Weekly report question

Bocconcelli
Bocconcelli Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Greetings all, I'm relatively new and have a question about the weekly report.

Currently my alloted daily calories are 1830. When I workout, I earn additional calories for the day. I generally take advantage of those calories but stay at or below my adjusted allotment.

I noticed on my weekly report that it tells me my weekly calorie goal is 12810 (1830 x 7) then it shows that I log 16300 and burned 5100 in exercise. So for the week I should be 1610 below my weekly allotment.

Further down it tells me that on 2 days I was within 15% of my calorie goal which it shows at 1830 but in actuality I'm usually below when exercise calories are counted in.

So my question is this. Why is it showing me over when I'm simply consuming the additional calories it's allowing me for exercise. Should I only be eating 1830 regardless of how much exercise I do? Sorry if this is confusing and thank you for any help.

Replies

  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,219 Member
    No, you should be eating most of the exercise calories. I don't look at the weekly goal, so I don't know how to explain what you are seeing.
  • KristoferNeal
    KristoferNeal Posts: 5 Member
    Are you talking about net calories and consumed calories? If so, I typically only go off of net calories (how many calories your body actually has to utilize). So, say for example, you consume 2,000 calories a day for 7 days. 2,000 x 7 = 14,000. Let us also say that each day, you burned 1,000 calories. 1,000 x 7 = 7,000. So, 14,000 - 7,000 = 7,000 NET calories. This means that your body was in a 7,000 caloric deficit in a 7 day period, resulting in 2 lbs lost (3,500 calories for a pound). You're fine. Going off of what you said, it seems that you're just adjusting your calories to compensate for exercise. This is normal and many people including myself do it as well.
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,463 Member
    Eat back about half the exercise cals because they can be inflated.
  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,219 Member
    shadyj26 wrote: »
    I would not eat those calories back. It will get to a point where you will stall with weight lose and that will be the problem. I thought the goal was to burn more calories that what you consume.

    If you stall the usual culprit is that you are less accurate with your calorie counting. Some of that is often that people don't use a food scale or forget to log absolutely everything, some of that is that people log huge calorie burns that are inaccurate.

    The goal is to burn more calories than you eat, but it doesn't mean burn more calories through exercise than you are eating. MFP calculates the amount of calories your body needs if you were in a coma (BMR) and the approximate amount of calories you burn through regular daily activity (cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, watching TV, and working). They then subtract calories from that to give you your calorie goal. If you exercise you are burning additional calories and they encourage you to eat most of those since you're now in an even larger deficit. A huge deficit comes with some potential health hazards and you might as well eat a little bit more food to fuel your exercise.
  • Bocconcelli
    Bocconcelli Posts: 2 Member
    Most of the calorie calculators that I have used put me at 2800 cal/day for my BMR and 1800 to lose 2lbs/wk so the calories assigned by MFP are in line with that. I was just confused on why the weekly report made it seem like I shouldn't be eating those extra calories for activity. Sounds like the best course is to ignore the weekly report and just let the scale do the talking. Thank you guys for the advise.

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