Anyone who tracks their actual daily TDEE and adjusts intake?
oat_bran
Posts: 370 Member
Is there anyone like me who uses MFP mostly to only log intake and uses their Fitbit to estimate daily TDEE, decide on their target daily/weekly deficit and adjusts their intake according to that?
For those of you whose activity level varies a lot, do you eat more on more active days to keep your deficit the same or do you just estimate your average daily TDEE and eat the same amount of calories every day. Do you feel hungrier on the days when you're more active?
Personally, my activity level varies a lot (sometimes by 700 cals or more) even if there's no actual exercise involved and I find myself much hungrier on more active days so I adjust my intake even though it makes meal planning complicated.
For those of you whose activity level varies a lot, do you eat more on more active days to keep your deficit the same or do you just estimate your average daily TDEE and eat the same amount of calories every day. Do you feel hungrier on the days when you're more active?
Personally, my activity level varies a lot (sometimes by 700 cals or more) even if there's no actual exercise involved and I find myself much hungrier on more active days so I adjust my intake even though it makes meal planning complicated.
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I absolutely use this approach. I log everything in MFP but have Fitbit synced so I can get an accurate TDEE every day, and I use the adjusted target calorie intake rather than a fixed one every day of the week, so I always have either exercise cals to eat, or a negative adjustment.
I have a spreadsheet I made to track my daily deficit and a 7-day average deficit, which then predicts my weight loss. If my actual loss is out of kilter with the predicted loss for more than a couple of weeks, I know I need to look at my logging, or adjust for Fitbit inaccuracies. Having the 7-day average also means if I have a couple of particularly active days where I don't eat back the full exercise calories allotted, I can go "over" my allowance another day and not feel bad about it. Very helpful when the one or two days a week I'm likely to go over are also likely to be my most sedentary.1 -
Depends on the season.
Winter with mostly doing lifting, has a very narrow range of TDEE, so eating same amount daily works fine.
If I have a very active day - there's a snack bar before or after a workout to make up for it - or more dessert perhaps!
Spring/Summer/Fall with major cardio - same daily would not work as the workouts would suffer badly.
So back to daily as needed - even that can fail for long bike rides ending late - I'll never make it up that day, but body doesn't stop at midnight anyway - so on to the next day.
Even then, amount of deficit can vary, since a long ride is by necessity not as intense and therefore more fat burn than a shorter more intense ride - so bigger deficit isn't a problem. But I do need to eat enough for next workout to be as good as I want it too.
If your increased daily burn is mainly to daily activity and not exercise - and you like the planning that comes with weekly TDEE deficit method (that's what it's called usually) - then indeed figure out your average day burns, subtract a reasonable deficit, and eat that daily.
On days where you go way over, eat a snack bar, extra for lunch, whatever, to make up for it.0 -
I use MFP for logging only. The app/website are easy to use, have a huge database, etc. I don't really 'use' MFP for setting a calorie target goal. I do that based on my Fitbit calories burned and understanding what is typical for me.
I don't have a huge amount of variance. Maybe 400-500 calories total from lowest burn to highest burn unless its something unusual like a half marathon day. I mostly keep the deficit fairly level. I do sometimes choose to have a lesser deficit day, if I feel I need the nutrition/food. I think for me, the important detail is control/choice. Its one thing to decide to eat at maintenance for whatever reason, rather than pigging out and just saying 'what the h*ll, today is shot'.longstocking wrote: »Is there anyone like me who uses MFP mostly to only log intake and uses their Fitbit to estimate daily TDEE, decide on their target daily/weekly deficit and adjusts their intake according to that?
For those of you whose activity level varies a lot, do you eat more on more active days to keep your deficit the same or do you just estimate your average daily TDEE and eat the same amount of calories every day. Do you feel hungrier on the days when you're more active?
Personally, my activity level varies a lot (sometimes by 700 cals or more) even if there's no actual exercise involved and I find myself much hungrier on more active days so I adjust my intake even though it makes meal planning complicated.
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