Exercise Cals deduction

The thing to understand is that your MFP activity level is meant to include only non exercise activity. MFP estimates how many calories you would burn per day at that activity level and then deducts a certain number of calories to achieve the weight loss rate you selected.

When you exercise, you burn more calories on top of what you burn at your selected non exercise activity level, so you need to eat more to arrive at the same calorie deficit/weight loss rate.

retta87 wrote: »

So the app tells you what amount of calories you should eat for a certain amount of weight loss. Well then you exercise and you can magically eat more. I guess I’m just a little confused as to why that is, shouldn’t you just stick with the first basic number and anything burned is just extra weight loss added? Maybe I’m looking at it wrong. Idk some further explanation of it would be appreciated! Thanks

Many people think faster is better.

Just ask them every January when they do it again.

IF you got the activity level honestly selected, and a reasonable deficit, and your workouts were 15-20 min of walking a couple times a week - ya, that's not an issue if you don't eat more when you do more.

But a big part of the 80% failure rate to reach or maintain goal weight are the folks doing extremes - already extreme diets, and then gung-ho extreme exercise amounts not accounted for.
Really bad combo.

Other side of that is people using other sites that accounted for a lot of exercise and ate a steady number that assumed they'd do it - and they didn't. And result of little to no weight loss was discouraging.

MFP is trying to teach that life lesson about weight management.
You can eat more when you do more.
You sure better eat less when you do less.

In a diet to lose weight - a little less in either scenario.

retta87 wrote: »

I never eat the amount they give me! I’d be stuffed all the time. I don’t know if because my exercise has went up, but I’ve lost a lot of my appetite and I hope it doesn’t effect my metabolism.

Calories burned in the database are often exaggerated, but eating at least a healthy portion of them back is a good idea. Try adding half of the calories and see if you are still losing weight at a reasonable rate. If you are losing more than 1-2 pounds a week (depending on how much you have to lose), eat back a few more. If your weight loss stalls, eat back a few less.

retta87 wrote: »

So the app tells you what amount of calories you should eat for a certain amount of weight loss. Well then you exercise and you can magically eat more. I guess I’m just a little confused as to why that is, shouldn’t you just stick with the first basic number and anything burned is just extra weight loss added? Maybe I’m looking at it wrong. Idk some further explanation of it would be appreciated! Thanks

There is nothing "magic" about it...that's how energy works. The further you drive your car, the more fuel it needs no? Same for the human body...the more it moves, the more fuel it needs. Your calorie target is already your deficit to lose weight without any exercise whatsoever. Exercise is unaccounted for activity if you're using MFP as designed. Common sense would dictate that all activity should be accounted for.

Dieting and then also increasing your calorie deficit with exercise is rarely a good idea. Large calorie deficits can be counterproductive at best and dangerously unhealthy at worst. It is one of those things where "more" isn't always better. Health issues with large calorie deficits are also exacerbated when you don't have a lot of stored energy (body fat) on board. The human body strives for homeostasis and with large calorie deficits, the human body will counterbalance the lack of energy coming in by slowing energy expenditure (essentially reduced metabolism). It does this by way of fatigue and lethargy and causing you to move less in your day to day and a reduction in involuntary movements such as fidgeting. Over time, the human body will also slow or cease altogether "non-essential" functions...things like growing hair or nails...hair and nails becoming brittle...hair thinning and falling out...loss of menstrual cycle, etc. In extreme situations, the body goes into starvation...which isn't a hunger thing, it's your body shutting down organ function and ultimately death...I would presume most people wouldn't go that far.

Additionally, dieting is a stress on the body...so is exercise. Exercise made to increase an already existing deficit and making it overly large is an even greater stress on the body. This jacks with your hormone regulation, and in particular raises cortisol levels. Sustained high cortisol levels can impede weight loss, particularly when combined with your body's desire to reconcile energy coming in with expenditure.

The difficulty with the MFP method is getting an accurate estimate of calories out with exercise. Often what machines and other devices give are inflated...some by a lot and some by a little. Database entries can be tricky because they have descriptors like light, moderate, or strenuous and it is often difficult to really determine what level we are working out...like something may feel like a strenuous effort, but it could simply be a matter of being out of shape and it only feeling that way vs actually being a strenuous effort. I first discovered this when I started and put in swimming for 60 minutes strenuous and it gave me some ridiculous calorie burn like 1,000 calories...nobody is burning that in 60 minutes except for maybe Michael Phelps.

Before I had a better way of estimating my calories out, I just used a general notion that burning 500 calories in an hour of cardiovascular work is a pretty high level of effort and I most likely wasn't burning any more than that for a moderate to vigorous effort on most things, and about 1/2 of that for weight training. In reality we just don't burn as many calories with exercise as people typically think based on feelz. My exercise is pretty regular and consistent, so I switched to the TDEE method years ago which accounts for exercise upfront in the activity level and thus a higher calorie target to start with than what MFP gives...ie MFP will give me around 1900 calories + exercise to lose about 1 Lb per week. The TDEE calculator I use gives me around 2,300 out of the gate for the same goal because it includes the regular exercise in my activity level. I lose the same amount of weight with either.