Recomposes question

Hi,
I’m new to body recomposition and have been reading a lot about it lately. I updated my calories today based from another website using their calculations. The calories where less than MFP and this app seemed high.
My question is, should I be eating my calories back in? I do not want to loose weight. When you read about recomposition on other websites, they tell you to eat the average calories based on xyz. It seems this app is the only one who adds it back.
Any advice on this subject is greatly appreciated.

Replies

  • Teabythesea_
    Teabythesea_ Posts: 559 Member
    I’m not really sure what you’re asking here. MFP follows NEAT (non exercise activity level) and intends for you to eat back exercise calories to meet your goals, so when you’re choosing your activity level you make the choice depending on your day to day life, excluding intentional exercise. You may have chosen your activity level based on your exercise habits, which is why it would have given you a higher number. Whether or not you need to eat back calories depends on the calculator you used. Which one was it?
  • triciale555
    triciale555 Posts: 57 Member
    It was a recomposition calculator. I didn’t keep the website as I’ve been on quite a few. To phrase the question differently, I want to gain muscle, so do I eat at maintenance, which includes my workouts, or do I add the workout calories back in.
    I have my calories set to light activity so that includes some exercise per week. This is why I am confused - my maintenance calories already include exercise.
    Sorry if I am being confusing in the way I wrote it
  • Cahgetsfit
    Cahgetsfit Posts: 1,913 Member
    edited January 2019
    I personally never use the MFP calculator. I use other online ones and when I do exercise i add it as 1 calorie burnt. So no syncing stuff to MFP. I don't eat back my calories as they are set to 1 anyway so it's more of a log for me to keep track of what exercise I did when.

    So i suggest you go off whatever the recomp calculator told you to do.

    give it a few weeks and see how you're going in terms of weight gain/loss. if you're losing weight, you may need to adjust calories a bit.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    It was a recomposition calculator. I didn’t keep the website as I’ve been on quite a few. To phrase the question differently, I want to gain muscle, so do I eat at maintenance, which includes my workouts, or do I add the workout calories back in.
    I have my calories set to light activity so that includes some exercise per week. This is why I am confused - my maintenance calories already include exercise.
    Sorry if I am being confusing in the way I wrote it

    If you worked out your weight maintenance goal on an other site (a.k.a. as a TDEE calculator) that goal includes your exercise in your daily goal already as every day you are being credited with a daily average of your estimated weekly exercise calories. In which case don't log your exercise (or overwrite the suggested number with 1 cal if you wish).

    If you work out your weight maintenance goal on here your exercise isn't factored in until you actually do it. That's when you estimate the cals and they get added to your daily goal.

    In both cases you are "eating your exercise calories" just one is a same day goal and the MyFitnessPal goal is a variable goal - over the course of a week they are going to end up very similar so it's down to personal preference although how regular/consistent your exercise is would be a factor in that choice.