Calorie deficit question

Did you try putting your height, weight and activity level (normal daily life excluding exercise) in MFP and selecting the goal "lose 0.5lb per week"? This will give you your deficit.

The way MFP is designed, you should then eat back any additional exercise calories. As they can be over-estimated, some people start by eating back half or 75% to get an idea of accuracy.

You don't have to estimate your BMR yourself - this site does it for you when you complete your goal setup.
Wherever you read or heard you should calculate your deficit from that should be totally ignored as it's terrible advice unless you are hospitalised and being starved!

It will then take your estimated BMR (your base calories at total rest and a fasted state) and multiply that by the activity setting you choose. That's setting is to account for all your non-exercise daily life.
It's picking a rate of loss that gives you the goal number which represents your deficit, half a pound per week rate of loss will give you a 250cal daily deficit.

Exercise is estimated after the event (unlike TDEE calculators which try to estimate an average daily amount), which means your goal on here is only for a day with no purposeful exercise. Yes you should estimate and eat back exercise calories just like you would if you used a TDEE site or an all day tracker. Not eating them back means you are now increasing the deficit that you actually picked. Note that the exercise database here is just one source of exercise estimates and in many case depending on your exercise it's often not the best choice.

sflano1783 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

You don't have to estimate your BMR yourself - this site does it for you when you complete your goal setup.
Wherever you read or heard you should calculate your deficit from that should be totally ignored as it's terrible advice unless you are hospitalised and being starved!

It will then take your estimated BMR (your base calories at total rest and a fasted state) and multiply that by the activity setting you choose. That's setting is to account for all your non-exercise daily life.
It's picking a rate of loss that gives you the goal number which represents your deficit, half a pound per week rate of loss will give you a 250cal daily deficit.

Exercise is estimated after the event (unlike TDEE calculators which try to estimate an average daily amount), which means your goal on here is only for a day with no purposeful exercise. Yes you should estimate and eat back exercise calories just like you would if you used a TDEE site or an all day tracker. Not eating them back means you are now increasing the deficit that you actually picked. Note that the exercise database here is just one source of exercise estimates and in many case depending on your exercise it's often not the best choice.

Just a random question can I eat back my exercise calories for fat loss

If your calorie goal comes from MFP and you've set your goal to weight loss, then the intention is for you to eat your exercise calories back.

Can YOU do this? This will depend on how accurate your estimates of calories in and calories out are. But if you're estimating correctly, this should result in weight loss.

sflano1783 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

You don't have to estimate your BMR yourself - this site does it for you when you complete your goal setup.
Wherever you read or heard you should calculate your deficit from that should be totally ignored as it's terrible advice unless you are hospitalised and being starved!

It will then take your estimated BMR (your base calories at total rest and a fasted state) and multiply that by the activity setting you choose. That's setting is to account for all your non-exercise daily life.
It's picking a rate of loss that gives you the goal number which represents your deficit, half a pound per week rate of loss will give you a 250cal daily deficit.

Exercise is estimated after the event (unlike TDEE calculators which try to estimate an average daily amount), which means your goal on here is only for a day with no purposeful exercise. Yes you should estimate and eat back exercise calories just like you would if you used a TDEE site or an all day tracker. Not eating them back means you are now increasing the deficit that you actually picked. Note that the exercise database here is just one source of exercise estimates and in many case depending on your exercise it's often not the best choice.

Just a random question can I eat back my exercise calories for fat loss

As long as you're in deficit from your TDEE, yes.

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

khalikhoopri wrote: »

Hello,
I am planning my caloric intake but getting a bit confused. Somewhere it said that your calorie intake should be a deficit of your BMR (mine is round 1400 calories) But if your body fat is 10% above (mine is), use lean body mass to calculate your BMR (mine is coming to 1200 calories) and then do deficit from there (suggested 500 calories a day). Doing the later would put me way below 1200 calories (which us dangerous). So I am a bit confused here.

Also, do you count the calories from exercise as deficit and do you eat those calories?

I am trying to loose weight and plan to do bout 200-300 calories deficit a day! I an 5'5" and 195 lbs! 😑

Your deficit comes from your TDEE, not your BMR. Your BMR is the calories you burn merely existing...you would burn them in a coma just being alive. My BMR is around 1800 calories per day...but I do more than just exist and I'm not in a coma. I go about my day to day stuff which all requires energy (calories) and burns calories...I also exercise daily in some capacity.

Like I said...my BMR is around 1800...but my TDEE hovers around 3000 give or take...sometimes more, sometimes a little less depending on the day and the days activity and exercise. So I lose weight eating anything less than 3,000 calories per day. I typically lose around 1 Lb per week eating anywhere from 2300-2600 calories per day.

I no longer use the MFP method for which exercise is not accounted for in your activity level and is accounted for after the fact when you log it and get additional calories to "eat back"...I use the TDEE method which accounts for all of my daily activities in my activity level...both my day to day and my exercise. I prefer this method at this point because my exercise is pretty regular in regards to days, what I'm doing, and duration on any given day...in other words, my exercise is more or less consistent enough across the board to just account for it in my daily activity level.

Either way, you account for exercise somewhere. I do not use exercise to increase my deficit...I set a weight loss target and my calorie targets are commensurate with the rate of loss I selected...so there is no reason to further increase that deficit with exercise. To that end, depending on what your deficit already is with your calorie target alone, increasing it further with exercise can be unhealthy as too large a deficit can lead to health complications down the road...hair loss...brittle nails...loss of menstrual cycle, etc...basically anything your body deems "non-essential" will slow down to conserve energy.

MandyJNeal wrote: »

Ok so what I’m hearing from some people on this thread is. If you’re choosing to use TDEE over MFP calcs then you should not include the exercise in your daily dairy calcs because TDEE is already averaging this out. If this is the case do I just disconnect all my exercise apps/Apple Watch to prevent this from being added to my dairy calculation?

@MandyJNeal

Yes a TDEE calculation includes an average of your projected exercise burns.
The one on Sailrabbit is a better TDEE calculator than many.

Upside is the simplicity of a same every day goal and just one number to adjust based on your actual long term results.
The downside is a loss of accuracy, especially for someone with a varied activity and/or exercise routine. (e.g my exercise can vary by many thousands of calories per week.)