Total calories and Net Calories

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taneum
taneum Posts: 16
in Health and Weight Loss
Can somebody please explain to me on my diary at the top of the screen what the "goal" "consumed" "net" and "remain" mean? I know what they mean but how to use them correctly. My "goal" is 1460 calories a day and today I "consumed" 1501. My "exercise" was 689, my "net" was 812 and my "remaining" was 648.

I'm just not sure when adding up my calorie intake each day what number of calories I should be aiming for and how the "net" works into that.

Replies

  • Aereon
    Aereon Posts: 27 Member
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    Goal is your caloric intake that will keep you in line with your weekly weight loss goal. Consumed is the amount of calories in the foods you consumed today. Exercise is the calories you burned today. And remaining is the amount of calories you could still eat and be below your goal after factoring in exercise.

    So it all goes together like:

    1460 - 1501 + 689 = 648

    Your starting goal was to only consume 1460 calories today but you consumed 1501. However, you burned 689 calories via exercise so that adds a cushion to your goal and allows your "consumed" number to be higher and still reach your goal.
  • Pandorian
    Pandorian Posts: 2,055 MFP Moderator
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    If you're using MFP as intended your NET number is supposed to be the same as your goal number.

    Here you get a calorie goal to lose weight before you lift a finger in exercise. Exercising burns calories widening that deficit so we are supposed to eat them back to keep the deficit at our weight loss goal point (0.5 1 1.5 or 2lbs per week)

    SO it's goal... minus what you've eaten... plus exercise = net for the day.
  • Dexy_
    Dexy_ Posts: 593 Member
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    MFP gives you an amount of cals to eat that will make you eat with no exercise. If you exercise, you earn extra calories. There are 8363829936 thread on wether you should eat them back or not, I for one believe you SHOULD. At the very least please net 1200 a day :)
  • NoAdditives
    NoAdditives Posts: 4,251 Member
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    Net calories = calories consumed - calories burned

    Your net calories should always equal or be close to your daily calorie goal. If you exercise the calories you burn are subtracted from the amount of calories you have eaten, which means you need to eat more to bring your net calories back up.

    For example:

    My daily calorie goal is 2040 (my maintenance amount because I'm pregnant). Let's say I burn 500 calories from exercise. My total consumed calories for the day should be around 2540. My net calories would be 2040, my calories consumed would be 2540 and my calories burned would be 500.

    2040 = 2540 - 500
  • taneum
    taneum Posts: 16
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    Hey that kind of makes sense. I thought I was suppose to still only hit my goal even if my exercise was up. Okay so if I exercise I need to bring that net up to get it to match my goa or get it close to my goal than anywaysl? think I understand it now.

    Question though, if I meet my goal and say I burn an extra 800 calories through exercise, aren't I just that more ahead if I do not bring my net up to match my goal?
  • 16mixingbowls
    16mixingbowls Posts: 205 Member
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    Question though, if I meet my goal and say I burn an extra 800 calories through exercise, aren't I just that more ahead if I do not bring my net up to match my goal?

    This is where you start entering the "Should I eat my exercise calories back" topic. The reason is that MFP already is setting your goal with a deficit. If you're at 1 pound a week, that means negative 500 calories per day are allotted to you. So you goal is set for you to lose weight even if you don't exercise. If you then burn 800 calories in exercise, and eat your goal, then you're really 500+800 calories deficit for the day (1300.) Some people will argue that this is too large of a deficit for you to be in healthfully. They say that the 500 cal deficit is a sustainable deficit that you can reasonably maintain (ie. you won't be hungry.)

    The other side of the debate is that you also under-estimate calories consumed, so if you "eat back" the 800 exercise calories and stay with just a 500 cal deficit, you might be eating too much to lose weight. Also, some people htink that calorie burns are estimates, an dare too high, so if you eat them back you might not have a deficit either.

    After all of my reading on this, I've tried both. Eating my calories wasn't working for me. I wasn't burning oodles of calories anyway, so now I just eat my daily goal calories and don't track my exercise.
  • llkilgore
    llkilgore Posts: 1,169 Member
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    Question though, if I meet my goal and say I burn an extra 800 calories through exercise, aren't I just that more ahead if I do not bring my net up to match my goal?

    Not really. There's a point of diminishing returns beyond which a bigger deficit doesn't consistently equal a bigger loss, especially when you look at it over the long term. It may well mean that you go through longs periods when you can't lose at all. I've been here since January and can't tell you how many threads I've seen started by people who find themselves stuck on a plateau and need to be told they've been eating too little. Some people do overestimate their exercise burns and/or underestimate how much they eat, but "help, I'm stuck" threads are more typically started by people who have chronically erred in the other direction.

    That said, I did find that the MFP overestimated the burn from most of the different forms of exercise I've logged since joining the site. The solution to that problem isn't to quit eating back exercise calories, though. You just need to ease back on the percentage of the calories you eat. In my case, I never needed to drop below 66%. That was enough to keep me on track and avoid any plateaus.
  • taneum
    taneum Posts: 16
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    Yeah I wondered if I really burned 2100 calories the other day through 2.5 hours of martial arts. Can you explain the platues a little more please and where your 66% came from?
  • llkilgore
    llkilgore Posts: 1,169 Member
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    Yeah I wondered if I really burned 2100 calories the other day through 2.5 hours of martial arts. Can you explain the platues a little more please and where your 66% came from?

    With 2100 calories, a little error in the calculations will make a big difference. My exercise burns were never close to being that high.

    I determined the percentage of calories to eat back by trial and error. I was losing while eating back 100% of exercise calories but not at the 1 pound/week rate expected, and I found that the longer I exercised, the less I lost. At some point it dawned on my that an overestimation of calories burned was eroding my 500 calorie deficit and the erosion was amplified when I logged more minutes. From that point forward I adjusted my exercise calories up or down if I strayed too far in either direction from my weekly goal. I didn't eat back 100% of my exercise calories again until I took up running as my primary cardio. The database is apparently accurate on that one, at least for me.

    On the plateaus: My take on that (based largely on the experiences of others and on what I've read in last year) is that plateaus can be triggered by a loss of muscle mass and/or a loss of energy. You'll not have much of a bounce in your step if an excessive calorie deficit leaves you feeling drained and wobbly, and you won't be able to give your all to your exercise routines. A adequately fueled body will burn more calories because it can. And if you run an excessive deficit long enough your metabolic rate, which will drop anyway with less weight to carry around, will drop even faster as you burn off muscle tissue as fuel. That's when plateaus can really become an issue - there isn't a quick fix.

    A lot of people will try to explain all of that in terms of something called "starvation mode" but it's never been clear to me what that really means. The consequences of losing muscle mass and/or having to drag yourself through the day are much easier for me to understand.

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