Do you eat exercise cals ?
Replies
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Sitting mine up using the goals MFP suggested it put me at an absurdly low calorie calculation, but overestimated my exercise calories, so if I ate them it took me out of my deficit, and led to weight gain. MFP, while awesome, overestimates the calories burned during strength training sessions. So for me personally, eating them was not the way to go and in the beginning of working with professionals I was told to quit eating my exercise calories. That was step number one for using MFP. They like the user friendly nature of MFP, but despise the calculations, then we starting tweaking the calculations and getting to a good calorie goal and plan for me.
I think it's sweet you all worry about me being overly aggressive in losing or under eating, but that's not the case. You're right @kimny72, a 150 pound female losing 2.6 pounds a week would be aggressive. However, losing .65-1% of your body weight isn't aggressive, if you weigh 150 you'll aim to lose between .97-1.5 pound(s) a week. My eating style is a good balance of fruits, veggies, lean proteins, and other foods I enjoy. My style of eating is "preferable, enjoyable, convenient, and sustainable" as laid out by nutritionists/trainers. I can tell y'all are sweet and caring people, but I can attest I'm not under eating. And @cmriverside I'm not doing anything with my Little Debbies, because I enjoy still eating those, albeit in a more moderate and healthy portion now
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Commander_Keen wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »It really depends on, how much your eating (How reliable ) and how much you are burning ( again How reliable)
The bigger the deficit, the quicker the weight loss .
Please stop promoting overly aggressive weight loss techniques. There are many adverse effects to rapid weight loss if a person doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.
Can you correctly identify the exact timing of when the adverse effect start to occur?
Your also suggesting that the OP does not know when to stop.
Not only that, but the advice affects doesn't occur because of lack of food, ( well death and organ failure) but hair and nails comes from lack of nutrients.
You need energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and other basic functions. It would stand to reason that when calories are insufficient, the body will slow down or cease altogether basic functions to conserve energy...it's not just a lock of nutrients.3 -
Sitting mine up using the goals MFP suggested it put me at an absurdly low calorie calculation, but overestimated my exercise calories, so if I ate them it took me out of my deficit, and led to weight gain. MFP, while awesome, overestimates the calories burned during strength training sessions. So for me personally, eating them was not the way to go and in the beginning of working with professionals I was told to quit eating my exercise calories. That was step number one for using MFP. They like the user friendly nature of MFP, but despise the calculations, then we starting tweaking the calculations and getting to a good calorie goal and plan for me.
I think it's sweet you all worry about me being overly aggressive in losing or under eating, but that's not the case. You're right @kimny72, a 150 pound female losing 2.6 pounds a week would be aggressive. However, losing .65-1% of your body weight isn't aggressive, if you weigh 150 you'll aim to lose between .97-1.5 pound(s) a week. My eating style is a good balance of fruits, veggies, lean proteins, and other foods I enjoy. My style of eating is "preferable, enjoyable, convenient, and sustainable" as laid out by nutritionists/trainers. I can tell y'all are sweet and caring people, but I can attest I'm not under eating. And @cmriverside I'm not doing anything with my Little Debbies, because I enjoy still eating those, albeit in a more moderate and healthy portion now
I don't have any argument with what you're doing right now, thank you for hanging in here and giving more detail
. Unfortunately, we get a lot of posters here who really are under-eating and exercising and getting their weight loss info from FB ads and just causing themselves all sorts of problems. So some of us (okay, at least me) tend to craft our answers to keep them in mind.
I wonder if OP is still reading
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cwolfman13 wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »It really depends on, how much your eating (How reliable ) and how much you are burning ( again How reliable)
The bigger the deficit, the quicker the weight loss .
Please stop promoting overly aggressive weight loss techniques. There are many adverse effects to rapid weight loss if a person doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.
Can you correctly identify the exact timing of when the adverse effect start to occur?
Your also suggesting that the OP does not know when to stop.
Not only that, but the advice affects doesn't occur because of lack of food, ( well death and organ failure) but hair and nails comes from lack of nutrients.
You need energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and other basic functions. It would stand to reason that when calories are insufficient, the body will slow down or cease altogether basic functions to conserve energy...it's not just a lock of nutrients.
Does hair and and nails grow, when one is in a coma?8 -
100% of my exercise calories worked fine for weight loss and weight maintenance at goal weight long term.
I wonder how people who advocate not accounting for their exercise energy requirements intend to maintain once they stop trying to lose weight.6 -
Commander_Keen wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »It really depends on, how much your eating (How reliable ) and how much you are burning ( again How reliable)
The bigger the deficit, the quicker the weight loss .
Please stop promoting overly aggressive weight loss techniques. There are many adverse effects to rapid weight loss if a person doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.
Can you correctly identify the exact timing of when the adverse effect start to occur?
Your also suggesting that the OP does not know when to stop.
Not only that, but the advice affects doesn't occur because of lack of food, ( well death and organ failure) but hair and nails comes from lack of nutrients.
You need energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and other basic functions. It would stand to reason that when calories are insufficient, the body will slow down or cease altogether basic functions to conserve energy...it's not just a lock of nutrients.
Does hair and and nails grow, when one is in a coma?
Yes, but may not be as much as a healthy person.
I would hope the average dieter is shooting for a level of health above "in a coma".
The tricky part of under-eating is it can take a few months for the damage to build up and become visible, and once your body has been stressed to that point, it can take many more months to get back to an optimal state of health. Eating enough to ensure you avoid that while losing weight at a more moderate pace is just good sense.8 -
Sitting mine up using the goals MFP suggested it put me at an absurdly low calorie calculation, but overestimated my exercise calories, so if I ate them it took me out of my deficit, and led to weight gain. MFP, while awesome, overestimates the calories burned during strength training sessions. So for me personally, eating them was not the way to go and in the beginning of working with professionals I was told to quit eating my exercise calories. That was step number one for using MFP. They like the user friendly nature of MFP, but despise the calculations, then we starting tweaking the calculations and getting to a good calorie goal and plan for me.
I think it's sweet you all worry about me being overly aggressive in losing or under eating, but that's not the case. You're right @kimny72, a 150 pound female losing 2.6 pounds a week would be aggressive. However, losing .65-1% of your body weight isn't aggressive, if you weigh 150 you'll aim to lose between .97-1.5 pound(s) a week. My eating style is a good balance of fruits, veggies, lean proteins, and other foods I enjoy. My style of eating is "preferable, enjoyable, convenient, and sustainable" as laid out by nutritionists/trainers. I can tell y'all are sweet and caring people, but I can attest I'm not under eating. And @cmriverside I'm not doing anything with my Little Debbies, because I enjoy still eating those, albeit in a more moderate and healthy portion now
I don't have any argument with what you're doing right now, thank you for hanging in here and giving more detail . Unfortunately, we get a lot of posters here who really are under-eating and exercising and getting their weight loss info from FB ads and just causing themselves all sorts of problems. So some of us (okay, at least me) tend to craft our answers to keep them in mind.
I wonder if OP is still reading
Absolutely! I appreciate you having a civil discussion. Oh, FB and IG are the bane of my existence, so much false and harmful info! I'm new to the community side of MFP, so I wasn't aware of that about the posters. I'll be more mindful of that going forward, thank you. I went through my phases of under eating and going about losing weight the wrong way, thinking the faster the better - that's nothing but a good way to develop an eating disorder unfortunately. I hope OP is. If nothing else the fact that we're all losing is good proof of how you need to individualize different aspects of losing weight to make it enjoyable and sustainable. Like taking into account hormones and other things for long term (and healthy) success. Personally, if eating exercise calories, not eating them, shoot if singing the Barney theme song before they eat helps someone become healthier - I'm all for it and will gladly cheer them on! Find what works for you OP and don't beat yourself up if you make a misstep, or feel like you have to be in a rush to get there. I know it's hard, but just remember this isn't about getting smaller, it's about getting healthier! 2 -
cmriverside wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »I don't eat any of my exercise calories. The estimates can be off and when I do eat my exercise calories I find myself going over or stressing about it, so I just don't eat them. I have them turned off, so I don't even see them. I try not to eat all of my calories. I try to leave ~200-300, I figure my accuracy can't be spot on when logging, so these allow me to account for that. I will say, I don't stress about leaving calories though, If I'm having a hungry day I may eat up to my calorie limit. I've found the best thing for me is to set it and then basically forget it until I reach my short term goals and reset my calories and macros.
Sure estimate can be wrong. There are ways to validate them though. But you know you burn SOME calories, right? So choosing zero is the one number that is definitively wrong.
Yes, I'm well versed in CICO. I've met with trainers, nutritionists, and dietitians, and they all recommended not eating the exercise calories. Yes, I have a Fitbit that estimates my calories burned. I just use my exercise calories as a sort of padding towards my deficit. I have a training plan from the personal trainer, I've lost 43 pounds in 4 months, losing at a decent pace, without binge-ing, or feeling deprived.
So your trainer and dietitian told you to use the MFP goal but not use it as MFP intends you to?
I'll add that 43lbs in 4 months is quite an aggressive rate of loss and would be undereating for the majority of people, so what you're saying is kind of supporting the argument that you should eat back exercise calories. Since you seem to be working with a team of professionals I'll assume it is fine for you, but most people aren't and should not be losing anywhere near as fast.
Congrats on your progress BTW
Thank you!
No they recommended MFP as a quick and easy way to log my food, but I don't use the goal it sets. I use calculations which takes into account the Mifflin-St. Jeor Equation to calculate my BMR, then I calculate my deficit and macros using the equation/guidelines they gave me for the macros. I have the premium version of MFP so I can override its goals and put in my custom ones. (I'm a dorky accountant, so I have spreadsheets that now do all these equations and math for me haha). The calculators are available online and I found free web guides to setting up the macros that actually explained why we set them up that way, vs. continuing to pay someone to set them up for me.
It's only 2.6 pounds a week, so it's not that aggressive. We set it up that I should lose .65-1% of body weight per week, as long as I stay within that range, I'm good. If after 3-4 weeks my progress isn't where it should be, either losing too much or too little, I make tiny adjustments. We're focusing on fat loss, while minimizing muscle loss, so my workouts are a good mix of strength training and cardio.
I'm not saying that not eating them is the only way to go. I think weight loss, while at its core is CICO, is very individualized; every person has to find what works for them. My mom doesn't count calories, she does Keto and has lost a good amount of weight. Some people mentioned here they ate them and lost, some didn't and lost. I think at the end of the day you have to remember that none of us gained this weight quickly, we won't lose it that quickly and we have to find what works for us individually so this can truly be a lifestyle change, not another failed "diet." So take the time to experiment on eating them or not eating them. Take 2-4 weeks to see how your body responds and do what works best for you!
See, the bolded is the key though. You ARE eating your exercise calories - they are already included by those calculators. They use TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) which includes your expected intentional exercise. We are saying that if you use the MFP calculation (which is NEAT, not TDEE, and does not include exercise yet) you should eat back your exercise calories.
If person A has a TDEE of 2000 cals and burns 200 cals per day at the gym, and wants to lose 1 lb per week, a TDEE calculator will give them a calorie goal of 1500 calories, MFP will give them a calorie goal of 1300 cals. MFP expects them to log their exercise (200 cals) whenthey do it and eat those calories back.
I'm guessing based on what you're saying that you are currently 250+lbs, but many people simply don't have that much weight to lose. For the majority of dieters, especially female dieters, consistently maintaining a 1,000+ deficit is risking under-eating. A female TDEE of greater than 2300 cals is just not that common.
Mifflin St Jeor is the calculator MFP uses, just to clarify.
I think @movgrl1 will be changing how she calculates once she gets closer to here goal. ALL the calculators are off at the margins of Obese and Underweight. So I'm willing to bet my Little Debbies that she'll be eating exercise calories once she gets within 20-30 pounds of a healthy BMI.
I under ate for a while too. All was well, till it wasn't.
We almost all learn the hard way.
Ah, is that one the BMR calculator, not TDEE? Shoot. I get them confused. Sorry @movgrl1
It's both. It's typically combined with an activity multiplier (often made easier on internet sites by asking about number of days and intensity of exercise).
A couple of examples: http://www.leighpeele.com/mifflin-st-jeor-calculator and https://jscalc.io/calc/EfwfPAiiqKMB3yH52 -
Sitting mine up using the goals MFP suggested it put me at an absurdly low calorie calculation, but overestimated my exercise calories, so if I ate them it took me out of my deficit, and led to weight gain.
What this indicates is that you ARE using a TDEE calculation, which is the only reason MFP would be way too low. And as kimny said, that means you are eating back exercise calories, just up front.MFP, while awesome, overestimates the calories burned during strength training sessions.
Depending on which entry you choose, that's true. I find that how much it overestimates depends on the exercises and, of course, which entries are chosen. For example, a lot of them include some judgment about how hard you are working, and often someone who is new perceives more intensity than the calories would reflect. The ones that are based on more objective factors (weight, distance, time) always seemed to me to be more accurate, although they can be off too for various reasons.I think it's sweet you all worry about me being overly aggressive in losing or under eating, but that's not the case. You're right @kimny72, a 150 pound female losing 2.6 pounds a week would be aggressive. However, losing .65-1% of your body weight isn't aggressive, if you weigh 150 you'll aim to lose between .97-1.5 pound(s) a week.
This sounds like it works fine for you, but my concern is the message that not eating exercise cals it better IF a person is using the MFP system (as would more often than not be the case) and at, say, 1200 cals seeking 2 lb/week. Or that 2.6 is the result of not using exercise cals, which I can see someone getting encouraged to do when they are much closer to their goal weight. That's why when saying experts say to ignore MFP's guidelines (max of 1-2 per week) and the way it works (exercise is added after the fact and eaten back), it's important to be clear that this is using an exercise goal different from (and higher than) the MFP one.
Similarly, as I noted above, when I switched to TDEE method I didn't log exercise calories, since they were already in my goal.1 -
Commander_Keen wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »It really depends on, how much your eating (How reliable ) and how much you are burning ( again How reliable)
The bigger the deficit, the quicker the weight loss .
Please stop promoting overly aggressive weight loss techniques. There are many adverse effects to rapid weight loss if a person doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.
Can you correctly identify the exact timing of when the adverse effect start to occur?
Your also suggesting that the OP does not know when to stop.
Not only that, but the advice affects doesn't occur because of lack of food, ( well death and organ failure) but hair and nails comes from lack of nutrients.
You need energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and other basic functions. It would stand to reason that when calories are insufficient, the body will slow down or cease altogether basic functions to conserve energy...it's not just a lock of nutrients.
Does hair and and nails grow, when one is in a coma?
Are you aiming to eat the same calorie level as a comatose patient?
As a wise rabbit used to say, “the winner is the one who eats the most and still loses the weight”. In other words, not going for the most aggressive weight loss with bare minimum calories but learning how to eat at a moderate deficit to sustain an activity level appropriate with fitness goals, which can them help transition smoothly into maintenance.
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Commander_Keen wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »It really depends on, how much your eating (How reliable ) and how much you are burning ( again How reliable)
The bigger the deficit, the quicker the weight loss .
Please stop promoting overly aggressive weight loss techniques. There are many adverse effects to rapid weight loss if a person doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.
Can you correctly identify the exact timing of when the adverse effect start to occur?
Your also suggesting that the OP does not know when to stop.
Not only that, but the advice affects doesn't occur because of lack of food, ( well death and organ failure) but hair and nails comes from lack of nutrients.
You need energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and other basic functions. It would stand to reason that when calories are insufficient, the body will slow down or cease altogether basic functions to conserve energy...it's not just a lock of nutrients.
Does hair and and nails grow, when one is in a coma?
Are you suggesting that cals are insufficient when in a coma? If the calories were not, the hospital would be in trouble. Typically the person in a coma would be fed to maintain weight. BMR is maintenance when one is in a coma, and has no relevance to what is sufficient when one is not (BMR could be, or even less than BMR, depending on what a reasonable weight loss goal is and how sedentary one is).3 -
Commander_Keen wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »It really depends on, how much your eating (How reliable ) and how much you are burning ( again How reliable)
The bigger the deficit, the quicker the weight loss .
Please stop promoting overly aggressive weight loss techniques. There are many adverse effects to rapid weight loss if a person doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.
Can you correctly identify the exact timing of when the adverse effect start to occur?
Your also suggesting that the OP does not know when to stop.
Not only that, but the advice affects doesn't occur because of lack of food, ( well death and organ failure) but hair and nails comes from lack of nutrients.
You need energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and other basic functions. It would stand to reason that when calories are insufficient, the body will slow down or cease altogether basic functions to conserve energy...it's not just a lock of nutrients.
Does hair and and nails grow, when one is in a coma?
They also continue to grow for a while after death, too. But that's not a level of rapid weight loss that should be aspired to, either.
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Commander_Keen wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Commander_Keen wrote: »It really depends on, how much your eating (How reliable ) and how much you are burning ( again How reliable)
The bigger the deficit, the quicker the weight loss .
Please stop promoting overly aggressive weight loss techniques. There are many adverse effects to rapid weight loss if a person doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.
Can you correctly identify the exact timing of when the adverse effect start to occur?
Your also suggesting that the OP does not know when to stop.
Not only that, but the advice affects doesn't occur because of lack of food, ( well death and organ failure) but hair and nails comes from lack of nutrients.
You need energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and other basic functions. It would stand to reason that when calories are insufficient, the body will slow down or cease altogether basic functions to conserve energy...it's not just a lock of nutrients.
Does hair and and nails grow, when one is in a coma?
Comatose patients are given nutrition, typically through their veins. The calories as well as the nutritional (vitamins and minerals as well as protein, carbs, and fat) make up of this is calculated and monitored twice a week by registered dieticians and they use lab values (drawn at least twice per week).5 -
As for the OP, I don't use the MFP calculation because I like a consistent daily target, so I used a TDEE calculator to set my own goal that includes exercise.4
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In my case, I do not eat them back because I already take into consideration the exercise in my nutritional plan. So no adjustment is necessary. It ultimately comes down to your goals, if you want to gain weight just remember to eat more than you burn. If you want to lose weight, then do not eat back the calories you burned while exercising. Hope this helps!8
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In my case, I do not eat them back because I already take into consideration the exercise in my nutritional plan. So no adjustment is necessary.
This is quite sensible.It ultimately comes down to your goals, if you want to gain weight just remember to eat more than you burn. If you want to lose weight, then do not eat back the calories you burned while exercising. Hope this helps!
The bolded is wrong if one is using MFP based on the set-up MFP gives you after you input your information. MFP's calorie goal assumes NO exercise, so if you exercise and use that goal, you should add in the cals and if you are logging correctly you will lose weight. I logged back my calories when I was using MFP's goal (before I changed to TDEE method), and I consistently lost 2 or even 2+ lb/week (I had a good bit to lose at that point, although I was likely being somewhat overly aggressive and had erroneously claimed to be sedentary when lightly active was more correct as I always got 10,000 steps before exercise).7 -
Initially 1, but now I try to eat back a percentage because with my now high activity level in the gym I was burning off a lot of calories and leaving myself in too large of a deficit. I dropped 33 pounds in just over 3 months (212 ->179). I thought it was awesome at the time, but looking back it was too aggressive and it cost me some muscle tissue. A few days ago I took 39 days worth of data samples from my weigh-in and calorie tracking to calculate my actual TDEE over that period. I calculated my TDEE to be 2920 calories, which was higher than I was expecting. I was also surprised to learn during those 39 days I was averaging 1786 calories a day and burning what I estimated as 400-500 in the gym five days a week. So I was in the ballpark of 1200-1300 net daily calories. I've always been told when losing weight that a 20%-25% deficit is a good slope and anything over 30% is reckless. I should have been around 2340 net kcals/day, but here I am hanging out over 50%. Looking back I should have been plotting my weight loss slope and calculated my TDEE earlier because I would have adjusted my intake the leaner I got. I read an article recently the Apple watch averages about a 40% error, so I take 60% of my calculated active calories and eat back 50-60% of that number. I'm done losing weight and going into maintenance mode.3
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cmriverside wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »I don't eat any of my exercise calories. The estimates can be off and when I do eat my exercise calories I find myself going over or stressing about it, so I just don't eat them. I have them turned off, so I don't even see them. I try not to eat all of my calories. I try to leave ~200-300, I figure my accuracy can't be spot on when logging, so these allow me to account for that. I will say, I don't stress about leaving calories though, If I'm having a hungry day I may eat up to my calorie limit. I've found the best thing for me is to set it and then basically forget it until I reach my short term goals and reset my calories and macros.
Sure estimate can be wrong. There are ways to validate them though. But you know you burn SOME calories, right? So choosing zero is the one number that is definitively wrong.
Yes, I'm well versed in CICO. I've met with trainers, nutritionists, and dietitians, and they all recommended not eating the exercise calories. Yes, I have a Fitbit that estimates my calories burned. I just use my exercise calories as a sort of padding towards my deficit. I have a training plan from the personal trainer, I've lost 43 pounds in 4 months, losing at a decent pace, without binge-ing, or feeling deprived.
So your trainer and dietitian told you to use the MFP goal but not use it as MFP intends you to?
I'll add that 43lbs in 4 months is quite an aggressive rate of loss and would be undereating for the majority of people, so what you're saying is kind of supporting the argument that you should eat back exercise calories. Since you seem to be working with a team of professionals I'll assume it is fine for you, but most people aren't and should not be losing anywhere near as fast.
Congrats on your progress BTW
Thank you! No they recommended MFP as a quick and easy way to log my food, but I don't use the goal it sets. I use calculations which takes into account the Mifflin-St. Jeor Equation to calculate my BMR, then I calculate my deficit and macros using the equation/guidelines they gave me for the macros. I have the premium version of MFP so I can override its goals and put in my custom ones. (I'm a dorky accountant, so I have spreadsheets that now do all these equations and math for me haha). The calculators are available online and I found free web guides to setting up the macros that actually explained why we set them up that way, vs. continuing to pay someone to set them up for me.
It's only 2.6 pounds a week, so it's not that aggressive. We set it up that I should lose .65-1% of body weight per week, as long as I stay within that range, I'm good. If after 3-4 weeks my progress isn't where it should be, either losing too much or too little, I make tiny adjustments. We're focusing on fat loss, while minimizing muscle loss, so my workouts are a good mix of strength training and cardio.
I'm not saying that not eating them is the only way to go. I think weight loss, while at its core is CICO, is very individualized; every person has to find what works for them. My mom doesn't count calories, she does Keto and has lost a good amount of weight. Some people mentioned here they ate them and lost, some didn't and lost. I think at the end of the day you have to remember that none of us gained this weight quickly, we won't lose it that quickly and we have to find what works for us individually so this can truly be a lifestyle change, not another failed "diet." So take the time to experiment on eating them or not eating them. Take 2-4 weeks to see how your body responds and do what works best for you!
See, the bolded is the key though. You ARE eating your exercise calories - they are already included by those calculators. They use TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) which includes your expected intentional exercise. We are saying that if you use the MFP calculation (which is NEAT, not TDEE, and does not include exercise yet) you should eat back your exercise calories.
If person A has a TDEE of 2000 cals and burns 200 cals per day at the gym, and wants to lose 1 lb per week, a TDEE calculator will give them a calorie goal of 1500 calories, MFP will give them a calorie goal of 1300 cals. MFP expects them to log their exercise (200 cals) whenthey do it and eat those calories back.
I'm guessing based on what you're saying that you are currently 250+lbs, but many people simply don't have that much weight to lose. For the majority of dieters, especially female dieters, consistently maintaining a 1,000+ deficit is risking under-eating. A female TDEE of greater than 2300 cals is just not that common.
Mifflin St Jeor is the calculator MFP uses, just to clarify.
I think @movgrl1 will be changing how she calculates once she gets closer to here goal. ALL the calculators are off at the margins of Obese and Underweight. So I'm willing to bet my Little Debbies that she'll be eating exercise calories once she gets within 20-30 pounds of a healthy BMI.
I under ate for a while too. All was well, till it wasn't.
We almost all learn the hard way.
Ah, is that one the BMR calculator, not TDEE? Shoot. I get them confused. Sorry @movgrl1
It's both. It's typically combined with an activity multiplier (often made easier on internet sites by asking about number of days and intensity of exercise).
A couple of examples: http://www.leighpeele.com/mifflin-st-jeor-calculator and https://jscalc.io/calc/EfwfPAiiqKMB3yH5
To add to this side topic of terms used - I've seen several TDEE calc's use the term BMR incorrectly instead of the correct TDEE.
So I'm not surprised when someone says they are like taking a deficit off their BMR or similar, as it appears in this case.3 -
In my case, I do not eat them back because I already take into consideration the exercise in my nutritional plan. So no adjustment is necessary. It ultimately comes down to your goals, if you want to gain weight just remember to eat more than you burn. If you want to lose weight, then do not eat back the calories you burned while exercising. Hope this helps!
If that was the case I wouldn’t have lost the 120+ lbs and would still be obese.
However, I did follow MFPs method. Ate more when I was active and less when I wasn’t. Lost weight just fine and at a reasonable rate as well.5 -
Not all bodies are the same.
Not every weight loss method will work with everybody.
Just because you did or did not eat your exercise calories back, does not mean it will work for every body else.
Just because MFP tells you something, doesn't mean that its setup correctly
You can setup MFP that you exercise, or that you do not exercise. -- I set it up, that I do not exercise
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I don't track my exercise calories. I do however, have a higher calorie/macro allotment on days I train, determined by working with a nutritionist and trainer to figure out what those numbers should be. It's simple and consistent and really works for me.1
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Commander_Keen wrote: »Not all bodies are the same.
Not every weight loss method will work with everybody.
Just because you did or did not eat your exercise calories back, does not mean it will work for every body else.
Just because MFP tells you something, doesn't mean that its setup correctly
You can setup MFP that you exercise, or that you do not exercise. -- I set it up, that I do not exercise
If you are talking about the exercise goal it doesn’t change your calorie goal at all. Regardless of what you put there it will always calculate a goal based on no exercise.
Now you could include exercise when selecting the activity level, but that’s not what MFPs calculations are set up for. In this case you wouldn’t want to add extra for exercise.
Regardless telling people they won’t lose if they eat them like the other person did is false. The truth is it depends on various factors including things like how accurate your food log is, how you calculated your calorie goal to begin with and so on.
I am in no way saying my way is better than anyone else’s. I am just pointing out that the “if you want to lose weight, do not eat back the calories you burned while exercising” is a blanket statement that isn’t necessarily true.
5 -
Commander_Keen wrote: »Not all bodies are the same.
Not every weight loss method will work with everybody.
Just because you did or did not eat your exercise calories back, does not mean it will work for every body else.
Just because MFP tells you something, doesn't mean that its setup correctly
You can setup MFP that you exercise, or that you do not exercise. -- I set it up, that I do not exercise
I would suggest that as far as weight loss in general is concerned - all bodies are the same.
You eat less than you burn - you will lose fat weight (if done smart, done foolishly include some muscle mass in there).
The problem is the line between foolish and not is individual - what can your body handle before it backfires.
And considering those effects can take months to show - "reading your body" isn't really a viable option.
Most people aren't tested out the wahzoo as in a research study to confirm if their body is rebelling, to find that line.
So it's smarter to get that line per studies that find what is reasonable and what is not, and even then some will need to adjust as their personal line isn't as aggressive as others can be.
I'd also wager that every weight loss method would work for anyone - barring medical issue.
And then what is the major difference - is the mental fortitude to adhere and sustain to it.
That's the difference, if you can't actually do a certain method than no good. But it still could work.
And the general method that MFP is using that is different than almost any other site out there (except fitness trackers) regarding weight control that it's trying to teach is a fact:
When you do more you eat more.
When you do less you eat less.
In a diet a tad less in either case.
Compare that method to the TDEE sites (which will work if you understand the reasoning) that I've seen all too many create the confusion in their mind that if they don't exercise they don't lose weight.
Well yes - when they've set a high goal of exercise that is almost totally creating the deficit and already accounted for - yes they better exercise or they won't create a deficit.
But exercise is not required to lose weight - only on the method and way they choose to set it up.
But on MFP the default method with no tweaking is to lose weight with no exercise.
And still create a deficit when you exercise and eat more.
And faster is not better except in rare cases where you should probably know your personal line from a study (not even just a Dr that gets little to no info on the subject frankly).
Perhaps that's why it's a Fitness Pal - it's trying to separate that fitness has it's own benefits and isn't required for weight loss - but it's good to do. View it as a reward to eat more, or as just a fact of the way things work.
But Fitness is it's own thing to be done.
I think the problem is you keep offering advice regarding usage of the tool in non-normal way without any caveats to the fact you are using it differently, as indeed many do.
Just because the closest tool you can reach might work as a hammer, doesn't mean it's always a good idea to do so, or that it'll work well. And you certainly have to know when it's not and you have to handle it differently.13 -
Commander_Keen wrote: »Not all bodies are the same.
Not every weight loss method will work with everybody.
Just because you did or did not eat your exercise calories back, does not mean it will work for every body else.
Just because MFP tells you something, doesn't mean that its setup correctly
You can setup MFP that you exercise, or that you do not exercise. -- I set it up, that I do not exercise
I would suggest that as far as weight loss in general is concerned - all bodies are the same.
You eat less than you burn - you will lose fat weight (if done smart, done foolishly include some muscle mass in there).
The problem is the line between foolish and not is individual - what can your body handle before it backfires.
And considering those effects can take months to show - "reading your body" isn't really a viable option.
Most people aren't tested out the wahzoo as in a research study to confirm if their body is rebelling, to find that line.
So it's smarter to get that line per studies that find what is reasonable and what is not, and even then some will need to adjust as their personal line isn't as aggressive as others can be.
I'd also wager that every weight loss method would work for anyone - barring medical issue.
And then what is the major difference - is the mental fortitude to adhere and sustain to it.
That's the difference, if you can't actually do a certain method than no good. But it still could work.
And the general method that MFP is using that is different than almost any other site out there (except fitness trackers) regarding weight control that it's trying to teach is a fact:
When you do more you eat more.
When you do less you eat less.
In a diet a tad less in either case.
Compare that method to the TDEE sites (which will work if you understand the reasoning) that I've seen all too many create the confusion in their mind that if they don't exercise they don't lose weight.
Well yes - when they've set a high goal of exercise that is almost totally creating the deficit and already accounted for - yes they better exercise or they won't create a deficit.
But exercise is not required to lose weight - only on the method and way they choose to set it up.
But on MFP the default method with no tweaking is to lose weight with no exercise.
And still create a deficit when you exercise and eat more.
And faster is not better except in rare cases where you should probably know your personal line from a study (not even just a Dr that gets little to no info on the subject frankly).
Perhaps that's why it's a Fitness Pal - it's trying to separate that fitness has it's own benefits and isn't required for weight loss - but it's good to do. View it as a reward to eat more, or as just a fact of the way things work.
But Fitness is it's own thing to be done.
I think the problem is you keep offering advice regarding usage of the tool in non-normal way without any caveats to the fact you are using it differently, as indeed many do.
Just because the closest tool you can reach might work as a hammer, doesn't mean it's always a good idea to do so, or that it'll work well. And you certainly have to know when it's not and you have to handle it differently.
One of the best posts I’ve seen on MFP and the “why” of the NEAT approach and how it differs from TDEE based methods. You should consider starting a new post and have it be made a sticky. I know that many exist already but I think this is super clear and helpful for new users. Well said!9 -
Commander_Keen wrote: »Not all bodies are the same.
Not every weight loss method will work with everybody.
Just because you did or did not eat your exercise calories back, does not mean it will work for every body else.
Just because MFP tells you something, doesn't mean that its setup correctly
You can setup MFP that you exercise, or that you do not exercise. -- I set it up, that I do not exercise
I would suggest that as far as weight loss in general is concerned - all bodies are the same.
You eat less than you burn - you will lose fat weight (if done smart, done foolishly include some muscle mass in there).
The problem is the line between foolish and not is individual - what can your body handle before it backfires.
And considering those effects can take months to show - "reading your body" isn't really a viable option.
Most people aren't tested out the wahzoo as in a research study to confirm if their body is rebelling, to find that line.
So it's smarter to get that line per studies that find what is reasonable and what is not, and even then some will need to adjust as their personal line isn't as aggressive as others can be.
I'd also wager that every weight loss method would work for anyone - barring medical issue.
And then what is the major difference - is the mental fortitude to adhere and sustain to it.
That's the difference, if you can't actually do a certain method than no good. But it still could work.
And the general method that MFP is using that is different than almost any other site out there (except fitness trackers) regarding weight control that it's trying to teach is a fact:
When you do more you eat more.
When you do less you eat less.
In a diet a tad less in either case.
Compare that method to the TDEE sites (which will work if you understand the reasoning) that I've seen all too many create the confusion in their mind that if they don't exercise they don't lose weight.
Well yes - when they've set a high goal of exercise that is almost totally creating the deficit and already accounted for - yes they better exercise or they won't create a deficit.
But exercise is not required to lose weight - only on the method and way they choose to set it up.
But on MFP the default method with no tweaking is to lose weight with no exercise.
And still create a deficit when you exercise and eat more.
And faster is not better except in rare cases where you should probably know your personal line from a study (not even just a Dr that gets little to no info on the subject frankly).
Perhaps that's why it's a Fitness Pal - it's trying to separate that fitness has it's own benefits and isn't required for weight loss - but it's good to do. View it as a reward to eat more, or as just a fact of the way things work.
But Fitness is it's own thing to be done.
I think the problem is you keep offering advice regarding usage of the tool in non-normal way without any caveats to the fact you are using it differently, as indeed many do.
Just because the closest tool you can reach might work as a hammer, doesn't mean it's always a good idea to do so, or that it'll work well. And you certainly have to know when it's not and you have to handle it differently.
This is the clearest, wisest summary I've read in a long time. Kudos, heybales!5 -
I only eat any of mine back if I do a significant amount of exercise and burn more than half of the calories I eat for that day.0
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ashxtasticness wrote: »I only eat any of mine back if I do a significant amount of exercise and burn more than half of the calories I eat for that day.
How many calories are you eating each day? I’m betting 1200?
Regardless of the number only eating calories back if you burn half of what you plan to eat seems unnecessarily aggressive. How long have you been doing this?2 -
Commander_Keen wrote: »Not all bodies are the same.
Not every weight loss method will work with everybody.
Just because you did or did not eat your exercise calories back, does not mean it will work for every body else.
Just because MFP tells you something, doesn't mean that its setup correctly
You can setup MFP that you exercise, or that you do not exercise. -- I set it up, that I do not exercise
If I use the MFP method I will get 1900 calories to lose 1 Lb per week. If I go on a 30 mile bike ride, which I do regularly, I will burn in the neighborhood of 1,000 calories leaving my net intake at 900 calories. You find that to be healthy and acceptable. Are you pro-ana? Exercise Bulimic?
As to your previous coma question, patients in a coma are fed BMR calories...Do you know what that is?3 -
You’ve done really well..good on you! I think the advantage with calorie counting is that you can still ear a balanced diet and have some treats..I still like those!1
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Hi I only use my exercise calories when I go just over my limit.0
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