Confused...

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robynrstiles
robynrstiles Posts: 41 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm confused on how to figure out how many calories you should eat in a day. Once you use a calculator how do you know whether to eat back some of the exercise calories or if they already accounted for that. Any help would be appreciated! Sorry if this is dumb, I'm new to this

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  • LessCookiess
    LessCookiess Posts: 538 Member
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    Click on Goals enter your starring weight, goal weight, how much you want to lose, and MFP will do the rest of the calculations for you! The site takes into consideration you won't be working out, so loss before working out is already built into it.

    If you do work out ensure to track it, and they will be considered extra calories (will show you still have more to eat). Often people here suggest eating back at least half of the calories you burned.

    Good luck!
  • TxTiffani
    TxTiffani Posts: 798 Member
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    I work in a really sedentary job so I chose sedentary then log around 1/2 the exercise cals that MFP tries to give me. I think your activity level that it uses to give your base cals is really important so choose that wisely then eat about half the exercise cals back.
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
    edited March 2017
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    Whether or not exercise calories are included depends on the type of calculator you use. MFP uses the NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) formula, which does not account for exercise, therefore you set your goal according to your day-to-day (work) life and eat that much plus a percentage of your exercise calories. Other calculators go by TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), which already has exercise included so you would not be eating those calories back.
  • robynrstiles
    robynrstiles Posts: 41 Member
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    Would a 6 minute warmup, 28 minute hiit workout and 10 minute post workout stretching 6 days a week be considered lightly active or active?
  • Lillymoo01
    Lillymoo01 Posts: 2,865 Member
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    robynrstiles wrote: »
    Would a 6 minute warmup, 28 minute hiit workout and 10 minute post workout stretching 6 days a week be considered lightly active or active?

    Neither. The lightly active etc is based on how active you are when you are not exercising. Intential exercise is added based on how much you do that day. Either that or work out you average TDEE on an online calculator imputting all your daily activity, deduct 250 to 500 calories depending on how fast you want to lose weight, and add this to MFP instead of the calculations they give.

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