Recording my excerise. Necessary or no?

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

Mr_Knight wrote: »

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

MFP works best when you don't use it as it's designed to work.

MFP is designed to work as either TDEE or BMR/NEAT+Exercise.

Either is just fine.

Although if one uses it for TDEE one either doesn't record exercise or gives it a notional value, in which case it becomes an intake tracking tool, rather than an intakre and output tracking tool.

Anybody using MFP properly for output tracking is changing MFP's calorie burn numbers anyway, so really, in a practical sense, nobody is really using MFP for output tracking anyway, because the numbers are being calculated externally, anyway.

Going TDEE path just formalizes that process.

brianpperkins wrote: »

@sixxpoint ,
Copying and pasting that much material without citation is plagiarism.

Lol.

It's directly from my culinary book's section on nutrition, but you can also find it in the Nutrition Forum of Bodybuilding.com - the person who posted it there also plagiarised, I guess.

sixxpoint wrote: »

So to summarize... That person eats say 1200 calories, then burns 500 with exercise and adds it to MFP for a reduction, netting that person at 700 calories...

So using the system as it's designed would mean that the individual would have a daily goal of 1700 cals, since their net target would be 1200, and they'd then need to offset the 500 expended.

I'd agree that it's not all that intuitive to many, as we see lots of threads asking about what the best exercise to burn lots of cals is, people aren't appreciating that they should be eating those cals back.

Just because the problem exists between the chair and the keyboard, doesn't mean that the service provided is flawed.

So the point to the originator is, yes one should eat back what is expended in exercise.

And for the latter part of my original point, TDEE is fine if one is expending a consistent level of energy per session or the periodisation is short enough that increases and decreases are smoothed over time. Similarly, for some the background levle of activity changes quite significantly, and while TDEE can be modified, it may be easier just to reset base activity and stick with NEAT. In my own case if I mobilise on exercise in the field for a month then my activity level is significantly higher than sitting in an HQ location somewhere.

Different circumstances have different needs, I would suggest that broad brush assertions about suitablity of the tools aren't all that helpful.

_incogNEATo_ wrote: »

So this thread is open again?

Apparently. :flowerforyou:

OP, if you're already only eating 1200 calories and not eating back exercise calories, you're very likely not getting adequate nutrition. IMO you SHOULD be recording exercise and eating back a portion of the calories earned. What is your height and current weight?

hiaaitsmegan2 wrote: »

...and I don't get eating back the calories you burned. Isn't the whole point to burn them off?

So this gets to the heart of how MFP is designed to work, the debate upthread about alternative methods are just different ways to account for the energy that you consume, and the energy that you expend. At its simplest, MFP has calculated a goal of 1400cals per day for you, net. That will give you the rate of loss that you've set, and it assumes you do no exercise. Essentially weight loss is only about calories in vs calories out (aka CICO).

When you train, you expend more calories, so your deficit will be greater than that calculated. Some might see that as a good thing as it'll lead to faster weight loss, but as observed by many in thread that can be unhealthy as it leads to an unbalanced loss. So you eat back your calories to keep your deficit in balance.

You then get into a debate about the accuracy of measuring both calories in, and calories out. Calories in is pretty simple, weight and measure what you consume and log accordingly. That's not always possible for some, personally I travel a lot for work so I'm on hotel food three or four nights per week and just eyeball it. My goals are about running performance rather than weight per se.

As far as calories out are concerned, there are many variables and lots of ways of getting the wrong measurement, with very few ways of getting an accurate measurement. So people find different ways to account for the level of error. Some ignore it, and rail against their lack of progress. Some only eat back a portion of their expenditure, some don't eat back any. Personally I generally only eat back a proportion, but as I'm generally doing long distance running I have large calorie expenditures and physically can't eat back enough at times anyway. I currently have 1300 calories available to me for dinner, I'll probably manage 950. That's fine for me, but at 1400 cals you don't have much margin for error before you're undereating.

The best advice I can give you is to pick a method of estimating calories expended, and stick with it. As you make progress you can tweak how you compensate for that, based on how you're doing. If you are losing faster than planned, then eat back more, if slower then eat back less.

I hope that helps a little.

If that is the case, consider logging your exercise as the next day's activity so that the calories are there when you get up in the morning.