How to add exercise calories?

Rubyhelena8
Rubyhelena8 Posts: 13 Member
in Fitness and Exercise

Hi,

First question, if I’m maintaining my weight do I add exercise/steps calories to my BMR or sedentary TDEE? Say I’ve just downloaded pacer and they said I have burnt 400kcal walking, do I eat 400+my sedentary TDEE or BMR or what so confused!? I’m currently maintaining my weight. I basically do 7000-17000 steps a day it really depends. And also ngl I love food and I like the idea of eating the max. Amount of calories possible without gaining weight lol! I’m a bit confused how to account for these steps in my calories especially when it varies so much day to day. The start of the year I put my TDEE as lightly active and I don’t seem to have gained weight but my weight fluctuates more (before I was in a deficit of 100kcal below sedentary). Should I keep my activity level at lightly active or change my calories per day depending on my step count? I get very confused when it gets to this area of calories counting lol! Thanks :)

Replies

  • barefootbridgey
    barefootbridgey Posts: 81 Member
    Your BMR accounts for the things that keep your body alive and that's about it. Like, how much energy you expend when breathing, when your heart beats etc. If you were in a coma, it's the approximate number of calories you would need to stay alive. If you add exercise calories to BMR you're not going to maintain weight unless you do literally nothing else.

    Your TDEE is the average of all of the things that you with your body 0- whether purposeful exercise, walking, cleaning the house etc. If you're just looking to maintain weight, you're probably best served to eat roughly at your TDEE and not worry about your BMR at all. Just be cautious as to how you calculate your activity level. Other than the days that youre really up there closer to 15k-17k steps, I wouldnt even worry about counting them, honestly, 8000 or 10000 steps probably don't make as much of a difference as you would think.

    If it were me, I'd set the activity level at sedentary, calculate maintenance calories at that and hang out at that level of a bit and see if you get the results you want, increase if you are losing and not maintaining.
  • riffraff2112
    riffraff2112 Posts: 1,756 Member
    When I started I ate at my TDEE and entered every exercise manually, setting my activity level at sedentary (as suggested above). Eventually I could see what worked and what I needed to do to continue to progress, and slid my activity level up and only logged serious cardio burns outside of my daily routine. Just was easier and less time consuming. I am pretty consistent with diet and exercise so I opted for the less complicated way to track.

    You will find what works within a few weeks and adjust accordingly.
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,155 Member
    I'm still in the early stages of experimenting with this, so I might adjust later, but right now I set my activity level at "sedentary" and let the steps add calories throughout the day. I don't log exercise manually, but my tracker will automatically if it detects it (still figuring out this feature.)

    My true regular activity level is probably "lightly active" but I figure with this setup I can pretty much know that whatever extra calories I get from the tracker are fine for me to eat. I'm not going to end up in a situation with an unexpected negative adjustment in the evening if I have a slow day for some reason, and discover I actually had a surplus when I wanted a deficit.

    I figure as long as I'm losing weight at the rate I set, though, the math is roughly working out how it should.
  • sonyamurawski
    sonyamurawski Posts: 8 Member
    I’ll ask this here, maybe someone can help me. I’ve used MFP for a while and when I sync my Fitbit, my calories exercise calories change. It hasn’t done it the last few days. My steps sync, but not calories, even if I’ve gone for a walk. Is there an issue idk about? Has the feature changed? I really hope someone can help me.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    sonyamurawski wrote: »
    I’ll ask this here, maybe someone can help me. I’ve used MFP for a while and when I sync my Fitbit, my calories exercise calories change. It hasn’t done it the last few days. My steps sync, but not calories, even if I’ve gone for a walk. Is there an issue idk about? Has the feature changed? I really hope someone can help me.

    Look at your Exercise diary, which has a line regarding Fitbit adjustment that MFP creates based on Fitbit sending the daily calorie burn.

    If no line, sync issue.

    If line at 0, tap and hold for more info - it'll show the time and calorie burn at the last sync, was it lately?
    And did you overall burn more than the 2nd line MFP already expected you to burn?
    Did you manually log the walk on MFP for some reason?
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 921 Member
    It depends on what activity level you used to calculate your TDEE...if you used sedentary --- and you feel like you have accurate calorie burn estimates for your workouts EAT IT ALL BACK.

    If you included your workouts in your TDEE calculation (lightly active/moderately active, etc...) then you shouldn't have to eat them back. I'd say if you feel ravenous though...then it must mean you should eat more.

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