Mfp exercise calories autofill in

Sheisinlove109
Sheisinlove109 Posts: 516 Member
edited November 16 in Fitness and Exercise
I'm a big girl and quite new to exercise. Since 1/20/17, 22 lbs lost mainly with 65 min daily on elliptical and 3 days a week weights.

When I log the exercise calories it auto fills in 1286 calories and the machine usually says between 804-815. I get there are variances but that seems like a lot plus I've read the machines always over estimate.

I'm not looking for exact or anything as I'm happy with my progress but wondering what is more realistic amount and how does mfp calculate...I always enter the machine number into my log and go to bed with about 1,000 calorie deficit on average.

Ideas?

Replies

  • zandrathesweetheart
    zandrathesweetheart Posts: 109 Member
    I would get a heart rate monitor because I can not live without mines. It drives me crazy not having a accurate number of how many calories I burned. So far my Apple Watch has been spot on in terms of how much I burn but some days you may burn less or more. Lifting weights causes you to burn more calories overtime as well so keep that in mind.
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    MFP uses a METs vallue which is multiplied by your BMR to estimate Calories for cardiovascular activities. Since the estimate includes the Calories from your BMR, you can either subtract those, or as most users do, start by eating back a percentage of the estimated Calories (about 50 to 75 percent). After a few weeks, if you are losing weight faster or slower than you want, adjust the percentage you eat back.

    You can find MFP's BMR estimate for you at your current weight by using the web version and navigate to APPS > BMR. That value is for the whole day, so divide that by 1440 minutes to get your BMR per minute.

    See this information explaining METs...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent
  • Mysticalmaid
    Mysticalmaid Posts: 4 Member
    I don't trust the exercise calories in MFP, I found it much harder to lose weight when I used them, so I set my calorie limit higher (500 calorie daily defecit) and stick to that if I exercise or not. That way any extra exercise I do is a higher defecit and means more loss :)
  • powered85
    powered85 Posts: 297 Member
    Are you entering your weight/age etc on the cardio machine?

    I find at least for running that MFP and treadmill is pretty close. But for example today's run said 880 on treadmill, 830 on MFP, and 607 according to my Garmin watch with the HRM connected.

    I use the watch value for logging to MFP.
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