Profile Setup

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femmaggie
femmaggie Posts: 14 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I started MFP in March and I have a few questions about profile Goals I entered. My goal is to lose 50 pounds. I work in a sit down office job for 9 hours a day 5 days a week, but since I started MFP this time around I joined the gym as well close to my work. I workout during my lunch hour Monday to Friday and rest on the weekends. I do 30 minutes on the elliptical burning anywhere from 300-350 calories 4 days a week and 1 day a week I do 10 minutes of cardio burning about 100-125 calories and use the weight machines for a full body workout. On my profile in the "Goal Settings" the activity level I entered was sedentary because I do sit all day and I chose to try and lose 1.5 pounds a week which MFP calculated to 1370 calories, do I eat back the calories I burned at the gym? Or should I set it to lose 1 pound a week which calculates to 1610 calories and not eat back my workout calories? I just want to make sure my settings are correct for the goal I am aiming to achieve. ~Thanks.

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  • cbills65
    cbills65 Posts: 164 Member
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    I believe you have the right setting. I think that sedentary applies to your daily activities outside of exercise. If that is wrong, someone will correct me. As for eating back calories, most people advise eating back 50%-75% of your earned calories so you are not falling below the 1200 mark because of your calorie deficit. My personal advice is to decide how you want to approach it and try it for a month and see what happens. You may find you have to tweak it to find that place that works for you. I have a desk job too but try to work out 5-6 days a week. I lift so my calorie intake is higher when I am lifiting to build as opposed to cutting. With higher calories I tend to eat back less of my exercise calories than I do when I have a lower allowance. Which is not great because I WANT to eat them back more during that time, ironically. But I had to play around with this quite a bit over time to see what would work for me. The process works but customization seems to be key.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    sedentary applies to your DAILY activity level. office jobs count as sedentary.

    many people (myself included) eat back a percentage of their exercise calories- usually around half (mfp grossly overestimates calorie burns).
  • ruggedshutter
    ruggedshutter Posts: 389 Member
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    You have it set up correctly at sedentary. The reason that most people will say to only eat back 50-75% of the exercise calories is because exercise machines and MFP overestimate your calorie burns. By only eating back 50-75% you are fairly certain that you will stay on track to lose your 1.5lb/wk
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    Your activity level does not include exercise, as you log that separately.
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    You should log your exercise calories separately and eat them back. Just be aware that MFP tends to over-estimate exercise calorie burns, so you might want to be conservative and only eat back, say, half of your exercise calories.

    As for your other question, with your stats, 1lb/week is probably more reasonable than 1.5lbs/week. But if you feel fine and not hungry at the lower calorie goal you can keep it at 1.5lbs/week for now, but I'd suggest lowering it to 1lb/week once you've lost the first 10lbs or so.
  • femmaggie
    femmaggie Posts: 14 Member
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    Thank you all for the help. I think I understand it now.

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