making MFP *not* adjust my allowed calories when adding exercise
ivanhogsmybed
Posts: 13 Member
At this point I want to make adjustments in diet & exercise and see what results I get and how fast/slow, rather than setting a goal weight and a timeline and have everything calculated according to that.
Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
How can I get MFP to forget about goals and just track calories in and out?
Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
How can I get MFP to forget about goals and just track calories in and out?
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Replies
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If you want to track your exercise minutes but not count the calories, you can manually change the calories burned to 1.
Or you can not track your exercise minutes.0 -
I track all my exercise, but just put in 1 calorie.0
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I want MFP to track my exercise calories, but not increase my "allowed" calories for the day.
Is there a way to do that?0 -
ivanhogsmybed wrote: »I want MFP to track my exercise calories, but not increase my "allowed" calories for the day.
Is there a way to do that?
Yes, but you have to pay for that feature on the Premium version.0 -
Ha, I just came back from checking out the Premium features! Mystery solved.0
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I would like to do that too, I would like it to track my exercise and my food/calories in but let me decide how many calories I have left to eat instead of adjusting the calories I have left for the day.
It also adjusts according to how many steps I took with my Fitbit, I wish I could switch that off too, but if I disconnect the two apps then Fitbit doesn't know how many calories I ate.0 -
No ... I do not believe the premium features do that for you .... I have the premium version of MFP and what it actually allows is for you to set different calorie goals for different days.
IF you can make that work for you, that's great ... BUT ... it still adds the calories from aerobic exercise into your available calories for the day.
You can block it from adding the calories to your available calories. In either case, the remaining calories come from a subtraction of your totals from your available calories ... you really need to look at the exercise log to see how many calories you burned and how many minutes you excerised based on what you logged there. ... and, as so many people on MFP have commented, the exercise calories from cardio are 'high' on MFP ... so many people prefer to use what they get from their heart rate monitor appliances.
One other thing you can do with the premium version is to allocate the exercise calories across the macros based on your percentages or you can do special assignment of them instead in your set up.
PS ... as always on MFP ... strength training can be logged into the exercise journal but have no affect on available calories ... all you get is the exercise done, how many sets/repetitions/weight were done.
And ... just 1 more thing I have noticed ... and this is the same in standard version ... when you have a black remaining calories, you are in a deficit for that amount ... when the available numbers turn RED, you have over eaten that much based on available calories. ... so, as long as you have available calories left, you are in a deficit by that much.0 -
ivanhogsmybed wrote: »Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
Unless I am misunderstanding, this does show the deficit. Your maintenance calories plus exercise approximates TDEE, so the amount you are below it = your deficit.
However, if you don't want it to change the goal with exercise, change the calorie count from the exercise to 1 calorie. Since I set my goal based on expected weekly exercise, that's what I do.
There's no way to not have the goal, but you can ignore it and just focus on total calories and results.0 -
OK, I just added some exercise and MFP immediately added those calories to my daily food-intake goal. That is not what I want.
I literally just want it to:
1) track my daily calorie intake
2) track my daily exercise calories
Maybe MFP just isn't the tool I need.0 -
Yes you need premium and that's what I do.. I have it tracked but I don't want my calories adjusted because my base calories are already in my figures.
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ivanhogsmybed wrote: »Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
How can I get MFP to forget about goals and just track calories in and out?
You're making this way way more complicated than it needs to be. First of all what is your calorie goal before exercise needed to maintain your weight? Eat that many calories and ignore the others. I do this exact same thing some days.
Maintenance = 2500 calories (Yours may be different), without exercise. If I add 500 calories in exercise I would still eat 2500 calories. At the end of the day MFP says I still need 500 calories. Now I can look back at this day and see that I was 500 calories under my goal. That was my deficit for the day. The number of calories left IS your deficit.
You do not need the premium version to accomplish this.
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ivanhogsmybed wrote: »At this point I want to make adjustments in diet & exercise and see what results I get and how fast/slow, rather than setting a goal weight and a timeline and have everything calculated according to that.
Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
How can I get MFP to forget about goals and just track calories in and out?
Easiest thing I can think of to do is just ignore the 'calories left' stat. On your diary, it gives you the total you've had for the day and your exercise total separately. You'll have to manually calculate what your deficit is, but if you've set your own personal goal of however many calories for the day, you will at least get the calories in and out for that day.0 -
ivanhogsmybed wrote: »Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
How can I get MFP to forget about goals and just track calories in and out?
You're making this way way more complicated than it needs to be. First of all what is your calorie goal before exercise needed to maintain your weight? Eat that many calories and ignore the others. I do this exact same thing some days.
Maintenance = 2500 calories (Yours may be different), without exercise. If I add 500 calories in exercise I would still eat 2500 calories. At the end of the day MFP says I still need 500 calories. Now I can look back at this day and see that I was 500 calories under my goal. That was my deficit for the day. The number of calories left IS your deficit.
You do not need the premium version to accomplish this.
Then what is the point of the tool if I'm still doing my own calculations separately?
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ivanhogsmybed wrote: »ivanhogsmybed wrote: »Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
How can I get MFP to forget about goals and just track calories in and out?
You're making this way way more complicated than it needs to be. First of all what is your calorie goal before exercise needed to maintain your weight? Eat that many calories and ignore the others. I do this exact same thing some days.
Maintenance = 2500 calories (Yours may be different), without exercise. If I add 500 calories in exercise I would still eat 2500 calories. At the end of the day MFP says I still need 500 calories. Now I can look back at this day and see that I was 500 calories under my goal. That was my deficit for the day. The number of calories left IS your deficit.
You do not need the premium version to accomplish this.
Then what is the point of the tool if I'm still doing my own calculations separately?
Not having to calculate all the calories from each food. MFP has a huge database of foods, so it's much easier than looking everything up separately and going that route. Plus, it's a good way to keep a database of your eating habits so know what to adjust for the future.0 -
ivanhogsmybed wrote: »ivanhogsmybed wrote: »Right now on MFP I have my goal as maintaining my current weight, which means that when I add exercise, it increases my allowed calories for the day. This means I can't see how much of a deficit I achieved. When I set a weight-loss goal, it also doesn't show a deficit, it shows how close I got to the day's target.
How can I get MFP to forget about goals and just track calories in and out?
You're making this way way more complicated than it needs to be. First of all what is your calorie goal before exercise needed to maintain your weight? Eat that many calories and ignore the others. I do this exact same thing some days.
Maintenance = 2500 calories (Yours may be different), without exercise. If I add 500 calories in exercise I would still eat 2500 calories. At the end of the day MFP says I still need 500 calories. Now I can look back at this day and see that I was 500 calories under my goal. That was my deficit for the day. The number of calories left IS your deficit.
You do not need the premium version to accomplish this.
Then what is the point of the tool if I'm still doing my own calculations separately?
Not having to calculate all the calories from each food. MFP has a huge database of foods, so it's much easier than looking everything up separately and going that route. Plus, it's a good way to keep a database of your eating habits so know what to adjust for the future.
This exactly. Plus I typically eat the same foods for breakfast and lunch. That is the same variety of food. The more you use this the faster you can enter in your food. I don't think I've scanned anything for at least 3 weeks now. I simply enter what I eat and it does the calorie calculations for me.
zbakrjc0 -
You could just enter your exercise in the 'note' section (I think it's on the app too? I'm not sure).
Personally, I just stopped entering it because tracking it was just a pain.0
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