Is exercise added to the calorie goal?

kippapeterson
kippapeterson Posts: 7 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I put in my information and, assuming its all correct as ill question the numbers separate from this question, I have a calorie goal of 1680. If i then do 45 mins of walking cardio at 3.5mph and I burn 240 calories. Does my calorie intake goal then go up to 1920?

I do 45mins of this cardio 6 days a week... so essentially my goal is 1920 calories most of the time and 1680 on my rest day? Am i understanding how this app is tracking correctly?
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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,176 Member
    edited September 15 Answer ✓
    Yes, that's how the app is designed to work.

    Just using round numbers as an example: Let's say it would take 2000 calories per day for me to lose weight with just my daily routine, excluding exercise. I tell MFP I want to lose a pound a week. It will give me a goal of 1500 calories daily to create that loss.

    Then let's say I do 250 calories of exercise one day. That day, it would take 2250 calories to hold my weight steady. If I eat 1750 calories, (1500 + 250), I would still expect to keep the pound a week loss rate.

    A couple of things:

    Obviously, all of this is estimates. They don't have to be perfect estimates, just workable ones.

    Ideally, I will have set my MFP "activity level" to reflect just my non-exercise daily life activities, such as job and home chores.

    Ideally, I would stick pretty close to the recommended calorie level for 4-6 weeks, then look at my average loss per week. If it's averaging near my requested sensible loss rate, I'm all set. If it's noticeably too fast loss, or much slower than it's necessary to be to keep things sensible, I can adjust my calorie goal accordingly. I'd use the assumption that 500 calories per day is about a pound a week, and use arithmetic to figure fractional pounds. That personalizes the calorie estimate based on my own experience. (MFP starts us off with the average for demographically similar people, basically. But individuals may differ from average, so we test and adjust.)

    Women would go with whole menstrual cycles to figure average weight loss, but your profile says you're male.

    I ate all my carefully estimated exercise calories through just under a year of loss, and for over 8 years of maintenance since, on top of my "experience personalized" base calorie estimate. It's worked fine for me.

    Best wishes!

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