How do workouts fit into calorie deficits?

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SassyCassie90
SassyCassie90 Posts: 7 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello! I am brand new to MFP and calorie counting, and I am a little confused about how it works. I understand that eating less calories and working out is the best way to lose weight, but I don't fully understand...

So I logged in my meals and my workout today, and after logging in my workout, MFP told me that I can add 321 calories to my day because that is how much I burned during my workout.. It doesn't make sense to me that I should eat back the calories I burned??

Today is my first day on MFP, and I have about 60lbs to lose so I'm really trying to fully understand whether I need to eat those extra calories or if I should ignore it.

Side note: Does anyone else do Jillian Michaels 30day shred or Ripped in 30? How do I log that into MFP? Thanks for any help!!


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  • Merkavar
    Merkavar Posts: 3,082 Member
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    CassieMichaels24 wrote: »
    Hello! I am brand new to MFP and calorie counting, and I am a little confused about how it works. I understand that eating less calories and working out is the best way to lose weight, but I don't fully understand...

    So I logged in my meals and my workout today, and after logging in my workout, MFP told me that I can add 321 calories to my day because that is how much I burned during my workout.. It doesn't make sense to me that I should eat back the calories I burned??

    Today is my first day on MFP, and I have about 60lbs to lose so I'm really trying to fully understand whether I need to eat those extra calories or if I should ignore it.

    Side note: Does anyone else do Jillian Michaels 30day shred or Ripped in 30? How do I log that into MFP? Thanks for any help!!


    The goal is stable weight loss.

    So say you burning 1000 calories exercising and don't eat it back your deficit for the day would be say 2000. But your goal is to lose 2 pounds. But that deficit is at 4 pounds.

    But say you exercise and burn 1000 and eat back 75% then your deficit is closer to 1250 which is again closer to your goal of 2 pounds per week.

    Too fast weight lose can be unhealthy.


  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
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    What you should be aiming for is a consistent calorie deficit. If you don't replace the calories you burn during exercise, your deficit will increase.
  • MysticRealm
    MysticRealm Posts: 1,264 Member
    edited April 2015
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    MFP works by giving you a deficit already worked in to your 'everyday cals'. So if you weren't to do any exercise you would lose the amount of weight it predicts for you. If you were to exercise and not eat the calories back you would make your deficit too large which isn't healthy. Since most machines/calculators tend to over estimate calorie burn most people eat only 1/2 to 3/4 of the burned cals it says you can eat back. MFP feels that exercise should be for health, and diet is for weight loss.
    If you prefer a different method where you don't 'noticeably' eat back your exercise calories try the TDEE method. Google scooby's workshop TDEE calculator. Enter your stats and use the number it gives you. You can manually enter that calorie number as you goal into MFP and eat that number of cals everyday.
  • Ame_ly
    Ame_ly Posts: 29 Member
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    The calorie MFP says you burned doing exercise are often wrong.

    I don't bother eating back my exercise calories, I simply set my lifestyle as 'active' instead. Different people burn a different amount of calories doing the same exercise, you can't really be exact about this. I've heard a lot of people saying that you should eat back only half of the calories you got from exercising, so you could try that.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    This is how it works

    TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure = how many calories you use up on an average day
    * To lose weight you need to eat less than this number (3500 fewer calories over the week = 1lb weight loss)
    * all weight lost is made up of water, fat and LBM - the trick is to go slow and weight train to reduce amount of LBM (lean body mass: muscle, bones etc) lost


    TDEE is made up of

    1) BMR (the number of calories you use up just existing, ie lying in a coma in a bed all day you would burn this amount)
    2) your activity level without purposeful exercise eg getting up and dressed, brushing teeth, walking to work etc
    3) your purposeful exercise to improve cardiovascular fitness / strength

    MFP works on NEAT (Non exercise activity Thermogenesis)
    - so basically you tell it your height, weight, activity level and weight loss goal per week it calculates your BMR + your activity level - want to lose 1lb a week, it cuts by 500 per day

    - it ignores purposeful exercise so if you do no exercise you will still lose weight

    - as soon as you exercise you burn more so you eat more - take 50% of the MFP database calorie estimate and eat it, you don't want to lose too quickly - see LBM issues

    judge everything by your actual weight progression over time (6-8 weeks) not week by week and adjust how many exercise calories you eat back accordingly
  • juleszephyr
    juleszephyr Posts: 442 Member
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    The others have explained the maths but I would suggest if you are going to eat your exercise cals back that MFP can over-estimate so maybe try eating back half. Re JM30DS I did this a few times and when the discussion was had re calorie burn we settled on 26 mins of Circuit Training General...
  • 198cmahmwsi
    198cmahmwsi Posts: 7 Member
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    You definitely do need to eat back at least some of your exercise calories. I'm probably at the rather extreme end of the scale in terms of exercising, but this is my calorie intake while losing weight (Steadily losing 1kg every 10 days or so on average over the last 8 weeks).
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    However, you do have to ensure that everything is logged accurately, both in and out.

    Accurately tracking the inbound stuff is fairly easy - Buy food scales, weigh everything, log everything, sorted. Accurately logging the outbound stuff is more difficult as MFP sometimes massively overestimates the calories from exercise, so if you don't have a way of measuring it accurately (e.g. Power meter on a bike, etc.) then I suggest using about 60-70% of MFP's estimate.

    Also - If you want my advice - Don't get too hung up on the "total calories" or "net calories" for one particular day. Weight loss happens over the scale of weeks, not days, so as long as you're below maintenance on average, you will lose weight.

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