Extra calories earned?
winkwink8487
Posts: 4 Member
My goal is 1,400 cal, I workout and I earn extra calories. (see pic) do I consume all those extra calories? Will I still loose a lb a week? as that is how my settings are. I don't want to over eat. But I also want to make sure my body is getting what it needs. If I am hungry I will eat.
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Replies
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Yes, MFP is set up for you to eat back any calories you burn through exercise.2
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all you can do is eat all of them back for say a month or so and see what happens. what are you doing for exercise that you burn 800+ calories?0
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yes eat them. sometimes they over estimate calories burned so you can chose to eat 50-60% but eat at least some back, this is how MFP is set up. the 1400 is to lose the requested rate of loss WITHOUT purposeful exercise.
here is an explanation
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation/p1
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winkwink8487 wrote: »My goal is 1,400 cal, I workout and I earn extra calories. (see pic) do I consume all those extra calories? Will I still loose a lb a week? as that is how my settings are. I don't want to over eat. But I also want to make sure my body is getting what it needs. If I am hungry I will eat.
How long have you been logging, OP? Is it typical for you to have this many calories added for exercise? Are you syncing a fitness tracker to mfp?
The reason I ask...I sync my Fitbit to mfp. Initially I set my activity level to “lightly active,” but I found I was getting a LOT of extra calories from my Fitbit sync, which made planning my day, food-wise, kind of tricky. When I changed my level to “very active,” it ended up being a lot closer/easier to plan. Just a thought.
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Yes i have it synced with a traker and lightly active0
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winkwink8487 wrote: »Yes i have it synced with a traker and lightly active
Ok, great! Do you typically get this many extra calories? Do you have negative calorie adjustments enabled? If the answer to both of these questions is “yes,” you might consider bumping yourself up to “active” or even “very active.”1 -
Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, 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.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1
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If you want to lose weight, you want there to be those extra calories left over. That’s the reason you’re active at all and the reason you set a calorie goal. Stick to your goal and the fact that you’ve been active and you have those left over calories each day is why you were active or exercising and how you lose the weight. I’ve lost over 130lbs using MFP trust me on this.24
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johnnybravo21468 wrote: »If you want to lose weight, you want there to be those extra calories left over.
MFP is designed with the deficit built in. If you don’t eat at least SOME of your exercise calories, you are at risk of creating too large of a deficit, which has its own health risks, not to mention the risk of depriving yourself and binging later on.
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800+ calories is a lot of exercise. The idea of eating back is, that you have the energy to continue your fitness journey. For myself, I can workout hard, and then I will rip the fridge door off the hinges.. My programs are around 4 weeks, and I couldn't get through without the food. I have to add, though, that I'm still not trying to lose pounds on the bathroom scale. I'm working on lowering overall bodyfat, and it still works with eating back.1
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OP said she’s syncing her Fitbit to mfp, so the 800 aren’t necessarily strictly “exercise calories.” It looks to me like, as I said above, her everyday activity setting is too conservative.2
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johnnybravo21468 wrote: »If you want to lose weight, you want there to be those extra calories left over. That’s the reason you’re active at all and the reason you set a calorie goal. Stick to your goal and the fact that you’ve been active and you have those left over calories each day is why you were active or exercising and how you lose the weight. I’ve lost over 130lbs using MFP trust me on this.
its not how MFP is designed to work. if you read the post above yours with the link you will see.5 -
The whole reason you exercise(for weight loss) is to create that deficit and 800 is not necessarily Alot of calories burned it’s decent but definitely not unheard of. If you walk your 10k steps you’ll get like 300-400 but if I ride my bike like 40 miles I can easily burn 1800+ depending on speed and conditions a friend of mine burns probably 7k+ a day because he’s insane. I wasn’t saying people should starve themselves but you if you’re not hungry there’s no reason to eat just because they’re there. I logged my meals for almost 600days straight and went from 340lbs to 197lbs without starving myself. Why would anyone want to do all that work just to put those calories back in your body just because they’re there. I’ve also read that link before and I know how they say it’s designed but if I followed what you’re telling me I would have been consuming over 4000 calories a day on most days and there’s no way I would have lost any weight doing that.1
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johnnybravo21468 wrote: »The whole reason you exercise(for weight loss) is to create that deficit and 800 is not necessarily Alot of calories burned it’s decent but definitely not unheard of. If you walk your 10k steps you’ll get like 300-400 but if I ride my bike like 40 miles I can easily burn 1800+ depending on speed and conditions a friend of mine burns probably 7k+ a day because he’s insane. I wasn’t saying people should starve themselves but you if you’re not hungry there’s no reason to eat just because they’re there. I logged my meals for almost 600days straight and went from 340lbs to 197lbs without starving myself. Why would anyone want to do all that work just to put those calories back in your body just because they’re there. I’ve also read that link before and I know how they say it’s designed but if I followed what you’re telling me I would have been consuming over 4000 calories a day on most days and there’s no way I would have lost any weight doing that.
weight is lost in a calorie defict without exercise. if you exercise you make that deficit and if someone is burning 7000 calories a day(somehow I find this to be a bit farfetched) and only eating 2500 calories they are starving their bodies. the yare netting negative calories. your body burns so many calories a day just by being alive, you lost a lot of weight because you were losing 1.6 lbs a week which is a deficit of about 800 calories per day.
which if you rode and burned 1800 calories you would have an even bigger deficit if you didnt eat calories back which means more weight lost would have happened. when you dont eat enough your body will burn fat,lean mass and muscle(which includes organs). not to mention the health issues that can cause when not eating enough calories.
when you input your calories here your deficit is built in WITHOUT exercise which is why you are supposed to eat them back. now if someone did a TDEE calculator for calories your exercise level/activity is added into the equation and those you dont eat back. as for eating 4000 calories we dont know what your activity level is,height or weight,age, what you set mfp to lose per week and so on. then we could tell you if the numbers add up or not.3 -
johnnybravo21468 wrote: »The whole reason you exercise(for weight loss) is to create that deficit and 800 is not necessarily Alot of calories burned it’s decent but definitely not unheard of. If you walk your 10k steps you’ll get like 300-400 but if I ride my bike like 40 miles I can easily burn 1800+ depending on speed and conditions a friend of mine burns probably 7k+ a day because he’s insane. I wasn’t saying people should starve themselves but you if you’re not hungry there’s no reason to eat just because they’re there. I logged my meals for almost 600days straight and went from 340lbs to 197lbs without starving myself. Why would anyone want to do all that work just to put those calories back in your body just because they’re there. I’ve also read that link before and I know how they say it’s designed but if I followed what you’re telling me I would have been consuming over 4000 calories a day on most days and there’s no way I would have lost any weight doing that.
Couple of things...
1. Your calorie burn rates are a lot higher than someone who is smaller/shorter/female/weighs less. 800 calories for me is a 40 mile bike ride, or a 90 minute run. I will be eating those calories (and all the rest).
2. I don’t exercise for calorie burn. I exercise because I enjoy being out and about and doing things. After having been morbidly obese for decades, the fact that I CAN go for a run is worth celebrating. I also train to improve my overall performance. I can sludge through mediocre workouts without the fuel-but why? Why do that when I can actually live and enjoy myself and truly celebrate all the amazing things my body can do?
3. While theoretically there’s no difference in the math between a smaller woman losing weight and a larger male-the reality is that a smaller calorie allowance doesn’t allow for a lot of leeway or freedom. When I trained for a marathon, I was eating 2000 calories a day (including my exercise calories) and that was practically an all you can eat buffet. I’m guessing 2000 calories is a normal day for you. You need more fuel than I do. But you also have a whole lot more freedom and slightly more capacity to carry a larger deficit (meaning 1000 deficit per day is more than 1/2 of my usual TDEE, I’m guessing 1000 represents a far smaller % of your TDEE).
And most importantly:
4. Mfp is designed so you will eat your exercise calories back. You set your deficit so you’ll lose that amount even if you never ever do any exercise. That’s why when you exercise, mfp adds those calories to what you should eat.
PS. I’m on day 2600 of logging my food and exercise and I eat until mfp says “0 calories remaining” (including every delicious exercise calorie) and I lose, gain or maintain exactly as expected.
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@Duck_Puddle preach it, preach it or should I just say Amen2
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johnnybravo21468 wrote: »The whole reason you exercise(for weight loss) is to create that deficit...
This would make sense if mfp gave you your maintenance calories and expected you to create the deficit with exercise, but mfp builds it in for you.
For example, say I want to lose 1 pound per week. Mfp gives me 1800 calories/day, assuming I’ll burn about 2300 calories/day. I said I want to lose 1 pound per week and no more than that for health and satiety. Now, my Fitbit tells me I’ve actually burned 2500 calories, so mfp gives me an “extra” 200/day. You bet I’m going to eat those.3 -
Im new to fitbit mines said I earned 975 calories and then disappeared off my fitness pal app.0
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