Eating active calories

ggaj1234
ggaj1234 Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Do you stay in your calories given or eat all calories including activity calories earned? Can't seem to lose any more. On weight watchers an hit a plateau.
HELP!

Replies

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,845 Member
    I've always eaten ALL of the delicious extra calories my fitness tracker gave me. But experience has told me that the calorie burns are pretty accurate for me since I lost weight as intended.

    So the answer for you will depend on how accurate you think the calorie burns are. Are you using a step tracker or fitness tracker? What calorie adjustment are you getting and for what daily activity/exercise?
    What are your stats and weight loss goal?
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    ggaj1234 wrote: »
    On weight watchers an hit a plateau.
    HELP!

    there's the problem.

    yes, you should be eating back at least some of them, that's the way MFP is designed. WW however does its own weird point thing that is NOT effective at tracking calories. Buy a food scale, ditch WW, and learn how to accurately weigh and log your food.

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  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    I have no idea how Weight Watchers currently handles exercise, but MFP is designed for you to eat back the calories you burn through intentional exercise. Your daily calorie goal from MFP is based on your daily non-exercise activity, so if you wind up using more calories due to exercise, it just makes sense to take that into account.

    However, if you're currently doing this and not seeing loss over a significant period of time (say, a few weeks), that means that you've probably got something off in your calculations. Either your calorie goal is too high (maybe because you're overestimating the amount of calories burnt through exercise) or your estimate of calories in is off (maybe you're using measuring cups to measure food or choosing incorrect database entries). If it's truly been a few weeks, you'll want to make some adjustments to get into a calorie deficit.
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
    Personally, I eat an average of about half of my exercise calories. Some days I eat all of them, some days I don't feel hungry and I don't eat any of them, it works out to about half in the long run.
  • jediguitarist
    jediguitarist Posts: 73 Member
    Good insights. One thing I noticed is that most people over-estimate their activity levels when setting up MyFitnessPal or other food trackers. Before taking into consideration the intentional exercise, a full time office worker at a desk would be considered sedentary while a full time cashier standing might still be sedentary but burns more calories overall. This is in contrast to a full time lawn/landscaper who would be very active daily.

    It seems like MFP uses activity levels as part of it's algorithm but includes exercise into it. I would think that throws off the BMR. Sedentary assumes no (intentional) exercise. The issue I see with that is a mail carrier that walks a route and doesn't exercise could be considered sedentary even though they are active daily.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,845 Member
    edited February 2021
    jediguitarist wrote: »

    It seems like MFP uses activity levels as part of it's algorithm but includes exercise into it. I would think that throws off the BMR. Sedentary assumes no (intentional) exercise. The issue I see with that is a mail carrier that walks a route and doesn't exercise could be considered sedentary even though they are active daily.

    MFP's activity levels do not include intentional exercise, they only include daily activity. But contrary to their descriptions of the activity levels, not only a person's job should be taken into account, but also other daily tasks such as taking care of children, chores, hobbies...
    Intentional exercise should be logged separately and the calories burned eaten back (if the number is sensible).
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    ggaj1234 wrote: »
    Do you stay in your calories given or eat all calories including activity calories earned? Can't seem to lose any more. On weight watchers an hit a plateau.
    HELP!

    First of all, how are you defining a plateau? Has it been at least 6 weeks?

    Because you are doing WW I am wondering if the problem is the "free" foods. Might behoove you to switch to logging here at MFP. If you find the rest of WW helpful, do stay with it. I know I could eat the heck out of all those "free" foods ;)
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    jediguitarist wrote: »
    Good insights. One thing I noticed is that most people over-estimate their activity levels when setting up MyFitnessPal or other food trackers. Before taking into consideration the intentional exercise, a full time office worker at a desk would be considered sedentary while a full time cashier standing might still be sedentary but burns more calories overall. This is in contrast to a full time lawn/landscaper who would be very active daily.

    It seems like MFP uses activity levels as part of it's algorithm but includes exercise into it. I would think that throws off the BMR. Sedentary assumes no (intentional) exercise. The issue I see with that is a mail carrier that walks a route and doesn't exercise could be considered sedentary even though they are active daily.

    It's actually the opposite of what you're saying. MFP's activity level is meant to be your activity level BEFORE any intentional exercise. So a mail carrier, who has an active job, would be choosing at least "active" as an activity level. If she then went home and did exercise on top of that, she'd log that exercise. But she'd be getting the calories for her active lifestyle "up front" daily.

    So in MFP terms you could have someone "active" who never does intentional exercise (say, a daycare worker who runs around after kids all day but never does any intentional exercise) or someone who is "sedentary" who exercises daily (say, an office worker who runs five miles before work each day).

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