Exercise

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bryancarla48
bryancarla48 Posts: 1 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hey! I'm new here, I've added my step counter and exercise. Can someone explain how when I exercise my calorie intake increases? Is this normal? Never done this before 🤣

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  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    If you have a device synced, you will get an increase in your allotted calories when you actual activity level per your device exceeds the activity level you have selected in MFP. The more you move, the more calories your body requires. Using MFP as designed, deliberate exercise is not included in your activity level and thus unaccounted for. When you exercise, you are performing unaccounted for movement and get additional calories.

    Simple math using my numbers. If I tell MFP I'm sedentary I will get a calorie target of around 1900 calories to lose 1 Lb per week. This would then assume my sedentary maintenance to be 2400 calories per day. Sedentary generally includes movement up to about 5000 steps. When I exceed that, I am no longer sedentary so my calorie target increases to reconcile that. If I say I'm sedentary, but I burn an additional 500 calories through exercise my calorie target would move to 2400 calories to still lose 1 Lb per week...because my maintenance requirements would have also moved by that same 500 calories to 2900 calories and 2900-2400=500 calorie deficit still.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    It's because other sites, apps and methods guess what your average exercise calories are in advance and include that in your daily same every day calorie goal whether you train that particular day or not.
    (A combined daily life activity AND average purposeful exercise estimate.)

    MyFitnessPal on the other hand estimates your calories for a day with no exercise and when you do actually do some purposeful exercise you estimate that calorie burn and it gets added to that day's goal so you end up with a variable daily goal in line with exercise.
    (The activity setting on here is just general daily lifestyle movement and EXCLUDES purposeful exercise.)

    "Is it normal?"
    Well it's totally normal when calorie counting to take a significant calorie need into account but it's just that MFP does the exercise part a bit differently to other sites.
    24hr trackers do it slightly differently again but include all the same elements that make up your total calorie needs.
  • positiveyou1
    positiveyou1 Posts: 10 Member
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    if your losing weight, then adding the extra calories from moving doest make much sense, just stick to the daily recommended calories in -if your doing more muscle building (which fitness pal doesnt recognise as energy used for some reason) eat slightly more protein, if your endurance, eat slightly more carbs, dont over complicate things.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    edited March 2022
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    positiveyou1 wrote: »
    if your losing weight, then adding the extra calories from moving doest make much sense, just stick to the daily recommended calories in -if your doing more muscle building (which fitness pal doesnt recognise as energy used for some reason) eat slightly more protein, if your endurance, eat slightly more carbs, dont over complicate things.

    Very poor advice.
    It actually doesn't make sense to pick a certain rate of loss (say 500cals/day) and then not stick to eat by balancing out extra calories out with extra calories in to keep to the rate of loss selected.
    Which is why all sensible calorie counting methods do take exercise into account in different ways.

    And if you add strength training in the correct place (in the CV part of the exercise diary) you do indeed get a very decent estiate of calories burned.

  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,694 Member
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    Eat back some, if not all, of the extra calories. If you don't, you may be seriously undereating, which isn't good for your health, and isn't really sustainable long term. For example, I run 6-8 miles several days a week. That burns 500-700 calories. My maintenance goal is 1600 calories. If I don't eat back those calories, I would be netting only 900-1100 calories a day, and I would be starving. I get hungry enough on days I eat back all the calories I burn. I know from past experience that if I eat only 900 calories a day, I end up binging within a week. The goal is to eat in a way that works over the long term, not just the short.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    positiveyou1 wrote: »
    if your losing weight, then adding the extra calories from moving doest make much sense, just stick to the daily recommended calories in -if your doing more muscle building (which fitness pal doesnt recognise as energy used for some reason) eat slightly more protein, if your endurance, eat slightly more carbs, dont over complicate things.

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