Am I getting this right?

you shouldnt be netting so little calories. your net should be the calories MFP gave you as a goal. since exercise calories can be overestimated,most people eat back 25-50% of those calories back. if you are not weighing everything with so little to lose, you cant be sure how much you are really eating. with so little to lose you do need to be more accurate.The less weight to lose the slower its going to be. you should be losing that much weight but your not, so I would say it could be youre eating more than you think,water retention,or a combo of the two. are you losing anything at all? if you do eat back exercise calories with you not weighing food you could be eating too much before and after exercise.that could stall your weight.how long has it been since you lost anything?

To clarify, non-linear weight loss isn't just "pretty typical", it's 100% normal.

And as stated, the less you have to lose, the more accurate your logging needs to be, because the margin for error is really small. As you start to approach your goal weight, you'll likely need to start weighing those vegetables, along with any other food items that you've been lax with so far. You might as well start building the habit of weighing everything now because you'll have to do it eventually.

TimothyFish wrote: »

Actually, net calories is the negative of your deficit. But you're on the wrong site to ask about it because net means something different here. Here it means the number of calories you consumed minus your exercise calories. Outside of MFP, calories in minus calories out should equal a negative number to lose weight.

because MFP goes by the NEAT method and your deficit is built in,but your exercise is not. other sites go by TDEE method and your deficit isnt built in, but your exercise is. @sarko15. the way MFP works if it gives you say 1500 calories, (your deficit is built in,its determined by weight,height and activity level(non exercise activities),and what how much you tell it you want to lose. so if you burn say 400 calories from exercise, that gives you 1100 calories, you are supposed to eat those 400 calories back to net the 1500 calories because your deficit is built in,if you dont eat them back that would make a bigger deficit and for some they would be netting too low calories,

so most people only eat 25-50% of the calories they burned back to make up for a lack of being able to determine exactly how many calories you burned,since most things estimate burns(some high,some low).so yeah you should be netting that number.some people can eat all their exercise calories back and not have an issue.

so if you are not weighing your food and not weighing any food from exercise your burn off back you could be eating more than you think ,but if you are losing 4 lbs in 2 months thats 1/2 a lb a week loss,which is where you should be at.

another way to do it is if you are given 1500 calories,you could eat 1900 and burn off the 400 calories and you would have your 1500 net calories. you have to fuel your workouts and make sure you get enough nutrients. if you burn most of it off you are left with basically nothing so its pretty much just like not eating enough calories.you dont want a negative net number, it doesnt work that way,I know its confusing it was to me too but it does get easier to figure out. Im sure someone else will have a different way of explaining it in case you are still confused.

You're losing half a pound a week, with only 20 pounds to lose. That's a good result. Don't worry about the math.

If you're still worried about the math:

You're not weighing everything, so unless you're an outlier from the rest of the world, you're probably undercounting calories consumed. You don't say how you're coming up with your exercise burns, but the difference between the calorie-intake that you're logging and what MFP counts as your net suggests you're logging about 900 calories per workout* for what I assume is an hour class. That's not impossible, but it implies going pretty much all-out intensity for the full hour. Unless you're very fit and about ready to collapse when class is over, 900 calories for an hour-long class is likely an overestimate of your calorie burns. Put together undercounting calories consumed and overcounting calories burned, plus the pretty powerful evidence that you're only losing a half pound per week over two months, and I think we can safely conclude you are not really "netting" 750 - 1000 calories a day (in the MFP sense of "netting").

I'm not saying this applies to you, OP, but I find it odd that many people, when confronted with a disparity between their weight loss over a fairly long period and what the math based on their logging says they should be losing, want to question the way the calculations work, or wonder whether there is some special combination of food/macros/meal timing, etc., that they need to adopt, or even whether they've ruined their metabolism so that they can't lose weigh on anything close to what their current weight suggests they would need if they were in a coma, and how hard it is to get some people to consider the possibility that their data (calories in and calories out) is flawed.



* and here's the math:
(1600 + 1300)/2 for avg gross calorie intake of 1450
(1000 + 750)/2 for avg net calorie intake of 875
1450 - 875 = 575 avg daily recorded exercise burn
but OP says she's doing 4 -5 workouts a week, so let's avg workouts per week = 4.5
575 X 7 for weekly recorded exercise burn of 4,025 calories
4,025/4.5 workouts per week = avg burn per workout of 894 calories

CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

Actually, net calories is the negative of your deficit. But you're on the wrong site to ask about it because net means something different here. Here it means the number of calories you consumed minus your exercise calories. Outside of MFP, calories in minus calories out should equal a negative number to lose weight.

because MFP goes by the NEAT method and your deficit is built in,but your exercise is not. other sites go by TDEE method and your deficit isnt built in, but your exercise is. @sarko15. the way MFP works if it gives you say 1500 calories, (your deficit is built in,its determined by weight,height and activity level(non exercise activities),and what how much you tell it you want to lose. so if you burn say 400 calories from exercise, that gives you 1100 calories, you are supposed to eat those 400 calories back to net the 1500 calories because your deficit is built in,if you dont eat them back that would make a bigger deficit and for some they would be netting too low calories,

so most people only eat 25-50% of the calories they burned back to make up for a lack of being able to determine exactly how many calories you burned,since most things estimate burns(some high,some low).so yeah you should be netting that number.some people can eat all their exercise calories back and not have an issue.

so if you are not weighing your food and not weighing any food from exercise your burn off back you could be eating more than you think ,but if you are losing 4 lbs in 2 months thats 1/2 a lb a week loss,which is where you should be at.

The way MFP does things doesn't change the meaning of "net." The reason the "MFP net" is the way it is has nothing to do with NEAT versus TDEE. MFP is just trying to give people a goal number that tells them how many calories they can eat. If you wanted, you could use the TDEE method on MFP by including your exercise when you choose your activity level and then not recording exercise. You would still have a number telling you how many calories you've eaten that you can compare to your goal.

TimothyFish wrote: »

CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

Actually, net calories is the negative of your deficit. But you're on the wrong site to ask about it because net means something different here. Here it means the number of calories you consumed minus your exercise calories. Outside of MFP, calories in minus calories out should equal a negative number to lose weight.

because MFP goes by the NEAT method and your deficit is built in,but your exercise is not. other sites go by TDEE method and your deficit isnt built in, but your exercise is. @sarko15. the way MFP works if it gives you say 1500 calories, (your deficit is built in,its determined by weight,height and activity level(non exercise activities),and what how much you tell it you want to lose. so if you burn say 400 calories from exercise, that gives you 1100 calories, you are supposed to eat those 400 calories back to net the 1500 calories because your deficit is built in,if you dont eat them back that would make a bigger deficit and for some they would be netting too low calories,

so most people only eat 25-50% of the calories they burned back to make up for a lack of being able to determine exactly how many calories you burned,since most things estimate burns(some high,some low).so yeah you should be netting that number.some people can eat all their exercise calories back and not have an issue.

so if you are not weighing your food and not weighing any food from exercise your burn off back you could be eating more than you think ,but if you are losing 4 lbs in 2 months thats 1/2 a lb a week loss,which is where you should be at.

The way MFP does things doesn't change the meaning of "net." The reason the "MFP net" is the way it is has nothing to do with NEAT versus TDEE. MFP is just trying to give people a goal number that tells them how many calories they can eat. If you wanted, you could use the TDEE method on MFP by including your exercise when you choose your activity level and then not recording exercise. You would still have a number telling you how many calories you've eaten that you can compare to your goal.

well yeah you could, but then you dont eat those calories back. Ive tried the TDEE method before and for me it seemed like it didnt work as well. maybe its just me lol