Can we settle this calorie debate???
Motions28
Posts: 18 Member
If MFP says my goal is 1500 calories, and I burn 600 calories, should I be eating a total of 2100 calories? Or get my 1500? I've been told both by friends on here. I don't use a food scale every time so I adjust for variage counting. I would love to get a definitive answer on this. Thanks in advance....
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Replies
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I would eat back half...
However, the real answer will come by sticking with one approach for a few weeks or a month and seeing if you lose or maintain.. Then adjusting from there.11 -
No. You should eat back about half of the 600 calories which means your total would be 18002
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Calorie counters on treadmills and machines etc account for TOTAL calories, which includes the calories that you would have lost during that time by just sitting on the couch instead of exercising. To calculate NET calories, find your BMR, hours spent working out to get resting calories lost. Subtract resting calories from TOTAL calories lost. This is only an estimate since treadmills and other machines are inaccurate.3
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The best thing to do is weigh everything on the food scale in grams and eat back half of your exercise calories. You may see a temporary increase on the scale from increased calories, but that's normal.1
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It is all just estimates. However 600 kc is a pretty hard workout. It is really excellent that you are exercising that hard.
As IllustratedxGirl said you have to see what happens to know if your calorie counting, exercise estimates and what your body actually does with the food gets you moving to where you want to go. It is also something you have to watch because things change all the time. For example your metabolism can change or even the impact your workout changes as your muscles adapt. Sometimes the changes can be very good for weight lose, such as maybe as you lose weight you become more sensitive to insulin and end up with less of in in your blood. There are many things going on in your body, so you have to watch it over time to see what is really going on.
I basically don't pay attention to the exercise estimates on MFC. I think they are too high in general. However I don't even really pay attention to the estimates coming from my fitness tracker. I'm also eating about 400 to 800 kc more than what MFP recommends but I'm still losing weight for now. In fact I'm probably losing weight a little too fast right now. I'm sure that won't last.
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Well, I've always eaten back all or most of my exercise calories and I've been successful at both losing and maintaining at goal for 5 years here on MFP. The system is designed for you to eat back your exercise calories, but some people don't eat all of them back since it's common for exercise calories to be over-estimated. I wouldn't skip ALL the exercise calories, though. You have to fuel those workouts and then recover from them, you know. I'd think people who never eat back ANY exercise cals would burn out over time. Doesn't seem sustainable to me. But that's just my opinion. If it works for other people, who am I to judge? Just experiment and see what works for you.2
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I'm a math teacher. It drives me crazy there isn't a set answer to this....a yes or no would be fantastic. I've been doing this for 50 days and have lost 11.5 pounds so things are moving in the right direction. I just want to know if what I am doing is causing my body harm. I don't plan on staying at this once I reach my target weight...but it seems like the consensus is to eat half workout cals back. I'm never going to be hungry...0
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I sometimes eat all of my exercise calories back , other times some or none, it depends how hungry i am.
I don't do intense exercise though, just lots and lots of walking. Plus, i think my fitbit overestimates so this is another reason why i try to avoid eating back 100% of them.1 -
OP, I'm an engineer. So, in our world, two and two equals four. Every time. No matter how large the numerals are, no matter if you used a pencil or a calculator, no matter what. It's four. Unfortunately, this site must also adhere to that law, but our bodies do not. Sometimes, it's 3.9; others it's 4.1.
Did you REALLY burn 600 or was it 596 or 604? Did you REALLY eat 1500 or was it 1490 or 1510?
Yes, this site is a good guide, a good indicator to follow for the AVERAGE person, if such a person exists.
Since I have a bad back, I didn't have to worry about eating back the exercise calories because I couldn't exercise.
Just follow MFP's guidelines and you'll be OK.
But recognize the fact that they are simply guides and not laws.
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You are supposed to eat exercise calories with MFP. That is how it is set up.
The numbers may not be precise though.
Some people choose to eat only a portion of the exercise calories to account for errors in calorie burn estimates. That works pretty well for most people.
Some people choose to eat none of their exercise calories. I feel that is unnecessary personally.and could lead to unhealthy undereating if you are pretty active.
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I eat all or most of my exercise calories back and have been having success1
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I'm a math teacher. It drives me crazy there isn't a set answer to this....a yes or no would be fantastic. I've been doing this for 50 days and have lost 11.5 pounds so things are moving in the right direction. I just want to know if what I am doing is causing my body harm. I don't plan on staying at this once I reach my target weight...but it seems like the consensus is to eat half workout cals back. I'm never going to be hungry...
LOL I'm a data geek
Learn to focus on concepts like approximation, 20% margins of error and standard deviations5 -
I eat all mine from my Fitbit zip which logs steps only and my polar ft4 (which I use advisedly based on type of workout eg will knock a couple of hundred calories off for strength training)
Bio feedback and trend sites with extrapolations based on moving averages like trendweight.com are the way to go if you are into numbers IMHO
(Also Weightographer or apps like libra and Happyscale)0 -
I ate my exercise calories back (and I estimated conservatively). I did just fine, weight loss wise. MFP is designed to eat back exercise calories. So, I think it is very important that members take exercise into consideration in your calorie calculation, whether it be the MFP method or the TDEE method (which takes exercise levels into consideration before-hand). You need to make sure your overall activity level is properly fueled.
That being said, I think it is very sweet that you want a definitive answer (and I honestly don't mean that in a bad way). I've been here since 2012, and there has never been a consensus. Ever.
If I was using the MFP method, I would put my stats in, along with my activity level without exercise. Maybe start eating 50% of your exercise calories back, and within a few weeks, see how your weight loss is going and adjust. I found MFP calorie estimates for walking (my main exercise) to be fairly accurate. For other exercise, I used a HRM with a chest strap.
It takes some experimentation, some times, to find your sweet spot .1 -
TL;DR:
Pick a number. Any number.
Suggest 80% for walking/running/cycling.
Less (even 50%) for other activities that are not as easily measured and extensively researched.
Eat that number back.
Use a spreadsheet.
Compare your expected and actual results over time.
Adjust.
Longer answer:
Variables: how well you log your food; how close to average your body is when it comes to using energy; how well you record your exercise; what percentage of your weight loss or gain is water, fat, or lean mass.
"Definitive answer": In order to maintain your target deficit (given an accurate calculation of food intake) you should eat back the actual "additional" calories you spend exercising.
How can you know that amount ahead of time? You can't! Heck, you probably can't even know it after the fact because both your actual weight changes and your body composition changes are unknown too.
If you weigh in at 200lbs today, after eating our last night, did you maintain a 3500 calorie deficit this past week given that you weighed 200lbs a week ago? How about if you also weighed 200lbs 14 days ago?
Answer is quite likely yes. A 2lb overnight gain is easy enough in response to a single meal out.
So what does one do?
One evaluates their MFP settings (sedentary, lightly active, active) and considers their daily movements and exercise regime.
Sometimes truly sedentary people add exercise and eat back calories before meeting the upper bounds of the definition of sedentary (about 45 minutes of movement or 5000 steps a day). Their weight loss stalls.
More often people who are highly active (2.5+ hours of movement and 15000+ steps a day), think they are being brilliant by calling themselves sedentary, not eating back their exercise calories, and losing weight faster.
The result tends to be excess lean mass lost and generally speaking additional adaptive thermogenesis which, over time, reduces the amount of energy expended for a given quantity of apparent effort and reduces the effectiveness of the apparent caloric deficit.
So, really, all you can do is be fairly consistent in terms of how you calculate CI and CO, and figure out over time how your body is reacting to your assumed/purported deficit.... and adjust based on your own experience
You can create your own spreadsheet to track your weight loss.
You can use some of the tools that have been created by @heybales and @EvgeniZyntx.
Or you can use or modify the following more basic spreadsheet I cobbled together: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VDmqNpLPu7sbQSochUJNXdp2F7AN15AGgkvS3zLw1GU/edit?usp=sharing7 -
I'm a math teacher. It drives me crazy there isn't a set answer to this....a yes or no would be fantastic. I've been doing this for 50 days and have lost 11.5 pounds so things are moving in the right direction. I just want to know if what I am doing is causing my body harm. I don't plan on staying at this once I reach my target weight...but it seems like the consensus is to eat half workout cals back. I'm never going to be hungry...
Technically, the set answer is yes, eat back your exercise calories, as that is the way MFP is designed to work. They build your full deficit into your original calories goal, so that if you do ZERO exercise, you will lose the lbs per week goal you chose. So if you are not eating back your exercise calories, you are under-eating.
However, many have found that MFP overestimates calorie burns for them. So the suggestion is to start by splitting the difference and eat back half, then see what happens. If you are losing faster than the goal you set, you should eat back more, if you are losing slower you should eat back less.
Unfortunately, all the formulas are just estimations and generalizations. You will only arrive at the correct answer through trial and error. Too many variables - x and y just won't cut it! Good luck :drinker:5 -
I'm a math teacher. It drives me crazy there isn't a set answer to this....a yes or no would be fantastic. I've been doing this for 50 days and have lost 11.5 pounds so things are moving in the right direction. I just want to know if what I am doing is causing my body harm. I don't plan on staying at this once I reach my target weight...but it seems like the consensus is to eat half workout cals back. I'm never going to be hungry...
If you're a math teacher, you should be well equipped to figure this out for yourself with data you have but some of which you haven't given us.
11.5 lbs in 50 days is just over a pound and a half a week (1.61 lbs/week). At approximately 3500 calories per pound, that means you are averaging a roughly 800-calorie daily deficit (805).
The first thing you can do with that information is calculate your TDEE, assuming you've been logging your food. (Add up all your intake calories, divide by 50 and add 800. Hopefully as a math teacher you didn't need me to tell you that, but there's the method for lurkers.)
The second thing you can do is decide whether you should be eating more. We can't tell you, because you haven't told us your weight, height, and body fat %. You don't want your deficit to outpace your body's ability to make up the deficit by breaking down fat, so that you sacrifice more lean mass than is necessary or force your body to start deprioritizing things like skin repair, immune system, etc. The biggest number I've seen for the limit on calories recoverable per pound of fat per day is just over 30. Personally, I would want to be more conservative than that--by which I mean assume 25 calories per pound of fat or even 20 calories per pound of fat--because it's not likely you're consuming your calories perfectly in sync with when your body needs them throughout the day. If you don't know your body fat %, you could get expensive lab tests done to determine it, or just try to get an estimate (here again, I'd go with a conservatively low estimate for this purpose) from multiple caliper and impedance tests and by checking out pictures of people with different BF% and comparing them to your own body. Once you know your BF%, you should be able to figure out how many pounds of fat you have, and how large a deficit you want to run to try to maximize fat loss and minimize lean mass loss. (Lurkers: multiply BF% by body weight and divide by 100 to get your current pounds of fat. Multiply that result by .3, or .25, or .2, or however low you want to go to be conservative. That would give you your daily deficit goal.)
Finally, subtract your deficit goal from the TDEE you calculated from your own data, and you have your daily calorie goal. Don't adjust for exercise, unless you do something much more than what you were doing during the original 50-day data period -- i.e., you take up marathon training when you were only doing 20 or 30 minutes of cardio a few time a week during the data period.
The beauty of this approach is that it doesn't matter if the exercise calorie estimates you were using during the data period were inflated or not. It doesn't even matter if you were estimating your food intake instead of weighing solids and measuring liquids by volume, so long as you were reasonably consistent in your estimating (consistency does not equal accuracy) and continue to be reasonably consistent as you go forward.6 -
Oh boy, i think I'll just stick to estimating lol4
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I'm a math teacher. It drives me crazy there isn't a set answer to this....a yes or no would be fantastic. I've been doing this for 50 days and have lost 11.5 pounds so things are moving in the right direction. I just want to know if what I am doing is causing my body harm. I don't plan on staying at this once I reach my target weight...but it seems like the consensus is to eat half workout cals back. I'm never going to be hungry...
Well there is at least one study that suggests you may be making some undesirable long term changes. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/4/906.longDeclines in energy expenditure favoring the regain of lost weight persist well beyond the period of dynamic weight loss.
This is a well know issue, people diet and succeed but then gain back more weight than they lost. Anyway that is my primary reason I don't worry about what MFP thinks I need to eat. I've actually tried logging some exercise in MFP and the results were not trustworthy.
I mentioned I though my weight lost was too fast. That is about 13 pounds in 100 days, although probably 3 or 4 pounds of that is because the weather is so much hotter now. Most people would consider that very slow I think, but I like eating.0 -
Weight loss when overweight is not an undesirable change
Getting overweight in the first place is
Following an advisable cautious path to lose that weight will in some way affect the amount you can eat after you lose ...there is no way to eradicate that as you will be a smaller person and need less energy ...minimising any metabolic shift through slower weight loss and building back to a new maintenance level slowly.
Focusing on some things obfuscate the process which is IMHO quite simple
Am I overweight?
Yes => Do I need to lose weight?
Yes => Eat fewer calories than I use (focus on both sides of equation energy in or energy out)
=> lose weight
Hit target weight
=> am I at the weight I want?
Yes => Start to increase intake and wait until water stabilises (2-4 weeks), increase again and again until stable
Do I want to maintain this new weight?
Yes => How many calories do I need to eat, how much exercise do I need to do (ooo would you just look at all that lovely data I have from the last x amount of time losing weight lets use that)
=> continual bio-feedback tracking1 -
Christine_72 wrote: »Oh boy, i think I'll just stick to estimating lol
Excuse me for thinking that a few minutes of basic arithmetic to make use of all the data from the logging I do anyway is a small price to pay for actually knowing what results I should really expect based on how much I'm eating, rather than going on forever losing two pounds for every one pound MFP tells me I will lose.
Or don't excuse me. I don't see anything to apologize for in being able to calculate an average. And I don't see anything funny about it ("lol"). Shaming people (especially women) for being able to do arithmetic is wrong on so many levels.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Oh boy, i think I'll just stick to estimating lol
Excuse me for thinking that a few minutes of basic arithmetic to make use of all the data from the logging I do anyway is a small price to pay for actually knowing what results I should really expect based on how much I'm eating, rather than going on forever losing two pounds for every one pound MFP tells me I will lose.
Or don't excuse me. I don't see anything to apologize for in being able to calculate an average. And I don't see anything funny about it ("lol"). Shaming people (especially women) for being able to do arithmetic is wrong on so many levels.
I think she was being self deprecating
I love maths and data but some people, both men and women, don't
I know what you mean .,nobody would ever happily say in public "I'm not very good at reading" but it's a mite unfair when the society we have created is one where it is ok to laugh at ones inability to use numbers competently or effectively
(Of course if she was one of my children or students she would be slammed into the ground for that kind of comment, figuratively speaking, but such is the nature of my hypocrisy )
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lynn_glenmont wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Oh boy, i think I'll just stick to estimating lol
Excuse me for thinking that a few minutes of basic arithmetic to make use of all the data from the logging I do anyway is a small price to pay for actually knowing what results I should really expect based on how much I'm eating, rather than going on forever losing two pounds for every one pound MFP tells me I will lose.
Or don't excuse me. I don't see anything to apologize for in being able to calculate an average. And I don't see anything funny about it ("lol"). Shaming people (especially women) for being able to do arithmetic is wrong on so many levels.
Shaming? If anything, i was shaming myself for being hopeless at math! I very much admire your arithmetic skills, If i had the patience and nous to work it out for myself i would, but alas I am not mathematically minded. @lynn_glenmont I apologise for offending you, that was absolutely not my intention, quite the opposite in fact.
ETA: I hated math when i was in school, and i dislike it to this day, and i'm not ashamed to admit it, it is what it is! I do well in other things, and have gotten through life just fine8 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Oh boy, i think I'll just stick to estimating lol
Excuse me for thinking that a few minutes of basic arithmetic to make use of all the data from the logging I do anyway is a small price to pay for actually knowing what results I should really expect based on how much I'm eating, rather than going on forever losing two pounds for every one pound MFP tells me I will lose.
Or don't excuse me. I don't see anything to apologize for in being able to calculate an average. And I don't see anything funny about it ("lol"). Shaming people (especially women) for being able to do arithmetic is wrong on so many levels.
Well if you really want to hone your math skills, dive into the 3500 kc / lb of fat estimate. It is a pervasive number used everywhere and it is probably wrong for most people.1 -
Weight loss when overweight is not an undesirable change
Getting overweight in the first place is
Following an advisable cautious path to lose that weight will in some way affect the amount you can eat after you lose ...there is no way to eradicate that as you will be a smaller person and need less energy ...minimising any metabolic shift through slower weight loss and building back to a new maintenance level slowly.
...
=> continual bio-feedback tracking
Of coarse if you are smaller you need less food, that isn't the issue. In the study I referenced the REE and NREE ended lower than could be accounted for by body composition changes. This is something that has shown up in other studies too, the most noticeable one is the biggest loser study. In short I don't want to eat like I'm 100 lbs less when I'm only 50 lbs less.0 -
I'm a math teacher. It drives me crazy there isn't a set answer to this....a yes or no would be fantastic. I've been doing this for 50 days and have lost 11.5 pounds so things are moving in the right direction. I just want to know if what I am doing is causing my body harm. I don't plan on staying at this once I reach my target weight...but it seems like the consensus is to eat half workout cals back. I'm never going to be hungry...
If you are a math teacher, just use the data you have in hand already. You can calculate your daily or weekly rate of weight loss, and then compare it to your food and exercise logging to find your total error.
But since you aren't weighing your food, you can't really be sure where the error is. Not to say that you can't lose weight without weighing the food you eat, as you and many others have proven that you can.
The system MFP uses is designed to allow you to eat back all exercise calories. The problem lies in the fact that all calorie expenditure numbers, both for exercise and non exercise activities, are estimates. If your activity level and exercise estimates are close, you will be closer to MFP goal. Many apps, machine, and MFP estimates for certain exercises are unrealistic. If you use reasonably accurate calorie burn estimates you should be able to eat back all your exercise calories.
I personally think the trend of many suggesting eat back half is simply people leaning towards any error producing greater weight loss. And for those that don't exercise as much, that might not be a bad thing. But for anyone exercising longer and/or harder it could easily lead to unhealthy deficits. It has been proven that weight loss that is too rapid can lead to metabolic damage in the long run, and those people struggle to maintain once at desired weight. Large deficits can also have short and long term impact on hormone levels, mood, and mental health in general.
Though it's not an exact, I think the basic suggestion of never losing more than 1% of a persons body weight per week is fairly sound for most people. Greater percentages for very large people might be the lesser of the evils at times, but at that point a doctor should probably be involved regardless. Even at 1% I think that is pushing things some, and think many people would notice energy drops or performance drops if training.1 -
My suggestion is to keep yourself in a 20% deficit overall. So yes you have you know your total caloric burn to do that. I measure and weigh all my food. I estimate my weightlifting burn for the week and just keep my calories flat off that.1
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If MFP says my goal is 1500 calories, and I burn 600 calories, should I be eating a total of 2100 calories? Or get my 1500? I've been told both by friends on here. I don't use a food scale every time so I adjust for variage counting. I would love to get a definitive answer on this. Thanks in advance....
You can give yourself the definite answer on this in about 6 weeks time. Choose one way or the other but stay consistent on whether or not you are going to eat your exercise calories or not. Log your calories eaten and your weight loss over that period of time. Work out your TDEE bearing in mind that for each pound lost you are adding 3500 to the total calorie intake. If you have lost more or less than expected, adjust your intake!
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Did you calculate 1500 from your TDEE or using MFP? If using TDEE (- 10 to 20%) then that accounts for exercise calories, MFP doesn't and expects you to NET your GOAL. I would say eat as many back so you NET 1500. If your are set to sedentary you probably aren't being a teacher.1
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