Net calories

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ljstewart0825
ljstewart0825 Posts: 19 Member
edited March 2017 in Food and Nutrition
I'm really confused as to how the net calories work. For example; mine this week says my net calorie goal is 1550, my net average says 1646, 3 days are in the red and it says I'm 640 over goal. Is that good or bad? I'm still losing weight so I'm really confused.

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Replies

  • sammyliftsandeats
    sammyliftsandeats Posts: 2,421 Member
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    Well you're not too over your weekly goal so that may explain why you're still losing weight, especially if your deficit is higher.

    Net calories is what you're left with after you've logged all your food and exercise.

    So if I consume 1500 and burn 200 exercising, I net 1300.
  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 984 Member
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    It's adding up all your calories /exercise for the last week and dividing that number by 7 to get your average. As I know I eat (and drink) more on some days than others, I aim for my Net Average, per week, to be as close to my Goal as possible. If it's a little over I don't worry; if it's way under, I'm not eating enough. My 'maintenance' figure is about 250 calories more than my Goal allowance, so as long as my Average is below my maintenance figure I'd still lose weight, but more slowly.
  • ljstewart0825
    ljstewart0825 Posts: 19 Member
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    sammyliftsandeats wrote: »
    Well you're not too over your weekly goal so that may explain why you're still losing weight, especially if your deficit is higher.

    Net calories is what you're left with after you've logged all your food and exercise.

    So if I consume 1500 and burn 200 exercising, I net 1300.
    Strudders67 wrote: »
    It's adding up all your calories /exercise for the last week and dividing that number by 7 to get your average. As I know I eat (and drink) more on some days than others, I aim for my Net Average, per week, to be as close to my Goal as possible. If it's a little over I don't worry; if it's way under, I'm not eating enough. My 'maintenance' figure is about 250 calories more than my Goal allowance, so as long as my Average is below my maintenance figure I'd still lose weight, but more slowly.

  • ljstewart0825
    ljstewart0825 Posts: 19 Member
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    How do you know what your maintenance figure is?
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
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    ljstewart0825 wrote: »
    How do you know what your maintenance figure is?

    Have MFP re-calculate your daily goal to lose 0 pounds per week (i.e maintenance). I would recommend running the goals for all four Activity Levels (Sedentary, Lightly Active, Active, and Very Active) then making a note of those numbers somewhere for reference. As you lose weight, occasionally re-calculate your maintenance goals for those four settings and note the changes.
  • ljstewart0825
    ljstewart0825 Posts: 19 Member
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    Thank you... I'm going to go in and try that now.
  • ljstewart0825
    ljstewart0825 Posts: 19 Member
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    Ok. I went in and readjusted my calories and brought them up to 1600. Now this is what I have. I'm a very smart person but for some reason, this just isn't clicking with me. 23lhikgncqm1.png
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  • RuNaRoUnDaFiEld
    RuNaRoUnDaFiEld Posts: 5,864 Member
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    Your calorie goal is what you want to be left with after exercise.

    So you can eat 1600 calories a day to lose what ever amount it was you chose.
    If you chose 0.5lb a week that will of had 250 calories taken from it. 1lb a week 500 calories and 2lb a week a whopping 1000 calories a day will have been taken off.

    Weight loss works over full weeks not days. So some of the days you are under and some you over calories. By the end of the week you are only 994 calories over goal.

    If your goal was to stay the same weight then this would at some point be roughly a gain of a quarter of a pound. 3500 calories is a pound in weight.




  • ljstewart0825
    ljstewart0825 Posts: 19 Member
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    Ok, so now I'm even more confused. I walked a lot more this week and was almost 2,000 calories under my net and I gained 1.4 lbs this week. How does that happen?
    Am I really that duh that I just don't get this?
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
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    Weight loss is not linear. The body can retain a significant weight of water at the cellular level for different metabolic processes, such as muscle tissue repair especially when someone is more active than normal, or as a result of excess sodium intake. As long as a person is in a sustained caloric deficit, the overall trend in weight will be to go down.

    Often, daily or weekly fluctuations in individual weigh-ins can mask the actual trend in weight loss. For this reason, many people use online charting tools (such as TrendWeight, Libra, Happy Scale, or others) that use a moving average line, usually 7 or 10 days, which will smooth out the inherent noise of daily or weekly weigh-ins.

    Here is my TrendWeight chart, where I noted how many days it could appear that I was at a "stall" (or even gained weight), but I really wasn't, it was just a normal recovery from a particularly low weigh-in. If you are recording weight weekly, it would sometimes appear that the weight loss has slowed down, has stopped, or is even temporarily higher than a previous weigh-in, when in actuality, the general trend is downward.

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