Calorie Deficit?

If you set up MFP with your current weight and goals then you will be provided the number of calories you can eat in a day with the deficit already included.

The Calorie Deficit includes all calories consumed and burned in one day. This includes what you burn while you are at rest. Your phone will not give you what you are burning at rest. This is best achieved by using a Fitness tracker watch that does Heart Rate and step count. I use the Basis Peak, but there are many. So if I am watching my calories that I burn in a day (total exercise and rest) and I am keeping under what MFP is telling me to stay under to reach my goal then each calorie I am under I start making the calorie deficit and will subsequently start losing weight. 3500 calories equals 1 LB. Try to do 1 lb a week by changing your lifestyle. Good Luck.

This info was supplied on another post. I wrote it down as I found it very helpful.

(A+B)-C=D

A= Calories burned during exercise.
B= BMR, Energy (calories) expanded at rest
C= Calories consumed by eating
D= Deficit of Calories

So say you burn 500 calories doing exercise and your BMR is 1,876. A+B=2,376
And for the day you've eaten 1200 calories. 2,376-1200 (C, Calories consumed) = 1,176 (D, Calorie Deficit) for the day.

Then if you take your daily deficit amounts and add them all together. Divide by 3,500 (1 lb.) this will tell you approx how many pounds you will lose that week.

Hope this helps.

NotMika wrote: »

You're not supposed to burn ALL your calories. MFP gives you an estimate of the calories you burn just in your daily life PLUS the deficit you want to lose a pound a week - or whatever. If you have a calorie allowance of 1, 500 per day, for example, MFP assumes you burn 2, 000 calories in a day and have built in the weight loss for you. If you eat 1, 800 worth of calories for a day, then you need to jump on the treadmill and burn 300 calories in order to reach your calorie deficit target.

A calories deficit is when you eat less than your body needs in order to survive. So for a woman you need about 2,000 calories just to live (eat, sleep, digest, breathe, etc). So what you do is you take out some of those calories so your body is forced to get that energy else where (from fat, hopefully).

Now i bolded @NotMilka because they're right, you're not wanting to burn ALL your calories. You NEED calories in order to live. "Burn more than you consume" is always so confusing because people take it quiet literally. And that's not what it means.

Please note, MFP normally way over estimates that amount of calories burn. Take about HALF and that's probably more accurate of how much you burn. For example, a 45 minute aerobic workout for me says i burn upwards of 300, i estimate it's more around 100/150. I eat anywhere from 1,300-1,500 PLUS workout. I do not add any calories back.

Understand eating 1,200 calories is the bare minimum for a woman, adding ANY amount of workout will cause you to dip below, and personally, i think that's an extremely bad idea. It sends you into "starvation". (no im not meaning starvation mode) i'm meaning you go below what your body needs in order to survive and can cause issues. Recovery time from workouts, being sluggish/sleepy, moody, etc. It's not good for your body. So if you workout i highly recommend you eat 1,300 calories a day at the least.