How do I add exercise without it giving me back calories?
asbpunkin777
Posts: 7 Member
I don't know if this is a stupid question, but when I exercise I don't want to add more calories to my day, I just want to track that I exercised and burned extra! So far I just haven't logged my exercise, but it would be nice to. Any tips? Thank you!
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Replies
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Sorry, but why would you not want to add them?5
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Just don't eat them if you don't want to? If you are doing strength training you can log it as strength training and it doesn't add calories afaik.1
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You can log your exercise as 1 calorie IF you like but I'm not sure why you aren't eating some of those exercise calories back, they will fuel your body accordingly.8
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Go to the goals section on app menu scroll to bottom switch add exercise to off0
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asbpunkin777 wrote: »I just want to track that I exercised and burned extra! So far I just haven't logged my exercise, but it would be nice to. Any tips? Thank you!
To add to my previous answer, I would recommend being careful with that. Without knowing your deficit and goals, there can be potential large problems with this. So forgive me for answering more without the proper context - this may not really apply to you....
Most people want to lose weight as quickly as possible, usually more than the recommended 2 pounds per week when they get started. Therefore anything they can do to increase their deficit, they try to do.
There are ramifications for doing that and there are good, legitimate reasons why health professionals want to keep your weight loss rate reasonable, steady and slow. Those reasons have to do with your body receiving proper nutrients to function for daily activity. When people "crash diet", i.e. function at excessive calorie deficits, they lose lean body mass, not just fat. The long-term effects don't show up until after the damage is done.
As I said, without context, I don't know if this applies to your situation, but I would caution that when it comes to caloric deficit, a bigger deficit is not necessarily better. Further, eating enough to fuel your exercise makes your exercise more effective. Hopefully you are exercising in order to do more things better.
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Go to the goals section on app menu scroll to bottom switch add exercise to off
This is only available to Premium members
OP, you can either purchase Premium, which offers the suggestion quoted, or log your exercise as 1 calorie. But if you're following MFP's calorie goals, you're expected to eat exercise calories back.3 -
Hope you have set your goal using a TDEE calculator instead of this site then.7
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I manually adjust it down to "1 calorie" because I use the TDEE method also, but my FitBit adds them regardless... I hate how it messes up my macros!2
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Not eating exercise cals back might not be a good idea, you don't want a too aggressive deficit.3
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nosebag1212 wrote: »Not eating exercise cals back might not be a good idea, you don't want a too aggressive deficit.
If OP set their own calories and macros based on TDEE from another calculator then no, they do not. They'd be double dipping.2 -
I wait until the end of the day right before I complete my entry to add my exercise then I am on track for the day1
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I use the notes section to keep track of my exercise. It's only so that I know what I did on any particular day...I don't even try to figure out how many calories my exercise burns.3
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I adjust my calories burned on exercise to what I want to eat. I use Google Fit to log exercise automatically (counts my steps and cycling) and when it imports to MFP, it logs the cycling as a much faster pace than I did it. So I end up adjusting it to about half that for calories.
Set up MFP to do what you want to do. Do what it says. Log food, log exercise, it works out.0 -
mrsnattybulking wrote: »nosebag1212 wrote: »Not eating exercise cals back might not be a good idea, you don't want a too aggressive deficit.
If OP set their own calories and macros based on TDEE from another calculator then no, they do not. They'd be double dipping.
That's unlikely given that they specifically say they want to track that they burned "extra." I read that as creating a larger deficit, not that they are already taken into account with a different method of calculating a calorie goal.2 -
I guess I just don't understand what you want. Like you want to add exercise but you don't want it to add calories, but you want to see the calories you burned... I just don't get it lol. That seems like an oxymoron. If you want to see that you burned extra calories then you log the exercise and don't eat that number of calories extra.3
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MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others, however, are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.
My FitBit One is far less generous with calories than the MFP database and I comfortably eat 100% of the calories I earn from it back.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1
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There's really no reason to have your exercise in MFP except to credit yourself for the calories you burned. No other value at all.2
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Just ignore the calories added back. No one is forcing you to eat more than you want to.1
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I log my exercise and enter "1" for calories burned. I like to keep track of what days and how much I exercise but I don't give myself the calories to eat back because I'm using TDEE for my calories which already accounts for my activity.2
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collectable99 wrote: »I wait until the end of the day right before I complete my entry to add my exercise then I am on track for the day
That is what I do also.1 -
I log mine as 1 calorie also1
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RunRutheeRun wrote: »You can log your exercise as 1 calorie IF you like but I'm not sure why you aren't eating some of those exercise calories back, they will fuel your body accordingly.
Thank you all for your responses! There's a lot of really helpful information here! It would most definitely make sense to add the exercise at night and just track my calorie deficit that way...I really like that idea.
I noticed several comments mentioning that I shouldn't have to avoid eating my fitness calories back, so I think I might be missing something. From what I understand, 1 pound is approximately 3500 calories - therefore 2 pounds loss each each would be 7,000 calories (I do understand the benefits behind only losing 2 pounds per week and not crash dieting .. I've been there and done that!).
If I eat 1300 calories/day (9100 calories/week), and my resting metabolic rate burns 13,220 calories/ week (formula used: For Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)) .... based on this, without exercise, I have created a 4,120 calorie deficit each week. This does not total up to the 7000 calorie deficit for 2 pounds.
Now that you can see what I am doing mathematically ... why exactly would I want to eat back my calories? Wouldn't I want to exercise enough in the week to burn approximately 2,880 more calories to have a full 7000 calorie deficit? I know there are a lot of other factors that can play here, but I'm just using my bare caloric number basics.
Thank you again for all of the information! It's really helpful!0 -
asbpunkin777 wrote: »RunRutheeRun wrote: »You can log your exercise as 1 calorie IF you like but I'm not sure why you aren't eating some of those exercise calories back, they will fuel your body accordingly.
Thank you all for your responses! There's a lot of really helpful information here! It would most definitely make sense to add the exercise at night and just track my calorie deficit that way...I really like that idea.
I noticed several comments mentioning that I shouldn't have to avoid eating my fitness calories back, so I think I might be missing something. From what I understand, 1 pound is approximately 3500 calories - therefore 2 pounds loss each each would be 7,000 calories (I do understand the benefits behind only losing 2 pounds per week and not crash dieting .. I've been there and done that!).
If I eat 1300 calories/day (9100 calories/week), and my resting metabolic rate burns 13,220 calories/ week (formula used: For Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)) .... based on this, without exercise, I have created a 4,120 calorie deficit each week. This does not total up to the 7000 calorie deficit for 2 pounds.
Now that you can see what I am doing mathematically ... why exactly would I want to eat back my calories? Wouldn't I want to exercise enough in the week to burn approximately 2,880 more calories to have a full 7000 calorie deficit? I know there are a lot of other factors that can play here, but I'm just using my bare caloric number basics.
Thank you again for all of the information! It's really helpful!
BMR isn't the figure you're taking a deficit from, that's your estimated burn for basically not moving your *kitten* out of bed all day. MFP uses NEAT methodology to calculate your burn taking into account your work/homelife activity without exercise at Sedentary this is 1.25 x BMR.
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How much do you have to lose? 2 pounds a week isn't an appropriate goal for many people.3
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tinkerbellang83 wrote: »asbpunkin777 wrote: »RunRutheeRun wrote: »You can log your exercise as 1 calorie IF you like but I'm not sure why you aren't eating some of those exercise calories back, they will fuel your body accordingly.
Thank you all for your responses! There's a lot of really helpful information here! It would most definitely make sense to add the exercise at night and just track my calorie deficit that way...I really like that idea.
I noticed several comments mentioning that I shouldn't have to avoid eating my fitness calories back, so I think I might be missing something. From what I understand, 1 pound is approximately 3500 calories - therefore 2 pounds loss each each would be 7,000 calories (I do understand the benefits behind only losing 2 pounds per week and not crash dieting .. I've been there and done that!).
If I eat 1300 calories/day (9100 calories/week), and my resting metabolic rate burns 13,220 calories/ week (formula used: For Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)) .... based on this, without exercise, I have created a 4,120 calorie deficit each week. This does not total up to the 7000 calorie deficit for 2 pounds.
Now that you can see what I am doing mathematically ... why exactly would I want to eat back my calories? Wouldn't I want to exercise enough in the week to burn approximately 2,880 more calories to have a full 7000 calorie deficit? I know there are a lot of other factors that can play here, but I'm just using my bare caloric number basics.
Thank you again for all of the information! It's really helpful!
BMR isn't the figure you're taking a deficit from, that's your estimated burn for basically not moving your *kitten* out of bed all day. MFP uses NEAT methodology to calculate your burn taking into account your work/homelife activity without exercise at Sedentary this is 1.25 x BMR.
Yes^
So NEAT math would be BMR 1,888 x 1.25 = 2,360. That's sedentary. So without exercise your deficit is 2360 - 1300.....or 1,060 x 7 = 7420 per week.
7,420 is a little over 2 pounds a week. Add exercise & you push that number even higher. Healthy weight loss helps you lower your body fat %. If you have a ways to go, your body will focus on fat loss. But as you get closer to goal, lowering the deficit to a moderate one helps spare lean muscle mass.5 -
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asbpunkin777 wrote: »Now that you can see what I am doing mathematically ... why exactly would I want to eat back my calories?
For your health. Because you don't want to lose the muscle mass you have, or your hair. Gaining weight didn't happen all of a sudden one night, why should losing it be a race?3 -
asbpunkin777 wrote: »Now that you can see what I am doing mathematically ... why exactly would I want to eat back my calories?
Others have addressed the misconception that's leading you to underestimate your daily calorie burn (which should be at least 2360 cals/day instead of 1888 cals/day). I'll address why/when you should eat back exercise calories.
If we're only talking about 100-200 cals/day in exercise calories, it really doesn't matter that much whether you eat them back or not. BUT if you are burning a lot of calories exercising (or just generally being physically active in your daily life), you should "eat back" enough of them to keep you from having too large of a deficit.
What counts as "too large a deficit" will vary from person to person. People with more fat on them can afford a larger deficit. Many people use "don't choose a deficit that will see you lose more than 1% of your weight per week" as an estimate. That works well for many - but is actually too high for most small women. A woman who weighs 120 pounds probably doesn't have enough fat on her for her body to be able to handle a 600 calorie/day deficit, for example. Another number that is widely used is "TDEE-20%". That means that if you burn 2000 calories/day (including exercise), your body could handle a deficit of 400 calories/day (20% of the total daily calorie burn).
Why can't we just have super high deficits and lose weight faster?
A few reasons. Some can be counteracted by careful choice of food and exericse. Others can't.- The first reason most people give is preservation of lean body mass. If you cut calories too harshly, your body will have to take energy from sources other than fat (in addition to taking it from fat). At first, that might mean glycogen (very crudely: sugar energy stored in your muscles for immediate use) - which is one of the reasons why many people lose a lot of water weight at first because water is used to store the glycogen. But that runs out fast. So, then your body turns to your muscles. Which includes your heart! If you have too larger of a deficit, you are going to lose more muscle than necessary. That can be counteracted by eating enough protein and working your muscles hard enough that the body rebuilds them - but there is still a limit to how much that'll help. You need to be an expert (or be following instructions from one) to play that game.
- Over and above that, your body will respond to what and how much you eat by varying hormone levels. Excessive calorie restriction will tend to lead it to produce more hunger hormones. For many people, that means they'll be prone to binging and undoing that "extra deficit" they worked for.
Now, all of this depends on you measuring your intake accurately. The scale in your bathroom will tell you whether or not your deficit is *actually* too high. So, keep an eye on your progress and if you're losing weight "too fast", make an effort to eat back more calories. If your weight loss is proceeding as expected, then you've managed to strike a good balance between calories in and calories out.5 -
Thank you, everyone, for the detailed responses! The calculations and eating back calories makes a lot more sense!
To further avoid the muscle loss vs. fat loss ... are there certain things I could be doing/eating? Should I be eating more protein or drinking protein shakes to avoid this?0 -
asbpunkin777 wrote: »Thank you, everyone, for the detailed responses! The calculations and eating back calories makes a lot more sense!
To further avoid the muscle loss vs. fat loss ... are there certain things I could be doing/eating? Should I be eating more protein or drinking protein shakes to avoid this?
Just make sure you get at least 0.8 protein per lb of goal weight and do heavy lifting 2-3 x per week and muscle loss should be minimal0
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