Can you eat active calories???

I don't count calories, just getting that out there but I would think it depends on whether your apple watch can tell the difference between exercise or just living your life. Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) basically accounts for the calories burned from daily activity that isn't expressed exercise which I suspect is already accounted for in MFP, so if it's not actual exercise I would say no don't compensate and consume more. NEAT btw can have quite the variation person to person and can account for 1500 to 2000 calories easily depending on how you describe your life in general terms, so accounting for the correct amount of calories for an individual is a bit of a guessing game, so there is that which needs to be fine tuned over the course.

Yes, when you use the guided set up in MFP --- it uses the information you give it to calculate your maintenance calories and then if you choose that you want to lose weight, the calorie goal it gives you is already at a deficit from your maintenance.

You are *supposed* to eat back intentional exercise calories when using MFP. You will still be in a deficit.

Ugh.
There is the general idea.
There are the particulars.

The general idea is that you need a reasonable deficit in order to lose weight in a reasonable way. What's reasonable not too dangerous, not too hard, not too easy, sustainable. A way that teaches you lessons you can take into maintenance and that allows you to setup for that maintenance instead of setting up for a weight rebound.

That "reasonable" deficit is defined on MFP as -250 to -1000 Cal a day. I prefer to define it as 20 to 25% of your actual total daily energy expenditure. Because reasons.

MFP adds up your daily calories as "non exercise daily living" and "deliberate exercise". Added they define your total calories burned. Your deficit stays constant. And has been calculated off your declared activity level. Ergo you ARE supposed to eat back your true deliberate exercise calories that come in above that declared level.

Of course Apple uses different math to calculate the total and the MFP apple integration was (is it still?) broken to the point that people were losing calories the more they exercised!!!🤬

At a guess most of the active calories can and should be eaten.

But that's a guess.

You need to dig in deep into your apple stats and find the combined total daily energy expenditure value your watch has come up with combining the calories you burn being alive plus all of your activities and exercise. Doesn't matter how you burned them.... they got burned!

Deduct from that amount the deficit you want to achieve (-500 (boo) or -20% (yeah!!!))... and get to eating that much but not more.

You don't win by suffering. You don't win by overdoing. You win by consistently and over time eating just enough less than you burn so that your weight heads in the direction you want it to.

Exercise values on MFP may be half or three quarters or entirely fictitious and so can the ones on your watch.

But if you consistently log and adjust based on multi week averages you will be able to dial in your numbers.

Again apple active is NOT the same as MFP exercise. And MFP non exercise doesn't correspond exactly to a single apple value. The common denominator (and only thing that matters in the end) is the total calories expended vs eaten

Simple answer: no, do not, I repeat, DO NOT eat your “active calories”.
Why? Every time I did it, I failed to see progress. When I started to stick to my daily caloric intake regardless of how many calories I supposedly burned, I began to see results very quickly.
I’m starting to think it’s some sort of scam.
Whatever the case may be, it is extremely off. Your body adapts so quickly to what you demand of it that there is absolutely no way the simple “active calculator” can keep up with what your body is doing.
Anyways, keep it simple, eat what you set out to eat.

I have always eaten all my exercise calories. I lost weight (55 lbs.) and have maintained that loss for several years. I use MFPs exercise numbers and although they may be inflated, they work for me. I seem to burn hotter than usual for someone my age. As stated above, try eating back some or all of your exercise calories. If you lose as expected, great. If you aren't losing, then eat back fewer calories. Both calories in and calories out are estimates. It is hard to be exact on either. Adjusting as needed will help give you the results you are looking for.

I_AM_ISRAEL wrote: »

Simple answer: no, do not, I repeat, DO NOT eat your “active calories”.
Why? Every time I did it, I failed to see progress. When I started to stick to my daily caloric intake regardless of how many calories I supposedly burned, I began to see results very quickly.
I’m starting to think it’s some sort of scam.
Whatever the case may be, it is extremely off. Your body adapts so quickly to what you demand of it that there is absolutely no way the simple “active calculator” can keep up with what your body is doing.
Anyways, keep it simple, eat what you set out to eat.

You keep giving that terrible advice.

If your actual TDEE is well off from the MFP estimates including workout calories you add, that's something you can track and adjust for yourself over time. All TDEE calculators are based on population averages, not you specifically, and workout calories are estimates too.

The bottom line is, if you eat and drink at 500 calories below TDEE then also do a workout which burns an additional 500 calories, then if you don't eat back any of those calories you will be at a much larger deficit than you expected, which may be dangerous if your TDEE is low enough. That is why that advice you keep posting is not only wrong but also potentially dangerous.

Perhaps you were in the habit of over-estimating your workout calories which led to you not seeing the results you hoped for. Again, easily solved. Personally, I enter relatively conservative estimates for my workout calories.

recently i have been working out hard (for me) but not eating my exercise calories. i felt truly awful, almost like i was ill - i was weak and not thinking clearly.

eating at least half my exercise calories leads me to function and feel better, which also means i can work out better and make better decisions.

AT MIDNIGHT and only at, or after, midnight, IF integration is working correctly between Apple and MFP, the number you get on your apple watch for total calories (red circle on watch) should be equal to the "your daily goal" number (red circle on web page screen clip) AFTER YOU account for your selected deficit.

So if you selected a deficit of 500Cal, the example daily goal of 1520 plus 500 would bring you up to 2020 Cal. The apple watch daily calories at midnight should equal 2020 and not the 1041 shown in the screen shot above. --please note that I don't have an apple watch the screen shot is from the web.

If they don't match (once you've accounted for your selected deficit), then integration was NOT working properly and MFP did not faithfully adjust based on your actual watch data. To my knowledge MFP adjusts correctly for Fitbit and Garmin and (last I knew) did NOT adjust correctly for apple.

If integration was actually working properly, then your remaining calories (green circle) is what you can/would have been able to eat while still achieving your selected deficit. In the screen shot above you would have gone over your goals by a little bit in terms of the total calories you took in.

The above assumes that the population estimates used by all these tools are meaningful in your case (as they are for most). But this can only be established by consistent logging over sufficient time while monitoring your weight trend. Which is likely to require a few weeks of logging consistency and weight trend data.