Adjusted calories or no??

You should not eat back exercise calories if you are trying to lose weight. As already stated earlier, it can be very inaccurate and potentially derail your weight loss goals (assuming that is your goal). The easiest technique, and one I used to drop 40 lbs, is to calculate your TDEE. Once you have that calorie number knock off 10% and eat only those calories. TDEE takes your activity into account, so you won't be eating back exercise calories. Here are the links to a couple decent TDEE online calculators - https://www.damnripped.com/tdee-calculator/ & https://legionathletics.com/tdee-calculator/. The thing to understand is this will get you into the ballpark. After several weeks you will be able to zero in on the calorie deficit that provides your weight loss goals. For me I was trying to lose a 1 lb a week. One pound of fat equals 3500 calories. During my initial weeks into a calorie deficit I was only losing a half a pound so I knew I had to knock off another 1750 calories/week (250 a day). It took me about a month to really nail down my TDEE. Moreover, as you get leaner and/or more active your TDEE will increase, so you have to continually adjust your calories, or you may find yourself in a very aggressive deficit, which can be extremely difficult to sustain. For reference, I do a LOT of cardio. I cycle approximately 500-600 miles a month and also mix in steel mace and Indian club functional workouts. I've been following the TDEE method for almost two years now. It helped me drop 40 lbs initially, and now over the last 16 months it has helped me maintain my current weight and 11% body fat.

SharpWellbeing wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

SharpWellbeing wrote: »

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

simonthompson6516 wrote: »

oct232010 wrote: »

Is it better to have the calorie adjuster on or off if you're doing cardio every day??

I would suggest you have it off. You shouldn't eat the calories back from any form of exercise especially if your goal is weight loss. Burning calories has so many variables it's impossible to get an accurate amount of calories burned via exercise and therefore you run the risk of over eating and then wondering why you are not losing weight.

Don't count it but if you find yourself slightly hungry thanks to the exercise then maybe adjust the calories eaten instead, i.e. give yourself an extra 100 calories on exercise day.

Good luck.

I can guarantee that an estimate of zero calories burned from exercise is not accurate. Therefore you run the risk of undereating and wondering why your workouts are suffering, why you're always tired, why you're irritable, why you catch every cold and flu that's going around, why, eventually, you start losing your hair ...

Edited to add missing word.

I can guarantee I didn't say you burn zero calories so please don't put words into my mouth.

If the person has used an online calculator to determine calories part of that calculator is to determine activity level, if you then add back in an estimated level of calories that you think you've burned because of inaccurate readings on a watch or phone then you're likely over eating.

Do you know much about energy expenditure and the amount of individual variables involved? If you do then you'll know that there is no accurate way of determining expenditure, hell, it isn't even accurate to determine calorific requirements, it's all based on equations and estimations but we have a better understanding of requirements then we do of expenditure.

As I also quite CLEARLY stated in my original post. If you find yourself hungry then you work out the calories around it, you don't work to an imaginary figure because a watch/phone/device says you've burned x number of calories so you can now eat them back.

MFP's activity level determination does NOT include exercise which is why with MFP you get additional calories to account for that activity...which is why you end up undereating if you don't account for some measure of those calories.

Some other online calculators are TDEE calculators and DO include exercise...in which case you wouldn't want to eat additional calories...they are already accounted for with a TDEE calculator.

That said, it's 6 of 1...you either account for them with MFP by eating more or you account for exercise with TDEE by having a higher starting number.

I'd wager most people just use MFP to calculate their calorie targets...which isn't TDEE...MFP is a NEAT method calculator where your activity level is just based on your day to day hum drum...ie, me sitting at my desk job. I have a 25 mile ride scheduled for later this afternoon...I would need to account for that activity somewhere. If I'm set to sedentary on MFP per my desk job and then go ride 25 miles, I'm not sedentary and thus eat an estimate of my energy expenditure to account for that additional activity.

I guess it depends on your goal though. If you’re overweight and dieting then exercise can be there to support you in achieving your goal (as well as other health benefits), it helps create a bigger deficit.

If you’re already on a high deficit and it would leave you short of energy then yeah sure by all means.

It’s goal dependent, person dependent and highly dependent on the calculator being a basic start point only as it’s way too variable to be accurate.

The amount of clients I have had come to me and a simple change of not having there steps linked into their MyFitnessPal and suddenly they start noticing a difference in weeks is unbelievable.

A large amount of people think they’re in a deficit when they’re not and that is unfortunately thanks to taking estimations, calculations and equations as red.

I was overweight...I lost 40 Lbs almost 8 years ago using MFP as designed. I selected a rate of 1 Lb per week and sedentary as I have a desk job. I ate back an estimate of my exercise calories just as this tool is designed and what do you know...on average I lost at a rate of about 1 Lb per week just as I had intended and I've kept it off for 7.5 years.

I started training for a sprint triathlon while I was losing weight...that sure as *kitten* doesn't make me sedentary even if I was working a desk job. That was not accounted for in my activity level as I was using MFP as designed (desk job sedentary)...so you think I shouldn't account for triathlon training because I wanted to lose weight? Have you ever done brick work?

oct232010 wrote: »

Ok so what I'm getting from all of these great posts , is to, set my mfp to normal everyday tasks. Which for me is sitting ata desk all day. Then set my adjustment to ON. My watch is synced to mfp, so it will calculate any deliberate excersice I do and then sync it to mfp, adjusting my calorie intake. That calorie intake still reflects the deficit that mfp calculated for me. So in turn it is work ing like the TDEE method. So what I'm doing is the right way to do it.

Precisely.

And then keep an eye on your actual weight trend over the next 6 weeks or so (a weight trending app is handy, such as Libra or Happyscale). If you're losing less quickly than the rate you selected, eat a bit less, or if you're losing more quickly than intended, you can eat a bit more.

snuff15ee wrote: »

You should not eat back exercise calories if you are trying to lose weight. As already stated earlier, it can be very inaccurate and potentially derail your weight loss goals (assuming that is your goal). The easiest technique, and one I used to drop 40 lbs, is to calculate your TDEE. Once you have that calorie number knock off 10% and eat only those calories. TDEE takes your activity into account, so you won't be eating back exercise calories. Here are the links to a couple decent TDEE online calculators - https://www.damnripped.com/tdee-calculator/ & https://legionathletics.com/tdee-calculator/. The thing to understand is this will get you into the ballpark. After several weeks you will be able to zero in on the calorie deficit that provides your weight loss goals. For me I was trying to lose a 1 lb a week. One pound of fat equals 3500 calories. During my initial weeks into a calorie deficit I was only losing a half a pound so I knew I had to knock off another 1750 calories/week (250 a day). It took me about a month to really nail down my TDEE. Moreover, as you get leaner and/or more active your TDEE will increase, so you have to continually adjust your calories, or you may find yourself in a very aggressive deficit, which can be extremely difficult to sustain. For reference, I do a LOT of cardio. I cycle approximately 500-600 miles a month and also mix in steel mace and Indian club functional workouts. I've been following the TDEE method for almost two years now. It helped me drop 40 lbs initially, and now over the last 16 months it has helped me maintain my current weight and 11% body fat.

Those are the least accurate TDEE calculators I've ever tried, as far as I can recall. (Anytime someone links one, I like to try them, because for some reason I seem to be a bit of a calorie needs outlier.) I'm totally LOL-ing that you'd recommend one whose Exercise Level descriptors are things like "Light - Goofing Around" and "Difficult - Zero Gossip". Really helpful, that. 😆

Usually, TDEE calculators are a bit more accurate estimates for me than MFP's NEAT calculator. Both of the ones you linked are howlingly far off, for me. (Based on 5+ years of logging experience, 1 year losing from obese to healthy weight, maintaining since, daily life sedentary, athletically active.)

Nonetheless, I prefer NEAT method (estimate calories based on daily life, add exercise separately) because my exercise is quite variable, and seasonal/weather-dependent also. Of course, one has to adjust based on experience if needed, whether using NEAT or TDEE methods.

Back to these calculators:

It's nice that DR separates daily life from exercise level. Those exercise level descriptors, though! 😆

Legion, only 5 activity levels, and only exercise (not daily life) mentioned? No, thanks. The average bricklayer's apprentice burns more calories by far than the average reference librarian, before we consider their exercise schedules.

Among online calculators, for TDEE method, I usually suggest Sailrabbit (https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/), but it, too, has limitations. The pluses are more activity levels (not separate for daily/exercise though), multiple research-based formulas to compare or average, and (like one of the two you suggest) ability to input body fat percent (which most people don't know, and BIA scales aren't a great source, but still).

There's a spreadsheet that's passed around here from one of the expert MFP-ers, but I can never remember the link, and I'm not going to ask him again on behalf of a PP who Already Knows.

OP says "cardio every day" so either TDEE method or NEAT method can be workable; sometimes people prefer one over the other for simple logistics - that's all good, whatever works best. Also, OP sound a bit new to this, so getting those first few weeks of experiential data will have a bigger positive impact on progress than trying to get the NEAT or TDEE estimate exactly exact. It IS just an estimate, either way, as is the fitness tracker; and some methods will work better than others for specific individuals. Experience provides sound info, if tracking is accurate. (If someone's a data geek, it's easy enough to compare results to all three methods - NEAT, TDEE, tracker - no matter which is being used as control to start.)

OP, if your exercise calories from daily cardio aren't huge (not above low hundreds), your requested loss rate is low (say half a percent of body weight a week or less), you don't have other huge sources of stress in your life besides calorie deficit (and new exercise, if it's new), and you're otherwise healthy (and maybe not tooooo old **), then it's probably OK to NOT eat back the exercise calories for a 4-6 week trial period, as long as you don't experience otherwise unexplained fatigue or weakness.

Then, if you're losing too fast in practice, adjust your intake, either base allowance or exercise calorie handling. (It might be OK to lose more than half a percent weekly when you adjust, if you have quite a bit to lose, or a health-threatening reason to lose it, but that's a whole other discussion. It's certainly OK to lose slower, to increase sustainability, or to improve athletic performance or something like that.)

If those conditions are NOT all true for you, I'd suggest eating some exercise calories whether by averaging them in (TDEE method) or adding them on (NEAT method). I'm conservative about health risks: That's the summary rationale for that advice.

** This is not a dis, older people: I'll be 65 next week. Despite being very active and healthy, my resilience isn't what it was when I was 20, so I consider it sensible to avoid health risks that I might take if I were still quite young.