Calories Burned are outrageous!!!!

Heavier people burn more calories. If you are using MFP to calculate then for various exercises it cna be overgenerous, so do as rabbit said and halve them, then adjust accordingly.

If I put in swimming, leisurely, general I get around 500 calories....which would probably be about right for me. If you're putting "vigorous effort" or something, you shouldn't...people tend to overestimate their level of effort because something is difficult because they're out of weight and out of shape...but that doesn't necessarily translate to "vigorous effort"

You're moving, and that is more important than what a computer program says you're burning in calories. Keep up the good work. Often results lag behind actions. Our bodies are annoyingly reluctant to shed pounds, especially as we get older. Hang in there.

When I run, I always log it as walking and then I eat half of that. I'm still losing so I'm doing something right.

kirstfk wrote: »

I stopped logging my exercise on here because it was so unrealistic imo. not only that it then kept telling you to eat more which to me seemed like the wrong idea altogether! lol

It's not the wrong idea. It's just MFP's approach -- it can't know in advance what exercise you'll do. If YOU knew you were going to burn 3000 today, from existing, working, chores, exercise... you'd know that you should eat at least 2000, because 1000 is the typical max deficit (as a guideline for a healthy deficit).

But MFP doesn't know. So it takes 1000 off your BMR + lifestyle (work, etc). When you then go swimming and burn off another 300, you have this deficit of 1300... too big, kind of unnecessary. So you get to eat it back... just like you would if you'd known in the first place. (3000 - 1000 is 2000. 2700 - 1000 is 1700, but then you burn 300, making your deficit 1300, so eat another 300 to get 2000 and bring your deficit back in line. That's the same as 3000 - 1000, or 2700 + 300 - 1000.)

It's just trying to keep you in line with your goal that you told it you wanted to lose every week.

kirstfk wrote: »

I stopped logging my exercise on here because it was so unrealistic imo. not only that it then kept telling you to eat more which to me seemed like the wrong idea altogether! lol

fueling your fitness is very important to your overall health...with MFP, exercise activity is unaccounted for...your activity level just accounts for your day to day hum drum. With MFP you account for that activity by logging it after the fact...now you've done an additional activity that is otherwise not accounted for...thus your calorie requisites increase.

When you get past the notion of exercise simply for the purpose of burning calories and/or losing weight and start to look at exercise for the purpose of fitness, it makes perfect sense. Fueling your exercise is important to recovery and fitness performance.

I ride about 50-60 miles on average per week (more when I'm actively training) and hit the weight room a few days per week...and then I'm just pretty active in general. If I didn't fuel all of that activity properly, I'd be on my *kitten*...I'd have all kinds of recovery issues and likely chronic exercise related injuries.

The difficulty with MFP is getting accurate calorie burn estimates which is why many people who are consistent and exercise regularly just do the TDEE method and include some estimate of exercise in their activity level and thus an estimate of those calories are included in calorie targets.

I was just coming to post about exactly the same thing. MFP just tried to tell me that a 1 hour step class burned nearly 1000 calories! Even at my 250lb I don't believe it, so I halved it. MFP's calories burned for walking and running are always way over what my Garmin measures so I always enter the actual amounts from the garmin.

I compared my usually exercise (Walking, upstairs) in an amphitheater vs the machine at the gym and they were close. If anything MFP underestimated my calories burned!

I always eat back all my calories, but not on the same day. I look at it with a weekly perspective. I'm down 47lbs so it seems to be working.

I ran the numbers on a standard swimming calculator, since I was surprised the calories were so high--my swimming calories always seem higher than I think they are, but nowhere in that ballpark--and I got similar numbers for you (and the same 300 and some I normally get for the same exercise). There seems to be a huge variation based on weight.

I am curious about that, as I'd actually think the water would reduce the effect of the added weight. Does anyone have knowledge about this?

If I were you I'd halve it. I tend to see 10 calories per minute as a good max for really hard effort and scale everything else down accordingly. You will have greater burns due to weight, though.