Understanding the relationship between calories consumed and burnt with exercises via myfitnesspal

The daily activity goal doesn't factor into your initial calorie goal.

You'll want to set your activity level to reflect your daily non-exercise activity, log your exercise, and eat those calories.

In the Setup screen, your selection of Lightly Active means that you're telling MFP that you typically walk however many thousand steps a day. (It's pre-programmed, but I don't know the numbers). From, that, in conjunction with your height, weight, gender and age, it calculates how much you should eat per day to lose at the rate you selected.

You then enter any deliberate exercise, such as your cardio, on top of your normal day. That will give you more calories to eat. BUT, if you've selected Lightly Active based on the fact that you do cardio / walks as exercise, but you actually spend your entire day sitting down, you're double counting those steps. If that's the case and you don't do the same walk every day, I'd suggest selecting Sedentary and then log whatever exercise you do, when you do it.

As Jane & Ann say, what you enter as the number of planned workouts has no bearing on the calculation of calories you can consume. In the Exercise tab, it compares how much exercise you've actually logged to what you said you'd do, but it doesn't impact your calories allocation.

Re your comment "From that info I get a daily maximum calorific value of about 1700 Anything above that no weight loss", that's not true. 1700 (or pretty close to it) is what you should be eating. MFP will have calculated your maintenance calories based on your setup info. It then deducts x number of calories, depending on the rate loss that you selected. If you selected 1kg (2lbs) per week, it'll have deducted 1000 calories and if you selected 0.5kg (1 lb), it'll have deducted 500 calories. You can eat up to 500 / 1000 calories more than 1700, but your weight loss rate will be slower.

Donmaico wrote: »

OK sorry to take so long to reply (I have been rather busy) but thank you all for your very helpful replies
I think I understand now but please correct me if I am wrong so.
My stats are I am 67 years old , 1.73 mtrs high, weight 87.4 Kgms . I am also a lightly active man
I am endevouring to walk ( sometimes cycle) 7 days a week for, on average, 90 minutes per day, with some exercises thrown in ( squats, elbow planks etc) . My goal is to each a weight of about 78 kilos by losing 0.5kilos per week .Using that info MFP has given me daily target of 1710 calories. From my understanding I can add the extra daily calories i have burnt through walking to that figure and still lose that 0.5 kilos a week or consume fewer calories and maybe lose a little more.
This week I have walked 30 kms over a period of 3 days taking 6.75 hours in total .That averages at 10Kms and 2.25 hours each day which means a speed of 4.44 kms per hour or 13.35 minutes for every Km. I have no idea how that might translate into calories burnt per hour but I used Verywellfit website and according to their estimate based on slow walking I am burning about 274 calories per hours, which means for each day I have averaged about 616.5 calories which is then added to my daily total of calories which I can consume.

I removed the last part about sugars and such to avoid too much derailing In terms of alcohol make sure that you account for your bottles in your caloric totals... they don't come free. Protein is fairly optional. If your protein is not crowding out useful nutrients that you could be getting, for example, from vegetables and fruits that you neglect, and if you have no known or unknown kidney issues... well then, there are no hard limits.

Mechanically, there is a bit of a small issue/grey area/caution that the exercise you eat back should be OVER what your activity level already includes. So.

--If you're EXTREMELY sedentary and not moving around all day before going for your 90 minute walk... then you might be missing the sedentary threshold calories. This is hard to pull. But I know I can if I don't go out of the house all day!

--Your walk sounds like a moderate walk depending on terrain. Generally walks that achieve 100 steps a minute or so qualify in that regard. In any case it is a bit faster than 4 km an hour, which makes it easily fall at the MET 3.0 level given by a 2.5 mph walk on level ground

--which neatly takes us over to the net calorie concept. A lot of these estimates are based on simple math. MFP is already giving you 1.25x BMR calories for the time of your exercise (you are assigned these for the simple yet remarkable feet of continuing to live! Simplifying a bit, 3.0 MET is equivalent to 3.0x BMR, which means that your net calories over what MFP has already assigned to the time slot is about 1.75xBMR. Which is just about 58.33%.

You will note that often people suggest that people eat HALF the exercise back and re-evaluate their percentage based on actual weight level changes over time. Given that most people log somewhat approximately and a figure such as only 58.33% of the stated exercise figure being net calories... I think you can see where the 50% comes from.

--the following calculator may be of use to you if you continue to do things manually: https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

--personally I've found that with most of my exercise being walking, I benefited from connecting a fitbit to MFP. I note that you could even use a smartphone and count steps using that. This would give you a few fewer calories. Exercise calories from a tracker or smartphone that tracks movement, I would eat pretty much all of them until and unless they were proven to be an over-estimate.

Donmaico wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

Donmaico wrote: »

My biggest downfall is sugar , in fact any simple carb, as it just seems to shoot my weight up.

Any carb (simple or complex) will tend to replenish your glycogen stores (a good thing, especially if you are exercising) but that glycogen (a form of glucose) is stored with three or four times as much water.

That's why it can seem that carbs can have a disproportionate effect on your weight out of line with your calorie balance - but it's water weight and not fat gain. Not really a "downfall" - just a perfectly normal water weight fluctuation which will continue to happen when you get to goal weight too. It's one of the reasons your weight trend matters but daily fluctuations need to be accepted and ignored.

Protein intake over an extended period of time is far more important than day to day variations. Many people regard protein as a minimum goal not a precise goal to increase dietary flexibility.

I had some fears over insulin resistance as well but I am guessing that as I exercise and lose weight ( I have lost 18 kilos so far) than will become less of a problem. MY FT tells me not to worry about weight fluctuations on daily basis as well so long as the curve is downward although he does seem to be far more concerned about my protein intake .When I was going to a gym he suggested it needed to be between 132 - 190 gms a day.Now it's 120 gms due to lack of weights exercises

I feel like we've collectively left things a little confusing, so I'll go back to basics, at the risk of clarifying what was already clear to you:

* For weight loss purposes, if you hit your calorie goal, you should lose weight at the expected rate (subject to variation based on the fact that a calculator (like MFP, others, or even a fitness tracker) are just giving you a statistical estimate. If you're close to average, it'll be close to right.

* Once you are sticking to that calorie goal, exactly how/what/when you eat will not materially affect your fat loss rate. More protein won't change that, more sugar won't change that, etc. as long as calories are at the right level. (More sugar or other carbs than your normal amount will affect water weight, as previously explained, but it's not fat - so really, why care? ).

* Restating others: If strength or muscle mass (maintaining it or increasing it) are important to you - as I personally think they should be to everyone! - then getting a sensible minimum of protein on the majority of days is a Really Good Plan. Over that protein goal (within calories, for weight loss) is fine. Under that goal, occasionally but not usually, is also fine.

How much protein is sensible? It depends on your goals and circumstances. I personally like 0.6-0.8g per pound of healthy goal weight (roughly equivalent to 0.8-1g per pound of lean body mass, for most people). Translated into your goal weight, that would be 103-137g per day, minimum. But I've set that 0.6-0.8g/lb range based on my goals/characteristics. If you want to learn more, this is a good explanation from a generally well-regarded, research-based source, and it links a calculator based on that research that will let you get recommendations based on your goals/characteristics:

https://examine.com/nutrition/how-much-protein-do-you-need/

Now, beyond the (possibly unnecessary) clarification piece:

You are 67 years old, 1.73m tall (5'8", for other USA-ians like me), current weight 87.4 kg (about 192 pounds). That puts your current body mass index (BMI) at 29.2, which (in a strict but statistical definition) is very near the top of the overweight range (below obese). Your goal is to each a weight of about 78 kilos (171-172 pounds) by losing 0.5kilos (1.1 pounds) per week. That would be a BMI of 26.1, statistically near the bottom of the overweight range. (That's not a criticism: The health stats for that weight, especially for men, don't signal major health risks.)

You say you're lightly active, but you're undertaking what most (of any age) would consider fairly significant amounts of exercise, and based on your self-report of "legs screaming", I'd infer that that's relatively new for you.

If your MFP profile is set up correctly, your activity level there should be based on normal daily life before exercise, and you should eat an accurate estimate of exercise calories on top of the goal MFP gives you, to lose that estimated 0.5kg per week. (Most of us would advise you to monitor for 4-6 weeks, and adjust for individual variation from the statistical estimates based on your actual loss/log data at that point.)

Others have said useful things about exercise calorie estimates, so I won't repeat those.

I will say this: At your current weight and age, with a significantly increased exercise load, I think it would be less than ideal to leave lots of (accurately estimated) exercise calories uneaten, in an effort to lose fat faster. Half a kilo a week is already a reasonable, somewhat ambitious rate for your current size (not saying it's extreme, taken alone).

Here's the thing: Any calorie deficit is a physical stress. The bigger the deficit, the greater the stress. Your self-challenging exercise program is also a physical stress. So, you've stacked two significant stressors. I think you'd likely be better off not trying to speed up the weight loss (create a bigger calorie deficit via uneaten accurate exercise calories), beyond that basic 0.5kg goal.

I mentioned age, so I'll expand on that. I'm 64. I'm a great believer in the idea that we shouldn't stop challenging ourselves "because we're old", so I applaud what you're doing. I won't speak for you directly, but will say that as I age, I can do pretty much anything I ever could, even develop new strength and fitness . . . but that if I overdo, there's a higher cost and a longer recovery than there used to be when I was substantially younger, and if that recovery requires me to cut back on exercise in some way, I de-train faster than I used to. I've read others say the same, though I'm not saying it's universal.

But it's on that basis that I'm suggesting keeping cumulative physical stress (calorie deficit, exercise challenges) in a moderate rather than extreme range. For me, managing those stressors yields better total cumulative results over time, as compared with a cycle of aggressive loss/exercise, fatigue/underperformance, recovery/de-training, then getting back on the merry-go-round.

Best wishes!