Question about exercise goals

Hi everyone,

I have a strange question about the exercise goals that MFP has calculated for me. I noticed that when I signed up, I entered that I aim to workout 5 times a week. It calculated that my "goal" was to burn 590 calories through exercise a week. I double that goal everyweek. I burned 1095 calories this week through exercise, and I didn't even workout yesterday. I thought this was good..to go above the exercise goal.
But....now I'm wondering if we are supposed to adhear strictly to the calorie goals, shouldn't we be adhearing to the exercise goal as well? I have been eating those calories that I burned and have been steadily gaining weight again. So I am just curious if the increase is just too much for me and I am killing myself in the gym, when I don't really have too. Anyone else notice this?

Don't over think it too much. You can setup a training plan but listen to your body and be ready to adjust. My favorite strength coach said, "Never train past the point of your body's ability to adequately recover." And he promotes training 7 days a week, whether it's a full blown workout or active rest. If you're working out and your body feels great and you think you can do a 6th or 7th day, then do it. If you wake up and your body just hurts or is very fatigued perhaps take the day off or do some form of active rest (light walk or easy bike ride or something, Google Neural Charge Training or Activation Training for active rest days).

If you are conducting low to medium intensity cardio, after you burn off your glucose reserves, you will still need to burn off over 4,000 Calories of fat to lose a pound on the scale [where (approximately) 1 pound of fat = 454g and 1 g fat = 9 Calories energy stored ... hugely simplified]. Give it some time. You should set goals for both total calorie intake and exercise expenditure independently, where the combination will result in a planned loss over time. For example, if MFP estimates you burn 1,500 Calories throughout the day and you eat 1,500 Calories as your intake goal, you will break even and sustain your weight. Exercise above this will result in Calories burned and over time this will result in weight loss, fat loss if done properly. MFP makes a good attempt at Caloric estimates, but we are, overall, too reluctant to believe we are more active during the day and burn more Calories than we actually do. Underestimate both of these to stay sane. Caloric expenditure is based on many factors. Two people of the same age, build, size, cardiovascular health, and conditioning can burn vastly different Calories during the same exercise. Every little bit help your body composition and heart health, so don't fret.

Consider that when beginning any new exercise regiment, your body responds by storing additional water within your cells to aide in maintaining proper intracellular salinity and pH while removing waste products from the exercise. There may be a slight water retention due to this. Weight gain doesn't necessarily equate to anything if its only from water. Also, as part of the ATP cycle, increased muscle stimulus will drive an increased production of ATP to ensure you can sustain muscle contractions during exercise, which requires a small amount of creatine, sodium, potassium, and calcium. Most of these are salts of some sort. If you've ever felt sore 48 hours after a workout, this is partly due to the muscle inflammation (mostly water moving up a concentration gradient to dilute the cells) to eliminate waste product. As your body stores more salts, it will hold more water to ensure that the electrical signals from your brain reach every part of your body. Too much salt = bad, too little salt = bad. There is a huge huge margin of error here, so don't worry too much as long as you are taking a multivitamin and calcium supplement.

This water weight gain should only be minor, but in the game of the scale, it could temporarily counteract an actual loss of fat by indicating you gained a pound overall. Not to worry, as your body becomes more efficient at driving the ATP cycle and eliminating waste, the net effect will be a loss of fat and decreased water retention. Don't overtrain, but do train sustainably.

If you are eating the extra Calories MFP tells you that you burned off (but might not have), you may well be storing this as additional muscle or fat. (muscle=good, fat=bad ... you won't turn bodybuilder overnight). Adjust your total intake if you are hungry and take a look at monitoring your heart rate throughout exercise to get a feel for how well MFP estimates your expenditures and you'll be back on track. Personally, MFP overestimates what I burn by about 20% when I do calculations based on average heart rate during treadmill runs.

http://www.triathlontrainingblog.com/calculators/calories-burned-calculator-based-on-average-heart-rate/

Keep to the code.