Not to trust calories burned??

MFP uses your weight, age, etc. to help calculate. Personally I'd use the MFP number, but if you're "eating back" any of those credited calories I recommend only eating back 50-75% of them, as they're typically inflated.

justinkeeton0013 wrote: »

The treadmill asks for my weight and age too. So why is mfp higher than the treadmill? I dont eat them back bc I wouldnt have a calorie deficit if I did.

If you used MFP to calculate your daily calorie goal - that already has your deficit built in, so you will still have a deficit if you eat exercise calories back. If you used another online TDEE calculator, then no you should not eat any exercise calories back, because that already factors your exercise in.

Like the above poster said though, in my experience neither MFP nor any cardio machines are anywhere near accurate as far as actual calories burned.

Your MFP goal already has a deficit built in. If you don't eat back your calories (not 100% but some portion of them) then you are widening the deficit. Which sounds good, but that bigger deficit can cause issues with energy levels, maintaining muscle and cause the desire for food binges.

MFP may be higher as it is probably using an average calorie burn across most treadmill brands. I find they are pretty accurate, log it and eat about 50% of the calories and you will do fine.

be conservative...it's all estimates...it's impossible to be 100% accurate with determining calorie burns.

also, you aren't trying to create your deficit with exercise...MFP has your deficit built in as if you were not going to do any exercise whatsoever...when you set fitness targets, those are just for you...they have no bearing on your calories...play with the settings and you will clearly see this.

if you are using MFP as designed, any exercise is unaccounted for activity...this is why MFP increases your calorie GOAL when you log exercise...to account properly for that activity. You have to be conservative though...most people who properly follow the MFP method eat back only a portion of their exercise calories in order to account for estimation errors.

how important is eating back those calories? it really depends on what you're doing. burning a couple hundred calories on an elliptical is probably not a big deal either way...but if you get into actually training and doing moderate to vigorous workouts, you're going to want to learn how to properly fuel that activity.

remember, diet for weight management; exercise for fitness.