Calories eaten vs calories burned

First sorry Darth for hijacking this thread!

I would say this, don't put too much stock in a home scale for BF%, they are notorious for being wildly inaccurate. That said, they usually use electrical impedance, which means they go by how much resistance muscle has to electricity as opposed to fat. Which is fine except that much of this requires a specific amount of water being in your body, which is almost impossible to replicate on a daily basis. So BF% can vary from day to day on a home scale even if you eat the same amount, same type, and exercise the same way every day. You'd have to be completely regular in ALL your activities to make it truely accurate, by that I mean, drink the same amount of water every day at the same time, eat the same amount of sodium and other minerals (calcium, phosphorous...etc.) every day at the same time, go to the bathroom at the same time every day, exercise the exact same way for the exact same amount every day, have the same weather conditions every day... etc. it's just far to difficult.

AS to your calories, if you're using the goals that MFP gave you and say you chose 1lb a week, MFP is already adding in a deficit, so any exercise you do, if you eat those calories back, you'll still be eating less than what it takes to maintain your current weight, so yeah, you'll still be at that 1lb a week EVEN if you eat your exercise calories.

You may ask, "Then why do some people NOT eat them or all of them and still lose?" Well because our body's aren't an exact science, and body fat % has a lot to do with that, not EVERYONE will conform to the the exact number, some people's bodies can tolerate a higher deficit and still not trigger a famine response (fat storage), others need less of a deficit and are very sensitive to calorie deficit. The only way to know is to try a reasonable deficit and tweak it and see where you are in a month or so. Just remember, the more available fat someone has, the higher their deficit can be without triggering the famine response!

hope this helps!

\:happy:

I did notice the wild fluctuations and wondered about that. Yes, this is a great help! I can eat a bit more with confidence. I do notice that when I stay within my points exactly, not using the exercise calories, I don't tend to lose. I just need to balance exactly HOW much of those will give me the weight loss I want.

Thanks again! As always, you are a fountain of knowledge!! :-)

I wanted to weigh in (hardy har) on the WW angle here and mention that my experience was similar in my WW days when I would work out heavily (more than 5 APs a day); I could never understand why I wouldn't lose the weeks I stayed within my point limits but was HUNGRY and irritable, but when I would go over by about 10-15 points for the week, would invariably lose (and was a much nicer person to be around.)

I recently read on their fitness message board that if you are earning more than the recommended 4 APs a day, it's actually more effective to count each AP above the four as a point and a half; i.e. if you are earining 10 APs, then you should be eating 13 extra points. The way it was explained (in a really tiny nutshell) was that the AP's are designed for casual/regular exercisers, not intensive folks.

That certainly backed up my experience and though I tend to get a little lost in the numbers posted in these threads so am not sure if it applies to your question exactly, thought I'd throw it ya FWIW.

I wanted to weigh in (hardy har) on the WW angle here and mention that my experience was similar in my WW days when I would work out heavily (more than 5 APs a day); I could never understand why I wouldn't lose the weeks I stayed within my point limits but was HUNGRY and irritable, but when I would go over by about 10-15 points for the week, would invariably lose (and was a much nicer person to be around.)

I recently read on their fitness message board that if you are earning more than the recommended 4 APs a day, it's actually more effective to count each AP above the four as a point and a half; i.e. if you are earining 10 APs, then you should be eating 13 extra points. The way it was explained (in a really tiny nutshell) was that the AP's are designed for casual/regular exercisers, not intensive folks.

That certainly backed up my experience and though I tend to get a little lost in the numbers posted in these threads so am not sure if it applies to your question exactly, thought I'd throw it ya FWIW.

Oh! Where did you read this? Can you give me a pointer to the thread on the WW forum? That does apply to my question, yes!