Exercise calories

MFP is designed for you to eat back the calories gained through exercise. Just make sure your estimates for calorie burn are reasonable.

rodnichols69 wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

MFP is designed for you to eat back the calories gained through exercise. Just make sure your estimates for calorie burn are reasonable.

Or, if your goal is to lose weight, you shut that function off and eat just under your estimated BMR.

Sorry, that sounds like bad advice, it doesn't take into account the activity level (with and without exercise) and desired weight loss rate.
For people who are very active and/or do a lot of exercise, this could create a deficit which is too aggresive, especially if they don't have much weight to lose.

rodnichols69 wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

MFP is designed for you to eat back the calories gained through exercise. Just make sure your estimates for calorie burn are reasonable.

Or, if your goal is to lose weight, you shut that function off and eat just under your estimated BMR.

BMR (basal metabolic rate) is basically the number of calories you'd burn in a coma, without even any daily life activity included.

Eating under your BMR for any length of time would be a Bad Plan for virtually anyone of normal mobility, let alone one who's exercising, and really let alone anyone who's exercising a significant amount (hundreds of calories daily).

If someone wants to estimate their TDEE (total daily energy expenditure, which is not what MFP estimates), and eat a sensible amount under that, that's fine. That averages in planned exercise. That approach gives a person a consistent calorie goal each day . . . but can lead to slow or no loss if the anticipated exercise doesn't happen.

MFP estimates NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis), which is the combination of BMR, daily life activity ( calories burned during work, chores, non-exercise hobbies, and TEF (thermic effect of food, the amount of energy it takes to metabolize what we eat (and quite a small number)). It then substracts a weight-loss calorie amount (deficit) from that number. We're expected to add back exercise to keep that same deficit, learning the useful life lesson that when we move more, we can/should eat more; but if we move less, we need to eat less if we want to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

For people who get their calorie goal from MFP:

* Someone whose weight loss rate is set to a very slow rate for their current size, who is doing very minor exercise (in calorie terms), is probably fine letting that exercise increase their deficit.

* Someone who is pursuing an aggressive loss rate, and exercising a good lot (hundreds of calories), could be taking a very significant health risk if they ate back zero exercise calories.

* Someone in between those extremes? It's a cr*pshoot.

Losing weight too slowly is frustrating. Losing weight too fast is a health risk. A person can't always tell what "too fast" is, until they experience consequences (and I don't mean hunger). It's a question of how far a person wants to go in the "you bet your health" gamble.

rodnichols69 wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

MFP is designed for you to eat back the calories gained through exercise. Just make sure your estimates for calorie burn are reasonable.

Or, if your goal is to lose weight, you shut that function off and eat just under your estimated BMR.

Your BMR is the calories you burn merely existing...even without exercise, we do more than merely exist.

Your MFP calorie target already includes your weight loss deficit from your NEAT without any exercise. Exercise is unaccounted for activity in your activity level...common sense would dictate that activity should be accounted for even when trying to lose weight because you could and most probably would create too large of a calorie deficit which has health ramifications as well as compromised fitness performance and recovery.

MFP will give me a 1900 calorie deficit to lose about 1 Lb per week...so MFP is estimating my non exercise maintenance to be around 2400 calories. If I go on a 30 mile road ride (not unusual) I'll burn in the neighborhood of 1,000 calories. If I didn't account for that activity and just ate 1900 calories, my net intake would be 900ish calories...basically the same as just eating 900 calories. In what world would that sound like a remotely healthy thing?

My BMR is in the neighborhood of 1800ish calories...I exercise regularly and lose about 1 Lb per week eating closer to 2300-2500 calories per day...sometimes northward of 3,000 calories on days where I do a long ride or spend a few hours mountain biking in the foothills.