Am I missing something?

Because sometimes people with very little to lose come here and set their goal to two pounds per week. It's far too aggressive and they can't maintain it. Some come here and don't log accurately, so they aren't sure if their goal is correct when they aren't losing weight. Some people have absolutely no idea how many calories certain exercises burn and MFP doesn't give calorie counts for absolutely every exercise there is.

MFP has tools, but they aren't necessarily complete and people may not know how to use them. I try to cut them a little slack because some of us are completely lost when we start. It might be frustrating to long term users seeing the same questions over and over again, but the new users don't know that. Sometimes it's just nice having another human confirm that we used the tool correctly.

MynameisJerryB wrote: »

Thanks for clarifying that, I was just curioius if the majority didn't trust the numbers MFP gives or what.

MFP tries to give fairly accurate numbers, but they can't factor in all the variables. I think it's a good idea for people starting out to learn about more beyond the number MFP gives. It will help them understand why eating some or all of your exercise calories back is not undoing your work. If they understand their approximate TDEE it gives them confidence to eat more.

The only exception to the above is people who joined via the mobile ap over the last couple months. There was a glitch that had some people getting recs of as low as 500 calories per day, and the site admins just advised to wait for an update rather than disabling that function.


I was not a fan. Lots of people either tried to eat too little or gave up on eating healthy (because they got unattainable goals) because they got bad info.

usmcmp wrote: »

MynameisJerryB wrote: »

Thanks for clarifying that, I was just curioius if the majority didn't trust the numbers MFP gives or what.

MFP tries to give fairly accurate numbers, but they can't factor in all the variables. I think it's a good idea for people starting out to learn about more beyond the number MFP gives. It will help them understand why eating some or all of your exercise calories back is not undoing your work. If they understand their approximate TDEE it gives them confidence to eat more.

Now that's something I really don't understand ... everyone talks about TDEE and NEAT. I've no idea what that means.

However, as for learning more. During my first 3 weeks or so, I checked and double checked the calorie content of food against other calorie sites such as Nutrition Data. And of course, started weighing and measuring everything. I figured if I wasn't going to be accurate and honest ... why be here?

Machka9 wrote: »

usmcmp wrote: »

MynameisJerryB wrote: »

Thanks for clarifying that, I was just curioius if the majority didn't trust the numbers MFP gives or what.

MFP tries to give fairly accurate numbers, but they can't factor in all the variables. I think it's a good idea for people starting out to learn about more beyond the number MFP gives. It will help them understand why eating some or all of your exercise calories back is not undoing your work. If they understand their approximate TDEE it gives them confidence to eat more.

Now that's something I really don't understand ... everyone talks about TDEE and NEAT. I've no idea what that means.

However, as for learning more. During my first 3 weeks or so, I checked and double checked the calorie content of food against other calorie sites such as Nutrition Data. And of course, started weighing and measuring everything. I figured if I wasn't going to be accurate and honest ... why be here?

TDEE is the total amount of calories your body burns in 24 hours. It is made up of:
1. Your BMR, which is the amount of calories your body needs to sustain functions (brain, heart, lungs, etc.)
2. Your NEAT, which is your non-exercise activity (cooking, washing dishes, sitting, typing, etc.)
3. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) which is the amount of calories you burn digesting different macros (we ignore this slightly, but we do note that the less calories you eat the lower your TDEE is because of digestion).
4. Exercise, which is activity you purposefully do to improve health.

Glad you weigh foods! When I first started weighing I was a bit surprised (by peanut butter especially).

Machka9 wrote: »

usmcmp wrote: »

TDEE is the total amount of calories your body burns in 24 hours. It is made up of:
1. Your BMR, which is the amount of calories your body needs to sustain functions (brain, heart, lungs, etc.)
2. Your NEAT, which is your non-exercise activity (cooking, washing dishes, sitting, typing, etc.)
3. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) which is the amount of calories you burn digesting different macros (we ignore this slightly, but we do note that the less calories you eat the lower your TDEE is because of digestion).
4. Exercise, which is activity you purposefully do to improve health.

Glad you weigh foods! When I first started weighing I was a bit surprised (by peanut butter especially).

I just plugged in that I wanted to lose 0.5 kg/week ... and that I was sedentary. MFP told me that I could only eat 1250 calories.

And then I add my exercise, often modifying the calories burned to a lower number than what MFP provides because I think MFP is a bit optimistic.

As I've lost weight my max of 1250 calories has dropped rather rapidly to 1200 calories.

Since I'm actually losing about 1.3 kg/week, rather than 0.5 kg/week, I've gone in and manually upped my max calories back to 1250. While losing that quickly is exciting, it's probably just a teensy bit too fast.


So TDEE is what you burn at rest.
NEAT includes my "sedentary activities".

I think I've known those two as Basal Metabolic Rate and Resting Metabolic Rate.

No. TDEE is the total amount you burn at rest, at work, exercising and everything else you do in a 24 hour period. BMR is what you would burn if you stayed in bed and didn't do anything at all (not even roll over or lift your arms). NEAT is the daily activities you do that aren't exercise.

TDEE=BMR+NEAT+TEF+Exercise

MFP figures your calories based on your BMR and NEAT. They take your deficit from that total. Since they do not factor in exercise they expect you to eat those calories that you burned during your exercise or your deficit will be even bigger.

Machka9 wrote: »

usmcmp wrote: »

No. TDEE is the total amount you burn at rest, at work, exercising and everything else you do in a 24 hour period. BMR is what you would burn if you stayed in bed and didn't do anything at all (not even roll over or lift your arms). NEAT is the daily activities you do that aren't exercise.

TDEE=BMR+NEAT+TEF+Exercise

MFP figures your calories based on your BMR and NEAT. They take your deficit from that total. Since they do not factor in exercise they expect you to eat those calories that you burned during your exercise or your deficit will be even bigger.

Probably why I'm losing weight so quickly ... sometimes I don't eat my exercise calories, sometimes I eat some of my exercise calories, but I rarely eat them all.

The goal for most of us should be to lose weight while eating as much as possible. As we lose weight our body will use lean mass as well as fat mass for fuel. We take preventative measures to keep our lean mass through eating as much as we can while losing, eating adequate protein, and doing resistance training. This helps us have better body composition when we reach our goal and it prevents us from yo-yo dieting (a major contributor to yo-yo diets is the loss of lean mass, and resulting lower BMR at the end of the diet).