Can someone accurately explain net calories to me by any chance. It would be greatly appreciated!

You eat the calories remaining. Net calories is how much of what you've eaten hasn't been burned off from exercise. It's like a net profit is how much you make on a job after you account for expenses. (holy crap, i just made what little something i learned about accounting relevant to real life! XD)

And if you are using MFP to get your calories burned, be aware that MFP vastly overestimates the calories burned, so you should only eat back about half of that. MFP uses a generic calculation to estimate the calories burned, which doesn't take into account your age, weight, heart rate, etc. If you want a more accurate track of what you burned, get a tracker with a heart rate monitor.

Your Goal calories are set based on your BMR minus weigh loss goals.

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is an estimation of how many calories will require to stay alive today. MFP uses height, weight, gender, and age to approximate this . . . but it's not 100% accurate.

To lose weight, you need to consume less calories today than you will burn. To gain weight, you need to consume more calories than you will burn. 1 lb of fat is 3500 calories. MFP uses a weekly weight loss goal to figure out your goal calories.

My BMR is 2620 calories. I have a goal to lose 1.5 lbs this week . . . so I need to eat 1.5 lbs of fat less than I burn. Therefore, I will create a calorie deficit this week of 1.5*3500=5250 calories, or 750 per day. This means my "goal" calories would be 1870 per day.

As TeaBea says, for health reasons, MFP won't advise a goal of less than 1200, or more than 2 lbs per week (7,000 calories or 1,000/day). So if your BMR minus your weight loss goal leaves you below this number, it will raise your goal back up to 1200.

Now for net calories - BMR assumes that you are sedentary, or doing a minimum amount of exercise. If you do exercise, you will burn calories above and beyond your BMR, and this will add to the amount of food that MFP recommends you consume today. "Net" is Food minus the additional calories above your BMR that you have burned today. I wouldn't get too hung up on this metric. It's there to try to guide you with a number of calories that you've effectively consumed that day. In your case, if you burned 1200 calories in exercise, then ate your normal goal of 1200, your net would be zero. This means that you haven't eaten any of the BMR "maintenance" calories that your body needs to stay alive each day. This can be dangerous.

As dubird says, the exercise calories may not be accurate. They do account for height, weight, and age (I've seen mine change for the same exercise as I lose weight), but a HRM will be more accurate.

I'm gonna try to "uncomplicate" this for ya .....

If you are personally aiming for 1200 each day, then that is your net goal after exercise. So if you log 200 calories of exercise in a day, your goal changes to eat 1400 calories that day. 1400 total eaten - 200 exercised = 1200 net. Which is what you want.

Here are more examples:

100 exercise calorie = you want to eat 1300:
1300 eaten - 100 exercised = 1200 net.

300 exercise calories = you want to eat 1500:
1500 eaten - 300 exercised = 1200 net.

500 exercise calories = you want to eat 1700:
1700 eaten - 500 exercised = 1200 net.


With all that in mind, 1200 may be a little too low for you, but that really isn't what you asked about in the net topic.

I rarely look at my net calories unless I am just trending data or something. Calories remaining is much more useful in determining how much you can eat.

It's like money. If you make $50,000 per year, that's your gross...your after tax is your net.

The way MFP works is that you get your calorie targets as per your stats, activity level (WITHOUT EXERCISE), and your desired weight management goals. So if you eat 1500 calories (gross) and exercise 300 calories, your gross would be 1,500 - 300 = 1,200 calories...but MFP means for you to account for your exercise by logging it and getting those 300 calories to eat back...so your net would actually be 1,500 and your gross would be 1,800.

Net calories is the amount of your intake that can be applied to support your TDEE ( basic life functions for your general activity level ).

Your daily TDEE requirement is met from a combination of net intake and using stored energy.

Your daily goal = TDEE requirement + exercise expenditure - minus expected stored energy usage ( weight loss rate goal )

Because this whole process has built in inaccuracies and is all estimations, you typically want to land slightly less than your daily calorie goal, to account for anomalies. How much less needs interpretation, based on demonstrated accuracy.

And, as others have said, you need to get a net 1200 minimum a day, unless medically supervised and instructed.

steelyjoe22 wrote: »

Sorry for making it complicated! I'm an engineer and like to overexplain sometimes haha. I agree, it takes some understanding that a lot of Americans don't have. I've been using MFP for 3 years, so it now seems like second nature. But it's a big lifestyle change at first.

If your BMR is only 1373 calories . . . that means if you consume 1200 calories a day and don't exercise, it'll take 20 days to form a deficit large enough to lose 1 lb. This could explain why your results are slower than expected.

1373 seems low - I'm 6'2" and weigh 230 lbs . . . you must be smaller than me!

I'm not a professional . . . but just based on my experience, I wouldn't eat much below your 1200 calories. It can have adverse health effects, and make you feel hungry and want to binge eat. If you want to lose faster, I would add in more exercise. Some people here use the strategy of eating back 1/2 of exercise calories. Exercise will make you hungrier, so this gives some allowance for that, while still letting you lose weight a little faster than without the exercise.

Dude...

1 - BMR is just the calories you burn by merely existing...she may very well have a BMR of 1373...but obviously a higher TDEE. You don't need a cut of 3500 calories from BMR to lose about 1 Lb per week...you cut from TDEE.

2 - The OP is female...comparing yourself as a 6'2" 230 Lb male is meaningless....

3 - 1,300 - 1,400 calories BMR is pretty much the average female.

Heh, let the person bad at math try to explain!


To start with, you have your BMR (Base Metabolic Rate). This is the number of calories you burn by existing. Basically, if you were lying in a coma, this is what your body would need to keep functioning.

Second is your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). This is the number of calories you burn in a normal day, WITHOUT exercise. If you want to maintain your current weight, this is the number of calories you need to consume. There are a number of online calculators out there that will figure this for you, but be aware they're more estimates than hard numbers. Your definition of light activity might not match theirs, so it might be worth using several and taking an average. That's what I did, and it seems to work better for me.

Third is your deficit number. To lose weight, you have to consume less calories than your TDEE number. If your TDEE was 1500, you would need to eat less than that to lose weight. I don't know how much equals a pound and all that, but that's the basic premise of MFP. The number MFP calculates for you is your TDEE minus an amount to give you that deficit and lose weight. So if your TDEE was 1500, MFP would tell you to eat less, maybe 1300. That is what you aim for.

This is JUST with diet. Adding exercise does change those numbers. When you exercise, you are burning more calories than a NORMAL day. You have to account for those, so when you log it, MFP will add that number in for you and give you a Calories Remaining number to shoot for. That's the best thing about MFP for me is that it does the calculations for me. I'm horrible at math, so having an app do that makes it a LOT easier for me!


In short, MFP gives you the amount of calories to shoot for on a NORMAL day, without exercise. If you exercise and log it, MFP will adjust your goal for that day to account for it. The number you need to account for in checking your calories for the day is the Calories Remaining.

I hope this makes sense! I'm not always clear in explaining what I'm trying to say. ><

If you go to this site and look at each category, including measuring fat, and BMR, and the rest this might help too http://www.bmi-calculator.net/