Don’t want to subtract workout calories
Replies
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You know - the MFP food database has a lot of inaccuracies in it.
I think I'll log some base calories that probably aren't right, but then everything extra as 0 since I don't trust them anyway.12 -
Silentpadna wrote: »tcunbeliever wrote: »Given that MFP does allow you to set your own calorie goals, which you can set based on TDEE if you like, then you can't just assume that everyone using MFP should always eat back their calories and that if they don't they are creating too large of a deficit.
I like to key in 1 for my calorie burn, no matter what MFP says because like any other user entered data, some of the calculated calorie burns are way higher than realistic for someone my size.
Exactly what I'm getting at.
Yes but that's not exactly what you are saying.
BTW, if you use TDEE - Deficit (assuming you are accounting for activity generally closely, guess what? You are eating back your exercise calories.
I'm hitting "like"...like a hundred more times in my head.7 -
Exactly what I'm getting at.
No you're not. You're making a blanket statement to not eat calories back and posting memes and links to articles that say the same. You are under the assumption that the calories in MFP are TDEE. Unless you set your diary to be TDEE, it is not. If you use the automatic set up in MFP to determine your calories, it will give you a calorie count to reach your goals assuming you do not exercise at all. This means you need to eat additional calories to ensure you are getting proper nutrition and prevent muscle loss.
In my case, when I am training for the Highland Games or training for a long run race, I can eat about 2000 total calories per day and still lose weight because of the intensity of my work outs. If I don't work out at all, I need to keep my calories at about 1450 calories per day to have weight loss. MFP gives me 1447 which is pretty much exactly where it should be. During training, I eat back my calories and still reach my goals. When I take a break from training or am not feeling well, I eat only the calories from MFP. This is exactly the way MFP should work. The danger in putting the higher calorie count in and eating that every day without adjusting it for breaks is overeating and gaining weight.
*Edited because of a spelling error.*9 -
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ok, I read down this and still didn't get an answer. HOW can I stop MFP from adding bk my exercise calories? The premise is fine, but I don't want it to do it. I LOVE seeing how many calories I burned, but do NOT want it deducted from my daily limit. I'm trying to lose, not maintain. Please don't tell me it's a good thing and why, just tell me how I can stop it w/o disconnecting my fitbit.
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ok, I read down this and still didn't get an answer. HOW can I stop MFP from adding bk my exercise calories? The premise is fine, but I don't want it to do it. I LOVE seeing how many calories I burned, but do NOT want it deducted from my daily limit. I'm trying to lose, not maintain. Please don't tell me it's a good thing and why, just tell me how I can stop it w/o disconnecting my fitbit.
There were a couple of answers on the first page. I can't vouch as to whether they worked then or now because I've never wanted to do that. It sounds like a benefit of Premium is being able to turn off this feature, so you could pay for Premium. If you are manually entering your exercise, you at least used to be able to change the calorie burn, so you could change it to 1 calorie. I don't think you can change your Fitbit adjustment though. You could always open a Help desk ticket and see if there is a free way to make the change.1 -
ok, I read down this and still didn't get an answer. HOW can I stop MFP from adding bk my exercise calories? The premise is fine, but I don't want it to do it. I LOVE seeing how many calories I burned, but do NOT want it deducted from my daily limit. I'm trying to lose, not maintain. Please don't tell me it's a good thing and why, just tell me how I can stop it w/o disconnecting my fitbit.
The bolded means you don't actually understand how it works.
MFP has a deficit built into your eating goal whether you burn base calories it estimated, or you exercised and burned more.
Same deficit.
You would NOT be eating at maintenance.
By premium and tell it not to adjust your eating goal based on workouts added.6 -
You can go to goals, then calories and override the calorie suggestion to enter in your desired calorie goal. You don’t need the premium version to do this.
That’s what I’ve done since I started two years ago.
At the suggestion of my RD, I’ve consistently aimed for a flat calorie goal above the one suggested by MFP, regardless of additional exercise and that’s the number I monitor.
My suggested maintenance calories are 2170. My daily personal goal is 2300, however, I’ve begun intentionally buffering in a high cal day every week or two. I realistically average 2700 per day because otherwise I’d drop below maintenance. So 2300’ish per day with an occasional Whoopee It’s Cookies! or Mexican day.
Really, MFP is simply a tool to use however it works best for you. You have to find the system that does.
But good lord, if I didn’t eat back any exercise calories, I’d be dangerously malnourished. And I don’t think I’m more active than a lot of users here.
BTW, 58 female, SW222 CW 131.2 -
This is a guy who probably was complaining about why we need to learn math if we're never going to use it.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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I'm sure I have way more experience with this than you do and have actually helped more people lose weight correctly. The info you post is inaccurate. Just want to put that out there whether you care or not.
@slimdownt
Please stop posting this.
It's not just inaccurate and irresponsible - it's verging on the stupid.
1) A lot of tools or calculations give perfectly reasonable estimates. Not all estimates are high.
2) Highly unlikely any estimate is so inaccurate it could switch someone from a deficit to a surplus. For someone set to lose 1lb/week the estimate would have to be out by 500+ calories!
There's a whole lot of new users who understate their activity setting, select an inappropriately fast rate of loss and you are compounding that by suggesting people don't account for a perfectly valid energy need of their body.
If you don't like accounting for exercise expenditure this way at least promote a sensible alternative such as using a TDEE calculator.
I'll continue to lose weight while others gain not a problem. Have a good day.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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ok, I read down this and still didn't get an answer. HOW can I stop MFP from adding bk my exercise calories? The premise is fine, but I don't want it to do it. I LOVE seeing how many calories I burned, but do NOT want it deducted from my daily limit. I'm trying to lose, not maintain. Please don't tell me it's a good thing and why, just tell me how I can stop it w/o disconnecting my fitbit.
So I have no idea why you would think that if makes any difference whether you want to lose or maintain???
Weight loss is accomplished by eating in a deficit. So, if you want to lose weight and entered your stats into MFP and then entered how much you want to lose, it sets up a deficit for you. Then eat within that calorie range and you will lose weight.
Exercise is for health, and sure, you can bump up the deficit a little bit. Simply don’t eat all of your exercise calories back and you are still eating in a deficit. Again, not sure what you mean when you say you don’t want it deducted because you’re trying to lose and not maintain??? I deduct my exercise calories and still lose weight almost every week.... Again, you can choose to eat those calories back, or some of them or none of them, and you’ll still lose weight as long as you are within a deficit.2 -
Overwrite it with zero and adjust your daily goal higher to account for average daily burn.
Or adjust your daily burn to include the exercise calorie average and then just dont log exercise.0 -
@slimdownt
Please stop posting this.
It's not just inaccurate and irresponsible - it's verging on the stupid.
1) A lot of tools or calculations give perfectly reasonable estimates. Not all estimates are high.
2) Highly unlikely any estimate is so inaccurate it could switch someone from a deficit to a surplus. For someone set to lose 1lb/week the estimate would have to be out by 500+ calories!
There's a whole lot of new users who understate their activity setting, select an inappropriately fast rate of loss and you are compounding that by suggesting people don't account for a perfectly valid energy need of their body.
If you don't like accounting for exercise expenditure this way at least promote a sensible alternative such as using a TDEE calculator.
I'll continue to lose weight while others gain not a problem. Have a good day.
And I will eat back my calories, continue to lose, and not destroy me heart and muscles in the process, nor lose my hair, nails, skin and happiness.5 -
This is a guy who probably was complaining about why we need to learn math if we're never going to use it.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
I love this comment so much!3 -
Apparently, because I'm using the free version of MFP, the only way to disable this action of deducting burned-calories at the gym, is to unlink my fitness device (Garmin watch). Then it doesn't deduct the wildly inaccurate burned-calorie stats.
When my device was linked, I used the elliptical at the gym for 30 minutes, and the MFP app said I burned about 800 calories, and it deducted it from the total. WOW! Celebrate with two Big Macs and a milkshake!
Those numbers are obviously wrong.
I liked syncing my fitness watch with MFP app, as an incentive, but I still wouldn't want to deduct these burned calories from my daily calorie intake, even if the numbers were accurate.
So, guess I 'll use two apps: my Garmin app at the gym (which is fairly accurate), and MFP app, which excels in tracking daily food calories.
I could solve this by paying for the premium version of MFP, but I just can't afford it right now.0 -
deadguyintheweeds wrote: »Apparently, because I'm using the free version of MFP, the only way to disable this action of deducting burned-calories at the gym, is to unlink my fitness device (Garmin watch). Then it doesn't deduct the wildly inaccurate burned-calorie stats.
When my device was linked, I used the elliptical at the gym for 30 minutes, and the MFP app said I burned about 800 calories, and it deducted it from the total. WOW! Celebrate with two Big Macs and a milkshake!
Those numbers are obviously wrong.
I liked syncing my fitness watch with MFP app, as an incentive, but I still wouldn't want to deduct these burned calories from my daily calorie intake, even if the numbers were accurate.
So, guess I 'll use two apps: my Garmin app at the gym (which is fairly accurate), and MFP app, which excels in tracking daily food calories.
I could solve this by paying for the premium version of MFP, but I just can't afford it right now.
Two big macs and a small vanilla shake come in at 1600 Cal or more.
Since you burned 800 Cal and went on to eat at least 1600 you show the same understanding, and will get just as reasonable of a result, as you will get by continuously not accounting for your ACCURATE exercise burns.
Did you actually read through the thread before commenting?2 -
deadguyintheweeds wrote: »Apparently, because I'm using the free version of MFP, the only way to disable this action of deducting burned-calories at the gym, is to unlink my fitness device (Garmin watch). Then it doesn't deduct the wildly inaccurate burned-calorie stats.
When my device was linked, I used the elliptical at the gym for 30 minutes, and the MFP app said I burned about 800 calories, and it deducted it from the total. WOW! Celebrate with two Big Macs and a milkshake!
Those numbers are obviously wrong.
I liked syncing my fitness watch with MFP app, as an incentive, but I still wouldn't want to deduct these burned calories from my daily calorie intake, even if the numbers were accurate.
So, guess I 'll use two apps: my Garmin app at the gym (which is fairly accurate), and MFP app, which excels in tracking daily food calories.
I could solve this by paying for the premium version of MFP, but I just can't afford it right now.
If the 800 was the synch from Garmin, and the 800 calories the net result at the end of the day, it's a reconciliation of all day activity between what Garmin estimated based on what it "saw", and what MFP estimated based on your activity level setting . . . not just the calories from the exercise.
I don't synch my Garmin to MFP because it underestimates my all-day calorie burn rather dramatically (as does MFP). Go figure. I do eat every delicious exercise calorie, though, after estimating them carefully - I think exercise calories taste the best. 😉 That worked fine all through loss from obese to a healthy weight, and for 6+ years of maintaining a healthy weight since . . . after setting my base calorie goal based on my initial personal calorie/weight tracking experience.4 -
deadguyintheweeds wrote: »Apparently, because I'm using the free version of MFP, the only way to disable this action of deducting burned-calories at the gym, is to unlink my fitness device (Garmin watch). Then it doesn't deduct the wildly inaccurate burned-calorie stats.
When my device was linked, I used the elliptical at the gym for 30 minutes, and the MFP app said I burned about 800 calories, and it deducted it from the total. WOW! Celebrate with two Big Macs and a milkshake!
Those numbers are obviously wrong.
I liked syncing my fitness watch with MFP app, as an incentive, but I still wouldn't want to deduct these burned calories from my daily calorie intake, even if the numbers were accurate.
So, guess I 'll use two apps: my Garmin app at the gym (which is fairly accurate), and MFP app, which excels in tracking daily food calories.
I could solve this by paying for the premium version of MFP, but I just can't afford it right now.
If the 800 was the synch from Garmin, and the 800 calories the net result at the end of the day, it's a reconciliation of all day activity between what Garmin estimated based on what it "saw", and what MFP estimated based on your activity level setting . . . not just the calories from the exercise.
I don't synch my Garmin to MFP because it underestimates my all-day calorie burn rather dramatically (as does MFP). Go figure. I do eat every delicious exercise calorie, though, after estimating them carefully - I think exercise calories taste the best. 😉 That worked fine all through loss from obese to a healthy weight, and for 6+ years of maintaining a healthy weight since . . . after setting my base calorie goal based on my initial personal calorie/weight tracking experience.
6 years. Congrats!
I lost 85lbs about 4 years ago, but during the pandemic lockdown, I gained back 25 lbs ;(
so, I'm trying to fix that. Resisting a large pizza is hard, but I'm confident I can do it.
All the best!
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