Your body actually doesn't know about mfp

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  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,134 Member
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    Merkavar wrote: »
    You can trust your body... It's got your back

    rimshot_zpsvgabbk2i.gif
  • Annie_01
    Annie_01 Posts: 3,096 Member
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    DeguelloTex wrote: »
    But the elliptical tells me that I burned 1500 calories in 45 minutes!!

    But if you sweated a lot you probably burned closer to 2000.

    I read that some where on the internet.

  • tigerblue
    tigerblue Posts: 1,525 Member
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    I wish I had learned this sooner. I spent several fruitless months saying, "but I should be able to eat x number of calories and lose/maintain".

    In the end, if you are losing, you are in deficit. If you gain, you're in surplus, and maintaining means you are eating what your body currently uses. I spent those months being angry that I couldn't eat as much as someone else (sometimes my size, sometimes not.). What I should have been asking myself is "do I feel satisfied while eating this number of calories to maintain?" Head games.

    Of course, logging accuracy can play with your brain on this one too!

    Start with the estimates. Keep good records and adjust as needed.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,943 Member
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    Merkavar wrote: »
    You can trust your body... It's got your back

    This is good.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,943 Member
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    Domicinator wrote: »
    This post inspires me to just keep going. There are a lot of know-it-alls on this board, and this is yet another one who wants to sit here and mince words for three days about what gets you at a deficit and what doesn't.

    I will not let it frustrate me. MFP works for a lot of people because it's based on the only real way to lose weight: burning more than you eat.

    Also, how does it not know my exercise? It knows at least an approximate figure of calorie burn because my Apple Watch estimates burn based on my heart rate and what kind of exercise I'm doing and then feeds that into my MFP equation for the day. It can't be too far off, because I've lost 53 lbs. So it did know my exercise and it must have been a pretty close estimate because a lot of days I eat back my calories from exercise and still lose at almost exactly the rate MFP says I should.

    I apologize for sounding combative, but I'm tired of people being discouraging all the time.

    I don't feel any discouragement in this conversation. I'm having quite a bit of fun here. :)
  • bendyourkneekatie
    bendyourkneekatie Posts: 696 Member
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    HappyCampr1 wrote: »
    I read this as an example of why it's pointless to lie in your own diary/log. Your body knows what you ate whether you want to admit it or not, so you might as well keep track properly.

    Yeah, it's partly that, and partly for people who on paper seem to be doing everything right, and aren't intentionally fudging the numbers, but still aren't seeing results. Getting it right on paper means nothing, really. You seem to be doing everything right, the numbers indicate you should be losing, but you're not? Chances are, you need to eat less.

    This is coming from my own journey. due to personal variables I've had to manually set my own calorie goal, and finding it was a process of trial and error. But it worked and I've reached and passed my goal, using mfp as a tool but not a gospel.
  • tannibal_lecter
    tannibal_lecter Posts: 83 Member
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    Yes! Thank you OP! This needs to be said more.

    Not to mention food labels are allowed to have up to a 20% discrepancy to the product inside the package.
  • OsricTheKnight
    OsricTheKnight Posts: 340 Member
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    jennifer_417 wrote: »
    The thing about CICO is that it's as much art as it is science. No, you're probably never going to know EXACTLY how many calories you're eating, or burning. But the best evidence is that if you apply the formula, it works. It's entirely too easy to get caught up in the inprecisoon of the system and convince yourself that it doesn't work, when it really does. It's not perfect, but it does work.

    You're 100% right there is no way to know CI exactly or CO exactly.

    I find that focusing on the difference - CI - CO = my deficit - is way more useful for two reasons:

    1- it is easily calculated
    2- it is a much smaller number than my calorie budget, so little choices suddenly are more significant and easier to make correctly

    And in that way I also kind of agree with the OP - working on calculating the components is not necessarily that accurate - looking at the results and adjusting our eating and exercise based on them is the key.

    There's no point asking "Why am I not losing (gaining) weight?" The answer is always "Because you're not in the deficit (surplus) that you think you are!". Just adjust behaviour until the results are coming in...

    Osric
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
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    tannibal_lecter wrote: »
    <<snip>>Not to mention food labels are allowed to have up to a 20% discrepancy to the product inside the package.

    For items packaged for sale in the United States, companies are not allowed to "have up to a 20% discrepancy" with regard to nutritional information per serving size; however, the weight of the contents may vary per package depending on the quality control of the manufacturing process.

    Manufacturers are required to comply with the US FDA guidelines for rounding on Nutrition Facts labels, which can be found online at the below link. Hypothetically for Calories, the largest discrepancy permitted by the rounding guidelines would be rounding 54.99 Calories to 50 Calories, which would be just under 10%. As the Calories per serving size increases, the rounding error decreases.

    fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm064932.htm

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