Completely Confused

I just started today, and was happy to get the 150 calories from a walk.
Good for you, I have to take up swimming!!!

I dont eat back my calories

that might be a really high estimation of cals burned...unless you are using a HRM that is really accurate. i just checked out a couple of other websites and unless you weigh 300-400lbs and are swimming nonstop at a moderate to fast pace i doubt you burned that much...i would go with 50% to be on the safe side, and then maybe eat back 35% of that to allow for over estimation of food cals (we all overestimate w/out menaing to).

Unless you are using a heart rate monitor when you exercise you really cant know that you burned that many calories. I found that when I put my exercises in before purchasing an HRM that My fitness pal WAY over estimated my calories burned. Just FYI in case you were not using one. Hope that helps

Exactly.

I realized I was highly undereating because my basic calorie burn for a normal day was around 2300 BEFORE exercise. I had been eating 1200. That's an 1100 deficit plus any more deficit gained from exercise, and I wasn't losing anymore. My body had entered a pseudo starvation mode, and I was holding onto fat.

I upped my calories slowly after using my HRM to find out my REAL average daily calorie expenditure. On a normal day, app. 2300. On days that I sit on my couch for 9 hours then go right back to sleep, 1300 (I do this on Saturday and Sunday). So, I set my calories to 1450 per day for maintenance. And if I exercise for the day, which I do Monday through Friday, and depending on the exercise, I burn between 400-1000 calories a work out. So, on a normal day I'm BMR burning 2300ish plus an additional 400-1000, which is 2700-3300 calories a day I'm burning.

Because of this, I eat from 1800-2200 calories a day. And guess what? I haven't gained any weight almost doubling my calories, and I've lost body fat percentage. If you take my lowest NORMAL burn of 2700 minus what I'm eating at my highest 2200, I still have a deficit of 500 calories AT LEAST a day. I'm 5'2" and 122 lbs. with 20% BF.

None of this possible without a HRM.

Buy one.



edit: To more plainly answer your question. I have my calories set to 1450, and I'm eating 1800-2200 a day. So, yes, I am eating back my exercise calories. Almost all of them. Just never more than them. MFP doesn't give the right calorie burns for exercise. Calorie burn is specific to weight, height, age and HR.

I lap swim. 2000yards in an hour. I used their calculator and just plugged in what type of exercise I chose freestyle swim light/moderate and 60 minutes and that is what it gave me.
Like I said I am really confused.

Yayy swimming! ignore all the neighsayers. They don't swim. And it burns calories like crazy!! I swim too if you can't tell ;-) We have a Swimmers! group. You should join us if you haven't already. For swimming it's a whole day thing for me. I eat more calories at breakfast, add a glass of milk or a piece of toast. Not much but it helps I can't swim if I've not eaten enough. Then before swimming a little snack, nuts, dried fruit, cheese stick, something. After swimming lunch, heavy on protein. Usually large because I'm starving. Then an afternoon snack with a smoothie of some kind or milk if I didn't have some earlier in the day. Dinner is usually my splurge for the week, we'll do pizza or spaghetti something higher calorie that normally I couldn't enjoy. And after all that I usually have 600-800 calories left. I might have a treat of some kind but I never eat all the calories back.

Swimming is awesome. But remember as you lose weight you will burn less so if you swim now you get to splurge but later it will be less. But always something to be proud of!

I lap swim. 2000yards in an hour. I used their calculator and just plugged in what type of exercise I chose freestyle swim light/moderate and 60 minutes and that is what it gave me.
Like I said I am really confused.

Yayy swimming! ignore all the neighsayers. They don't swim. And it burns calories like crazy!! I swim too if you can't tell ;-) We have a Swimmers! group. You should join us if you haven't already. For swimming it's a whole day thing for me. I eat more calories at breakfast, add a glass of milk or a piece of toast. Not much but it helps I can't swim if I've not eaten enough. Then before swimming a little snack, nuts, dried fruit, cheese stick, something. After swimming lunch, heavy on protein. Usually large because I'm starving. Then an afternoon snack with a smoothie of some kind or milk if I didn't have some earlier in the day. Dinner is usually my splurge for the week, we'll do pizza or spaghetti something higher calorie that normally I couldn't enjoy. And after all that I usually have 600-800 calories left. I might have a treat of some kind but I never eat all the calories back.

Swimming is awesome. But remember as you lose weight you will burn less so if you swim now you get to splurge but later it will be less. But always something to be proud of!

I lap swim. 2000yards in an hour. I used their calculator and just plugged in what type of exercise I chose freestyle swim light/moderate and 60 minutes and that is what it gave me.
Like I said I am really confused.

Yayy swimming! ignore all the neighsayers. They don't swim. And it burns calories like crazy!! I swim too if you can't tell ;-) We have a Swimmers! group. You should join us if you haven't already. For swimming it's a whole day thing for me. I eat more calories at breakfast, add a glass of milk or a piece of toast. Not much but it helps I can't swim if I've not eaten enough. Then before swimming a little snack, nuts, dried fruit, cheese stick, something. After swimming lunch, heavy on protein. Usually large because I'm starving. Then an afternoon snack with a smoothie of some kind or milk if I didn't have some earlier in the day. Dinner is usually my splurge for the week, we'll do pizza or spaghetti something higher calorie that normally I couldn't enjoy. And after all that I usually have 600-800 calories left. I might have a treat of some kind but I never eat all the calories back.

Swimming is awesome. But remember as you lose weight you will burn less so if you swim now you get to splurge but later it will be less. But always something to be proud of!

Yes, I do swim, almost every day some weeks. you cant burn 1411 doing any kind of swimmimg in an hour.

When you say you lap swim. Are you constantly at it for a whole hour? My kids swimming coach says swimming doesn't eat up that many calories. An hour of breastroke give 848 calories according to MFP but the swim coach says it more like half of that. To get what you got, you must have been doing frontcrawl or butterfly the whole 60 minutes non stop and probably more. I reckon 600 calories would be more like it for a constant hours swim. But I'm no profesional.

This. I burn about that, (though hubby is getting me a HR montior so I can know for sure) doing just under an hour of non stop constant front crawl laps.

Ok, I just noticed something, her ticker says she has zero pounds lost (obviously, she just started) and ends on 179lbs lost.

So, if shes 179 lbs overweight, then I could see burning 1400 cals in one hour of constant front crawl lap swimming, with no rests.

I try not to use calories from exercise, that's when I do any lol, but if you,re burning that many I,m sure you can get away with eating a bit more