on Insanity. According to the Elite Nutrition Guide and varous things I've read, I should be on about 1900 calories a day to lose weight while doing the Insanity programme, on a 40/40/20 split between carbs, protein and fat.

I am female, 42yrs old, 5ft 6 and weigh around 149lbs. As well as Insanity, I cycle to work and back 4 days a week (6.5 miles total) and I horse-ride once a week for an hour (which will fall on the Insanity "rest day"!!

If I put my stats into MFP, it tells me that from normal daily activity I burn 1690 so therefore I'm actually not on a deficit at all if I'm eating 1900...... If I follow the guided goal setting, it automatically tells me that I should be on 1200 calories with 50% carb/20% protein / 30% fat split.

Should I go by what all the insanity literature says or should I plug away with MFP??

Help - my goal is definitely not to maintain or gain weight but to lose fat!!!!

Many thanks :)

Replies

  • determined_14
    determined_14 Posts: 258 Member
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    This isn't a dumb question. :) It sounds like the Insanity info is accounting for your "insanity" activity (though probably not the cycling and horseback riding?), whereas MFP is telling what to eat without added exercise. Does that sound like a possibility?
    If so, you could go either way-- eat what insanity recommends, and no more, or aim for MFP's "net calorie" recommendation and eat back some or all of your exercise calories.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
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    When you use MFP, it's set up to have a base, then earn additional calories for exercise.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
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    Since MFP doesn't include exercise until you log it, it looks like Insanity expects you to burn 200 calories doing that. With MFP, you would log a 200 calorie activity for Insanity and then log the additional activities with whatever calories they are. MFP would then give you the appropriate calorie allowance.
  • Sapphire_Elf
    Sapphire_Elf Posts: 76 Member
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    The insanity calories do account for the activity done in the workouts, but not extra exercise. My garmin gives me a rough count of 230-odd calories for biking, and horse-riding I have no clue. At the moment I am not logging extra calories for exercise onto MFP....

    I don't have the Insanity guide to hand, but the calculation is something like this;

    Multiply current weight in lbs by 12 - so for me that's 1788. Then it estimates you burn approx 600 cals during Insanity, so you add that on - that gives me 2388. Then, to lose weight, you subtract 500 from that number - which means my intake should be 1888, which is rounded to the nearest whole number, so 1900.

    I'm a bit doubtful that I actually burn that many calories doing the workouts, although I end up in a puddle of sweat on the floor, so I've set my food diary for 1700 calories a day...... which I am hoping will still allow me to eat enough and still be at a deficit?

    I have noticed that I am REALLY hungry at the moment!!!! :)
  • determined_14
    determined_14 Posts: 258 Member
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    If you're really hungry, you could probably eat a bit more, especially as it sounds like you estimated low/ didn't account for much of your activity. A 600cal burn sounds high to me too, though I've never tried Insanity. How long have you been proceeding this way? Are you losing weight? At what rate? Finding the right calorie intake is trial and error for all of us, so be patient, give it some time, and don't be afraid to tweak if things aren't working for you. Good luck! :)
  • lmramos1
    lmramos1 Posts: 6 Member
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    Hi. I had the same issue as you. I just finished insanity on Sunday (love love love it btw). I'm 4' 11, 146 lbs, 37 yr female. Month 1 I didn't lose a single pound and I followed the calories in the elite nutrition plan which had me at 1800 cal. Month 2, I followed MFP which had me at a 300 cal daily deficit so 1250 calories a day. In addition, I bought a heart rate monitor and found that I wasn't burning anywhere near the calories reported on insanity calories so I wasn't creating a deficit at all, just eating to maintain in month 1 (my tdee is 1550 so if I was burning problably 300 cal working out and eating 1800, I wasn't at a deficit at all, no wonder I wasn't losing any weight). Month 2, I made sure I'm burning at least 300 cal a day working out while eating 1250 cal a day so that I'm at a total 500 deficit a day with my calories. I'm now losing weight, and lost 3 pounds in month 2. If I burn more than 300 cal, which some days I burned up to 500 cal, I ate more to adjust. According to beach body, going 1250 cal while doing insanity is way too low and everyone said I would go into starvation mode and recommended I eat more. I feel great. I choose nutrient dense foods to fuel my body and I feel completely satiated. I'm now redoing insanity and wish I had adjusted my diet earlier. If your goal is to lose weight, I would follow MFP and keep a 500 cal deficit from your TDEE with a combo of working out and diet, being mindful not to " eat back" the calories you burned.
  • Sapphire_Elf
    Sapphire_Elf Posts: 76 Member
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    HI all

    sorry, I started to reply to this yesterday and work got in the way :)

    Imramos1, thanks for sharing your experience with me :) I have done my TDEE using a couple of different sites and the numbers are not a million miles away from the Insanity numbers? According to my calculations:

    =655+(9.6*68.9)+(1.8*160)-(4.7*42) gives me an RMR of 1407. Multiplying that by 1.55 for being moderately active gives me 2180.912 - so minus 500 for weight loss gives me 1680.912. Which if I round up either gives me 1700 or down to 1600.

    do you guys reckon that would be enough to give me a deficit?
  • virelay129
    virelay129 Posts: 43 Member
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    I do Insanity. Every exercise I wear a Polar FT7 (Heart monitor) that tells me how many calories I burn. I've talked to several people about how much they burn doing the same workout and it ranges from 150 to 750. It all depends on your stats, speed, ability, etc. I generally burn 175 to 348 per workout. I plug it into MFP that way.
  • Sapphire_Elf
    Sapphire_Elf Posts: 76 Member
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    GuitarJerry wrote: »
    Folks, you cannot get an accurate calorie count using an HRM with Insanity. They are not made for that kind of activity. Your HRMs are vastly wrong. Sorry.

    Intrigued - although I own a Garmin I use that more for running/cycling speed than anything else because that's what it's aimed at. It doesn't work for things like DVDs!

    But - If HRMs are not aimed at activities like Insanity, what would you say they are for? And, if they aren't for that sort of thing, is there any way to get an accurate count while doing something like insanity?
  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
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    HRMs work for steady state cardio. Not activites that include repeated start/activity/stop.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    Sapphire_Elf wrote: »
    GuitarJerry wrote: »
    Folks, you cannot get an accurate calorie count using an HRM with Insanity. They are not made for that kind of activity. Your HRMs are vastly wrong. Sorry.

    Intrigued - although I own a Garmin I use that more for running/cycling speed than anything else because that's what it's aimed at. It doesn't work for things like DVDs!

    But - If HRMs are not aimed at activities like Insanity, what would you say they are for? And, if they aren't for that sort of thing, is there any way to get an accurate count while doing something like insanity?

    A HRM's aim is to measure your heart rate...they excel at that. In RE to calorie burn, they are relatively accurate for steady state aerobic activities. Your HR doesn't not directly correlate to calories burned...if it did, I'd just have someone walk into my office every five minutes and scare the bejesus out of me and forgo all of this hard work I'm doing.

    A HRM simply uses your HR in an algorithm to estimate what level of a very generic VO2 max you are working at. VO2 max is best measured with steady state cardio...anaerobic exercises aren't good indicators of VO2 max...so HRMs really aren't all that accurate for things like circuit training, weight lifting, HIIT, etc...these types of activities often result in huge spikes in HR...which is going to inflate calorie burn.
  • Sapphire_Elf
    Sapphire_Elf Posts: 76 Member
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    Thanks both. Never really thought of it that way :)

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