Is It Possible to Have a Negative Net Calorie Count Daily?

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  • Thanasi99
    Thanasi99 Posts: 40 Member
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    aggelikik wrote: »
    Please say the 99 in your screen name is not the date of birth? As in, you are not a 16 year old trying to survive on negative calories?

    That's the date of birth of my son.
  • theresaTerriM
    theresaTerriM Posts: 28 Member
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    LeanButNotMean44 wrote: »
    Thanasi99 wrote: »
    I am using My Fitness Pal to measure my calories burned.

    The calorie burns for exercise on MFP are grossly overestimated.

    Serious? Wow, I just got onto MFP and was curious if they under or overestimated. So what's a good way to count calorie burn? I would hate to start logging my exercises today and think I'm burning more than I actually am! No bueno, yikes....
  • Thanasi99
    Thanasi99 Posts: 40 Member
    edited April 2015
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    Serious? Wow, I just got onto MFP and was curious if they under or overestimated. So what's a good way to count calorie burn? I would hate to start logging my exercises today and think I'm burning more than I actually am! No bueno, yikes....

    I also found that to be a bummer, especially considering that I've been taking these numbers to heart.
  • Spyer116
    Spyer116 Posts: 168 Member
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    not sustainable everyfday. But the odd day, it wouldn't be so bad. once you're not feeling hungry and purposely going without eating.
    i'm currently at -360 and am done for the night. I'll be perfectly fine tomorrow, and not any more hungry than I normally would be after waking up. But I wont be going negative each day
  • lemonsnowdrop
    lemonsnowdrop Posts: 1,298 Member
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    If your goal is 1430, you need to consume 1430 calories. That's before exercise. If you burn maybe 500 working out, you need to eat back at least half of that, or your body won't get the nutrition it requires to sustain high energy activities. You'll lose a lot of muscle that way too. Your best bet is to buy a heart rate monitor, so that you can accurately measure your burns until you can get a good feeling of how much you burn individually. For example, I know that running a mile for me burns 100 calories so I typically don't wear my HRM anymore.
  • theresaTerriM
    theresaTerriM Posts: 28 Member
    edited April 2015
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    Thanasi99 wrote: »

    Serious? Wow, I just got onto MFP and was curious if they under or overestimated. So what's a good way to count calorie burn? I would hate to start logging my exercises today and think I'm burning more than I actually am! No bueno, yikes....

    I also found that to be a bummer, especially considering that I've been taking these numbers to heart.

    No kidding! I was using the LoseIt! app previously but it didn't connect to my new fitness tracker (Garmin Vivofit) and so I just got onto MFP yesterday and will start logging my exercises on it today.

    Umm...kinda bummed to be honest if that's the case. But if there's some sort of ratio to keep in mind while logging them, I am still good with that.
  • Thanasi99
    Thanasi99 Posts: 40 Member
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    From what I've heard now, exercise seems to only count for about half of what it's truly logged in to MFP as.
  • skippygirlsmom
    skippygirlsmom Posts: 4,433 Member
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    lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
    Thanasi99 wrote: »
    I spent an hour bicycling at about 11 mph, an hour of moderate paced walking at work, and about 2 hours of moderate swimming laps.

    No. That would burn like 500-700 calories max, I would think.

    Depending on the size of the pool, how fast you swam and weight, in 2 hours you could burn 1,000 calories (or so I read on a few different sites) :smiley:
  • brisingr86
    brisingr86 Posts: 1,789 Member
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    I've had a negative net day before. Worked out for like 3 hours (I have a HRM for estimating calorie burn) and didn't eat very much in anticipation of a big family meal the next day. People that do IF probably have this happen fairly frequently if they are on a 500 day and workout at all (or just BMR). Agree with others that not sustainable/healthy to do this every day. If you're doing a specific program (like IF), maybe a day or two a week is fine, with the caveat that you're eating more (little to no deficit) on days in between.
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
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    Possible? Only if you're 100% certain you burned that much. Healthy? Not at all.
  • DaveinSK
    DaveinSK Posts: 86 Member
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    lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
    Thanasi99 wrote: »
    I spent an hour bicycling at about 11 mph, an hour of moderate paced walking at work, and about 2 hours of moderate swimming laps.

    No. That would burn like 500-700 calories max, I would think.

    Three hours of exercise and an hour of walking is quite a bit. I know MFP overestimates, but 700 calories seems like a low estimate especially with all the swimming unless the OP is very small.
  • DeeJayShank
    DeeJayShank Posts: 92 Member
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    TeaBea wrote: »
    OP - your body is using calories 24/7 for important stuff like heart, lung, and kidney function. Please fuel your body properly!

    None of us got fat overnight.....we shouldn't expect to lose weight overnight either.

    this
  • lemonsnowdrop
    lemonsnowdrop Posts: 1,298 Member
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    DaveinSK wrote: »
    lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
    Thanasi99 wrote: »
    I spent an hour bicycling at about 11 mph, an hour of moderate paced walking at work, and about 2 hours of moderate swimming laps.

    No. That would burn like 500-700 calories max, I would think.

    Three hours of exercise and an hour of walking is quite a bit. I know MFP overestimates, but 700 calories seems like a low estimate especially with all the swimming unless the OP is very small.

    Sorry, but unless you're a long distance runner, heavy weight lifter etc, I have a hard time believing that someone burned 1400 calories, especially when they were values given by MFP. Maybe not 700, but not nearly 1400.
  • LKArgh
    LKArgh Posts: 5,179 Member
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    Thanasi99 wrote: »
    From what I've heard now, exercise seems to only count for about half of what it's truly logged in to MFP as.

    In general MFP calculatiosn are accurate. But, logging exercise is usually not accurate. Let's say you swim for one hour. How much of it was actually swimming, how much was it resting. And how do you judge the "effort" which appears to be how MFP decides how many calories you have burned? It is very easy to e.g. log as 1 hour swimming what in fact was 30 minutes swimming, 30 minutes rest between laps. And it is also very easy to judge as vigorous effort what someone else would call relaxed swimming. I am not saying you did make any of these mistakes, it could be you actually did burn as much as MFP tells you, but it is very easy to overestimate a lot calories burned.
  • DaveinSK
    DaveinSK Posts: 86 Member
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    lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
    DaveinSK wrote: »
    lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
    Thanasi99 wrote: »
    I spent an hour bicycling at about 11 mph, an hour of moderate paced walking at work, and about 2 hours of moderate swimming laps.

    No. That would burn like 500-700 calories max, I would think.

    Three hours of exercise and an hour of walking is quite a bit. I know MFP overestimates, but 700 calories seems like a low estimate especially with all the swimming unless the OP is very small.

    Sorry, but unless you're a long distance runner, heavy weight lifter etc, I have a hard time believing that someone burned 1400 calories, especially when they were values given by MFP. Maybe not 700, but not nearly 1400.
    I don't know much about swimming, but the MFP numbers on cycling seem to match pretty well with other sources, plus cycling is really easy to track. If she went 11 miles in an hour, Livestrong gives 418 calories for that for someone who's 155lbs, and bicycling.com and MFP give 422 calories in the hour.
  • Bitokos
    Bitokos Posts: 26 Member
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    I think 1400 calories is totally doable based on the exercise. I bike hard for about an hour a day and can get around 1000 calories based on my Polar HRM. My resting heart is right at 50 bpm and I sustain 165 to 170 bpm for just about the entire hour minus the warm up and cooldown. And swimming is brutal when it comes to calorie burning.
  • lemonsnowdrop
    lemonsnowdrop Posts: 1,298 Member
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    It would have to be continuous working out. Two hours of continuous swimming, two hours of continuous cycling, etc.
  • shadowfax_c11
    shadowfax_c11 Posts: 1,942 Member
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    lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
    I have a really hard time believing you burned 1400 calories in one day, unless your session was like five hours long.
    Actually I burn about that in one 90 minute session of martial arts. Actually 2 hours but I only log 90 minutes.

    OP that did happen to me once. It was one of my dojo days and I ended up with a negative number for my net calories. It is not something would purposely do on a regular basis.

  • Thanasi99
    Thanasi99 Posts: 40 Member
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    The exercise was all continuous for each respective exercise. (I swam all at once, biked all at once, etc.)

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