Looking for clarification

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tynekaH
tynekaH Posts: 5 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello beautiful people. I have been a member here for about a month. Although this is my first post I have been searching the forums trying to absorb as much info as I can, but it has left me more confused than ever lol.

I'm 32, 145lbs 5'9 mother of 3 (2 yo twins and a 5 yo) I am only looking to lose about 15ish lbs (pretty much only my jiggly belly lol)

I have my cals set to 1200 as per mfp suggestion. Work out for about 2hr a day - 1hr of tae bo and 1hr of cardio dance. I don't have a heart rate monitor, so I just use what mfp says I burn during that time which is 870 cals. Now what I'm really struggling with is that I do eat back all my cals most days but I'm wondering how accurate mfp is when it is guestimating calories burned? I have seen some posts where people say they only eat back half their workout cals if they aren't sure how many were burned, but I'm wondering if I do that would I be eating much less than my 1200? if I eat all of them back I would be consuming 2070 cals minus my cals burned to net 1200.... which would be way too much if the cals burned wasn't accurate? I have also seen people say that 1200 is too little so does it really matter if I eat them all back?

Not sure if anyone can even understand this lol, just typing it made my head spin. Anyway, hope someone can give me some type of peace of mind lol

Replies

  • cari4jc1
    cari4jc1 Posts: 233
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    I think the calories burned is pretty accurate. I had done a 1 1/2 hour circuit training workout and was so excited to see 1000 calories burned that I posted about it on FB. Then a friend commented on my post trying to burst my bubble saying that mfp estimates high so I decided to get on the web and look up on other sites what they had for calories burned and what I found was that it was about the same. Actually mfp was a little under what the other sites said. If you're curious about a specific exercise though you can do a google search and see what you find then you can manually enter your calories burned. As for eating back your calories, I really don't know. I have read that it's different for everyone. For me though, my calories had been set at 1200 automatically from when I first signed up many many months ago. For the last couple months I'd been doing about 1300 calories and working out 3-4 times a week for at least 30 minutes but most of the time 45-60 minutes and I hadn't lost anything. I finally got the advice to update my information in mfp and that I probably needed to up my calories. I updated my info and it jumped my calories big time. I've lost 4 pounds in the last 9 days by doing that. I haven't really needed to eat back my calories. It's hard enough to eat the 1500 calories I'm allotted. I do end up eating back some of them sometimes, but I don't stress about it. I just try to make sure I at least eat the 1500. I feel like I'm rambling, but I hope that helps some.
  • megsmom2
    megsmom2 Posts: 2,362 Member
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    You definately need to be eating most of those calories back. 1200 is very low to begin with, taking it even lower with exercise could have some negative impact on your metabolism and make it harder to lose in a healthy way.
  • gpstrucker
    gpstrucker Posts: 930 Member
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    The question for you is "Are you losing the weight you want to lose?"

    If yes, then continue what you are doing and don't worry about it.

    If no, then you need to change tactics.

    Me, I try to stick as close to my NET calories each day as I can, which means eating back the exercise calories. So far it's been working for me.
  • tynekaH
    tynekaH Posts: 5 Member
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    Well, This week I didn't lose anything. Maybe I'm not eating enough? should I up my cals? if so, by how much? I really think the estimate of cals burned on mfp is way over so I think I'm consuming more than 1200 anyway. Should I set my settings to 1 lb a week? Thanks for all the advise
  • spngebobmyhero
    spngebobmyhero Posts: 823 Member
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    what are your settings now? Because you only want to lose 15 pounds, I would put them at .5 pounds a week. You aren't far from your goal and you'll probably see faster results if you don't set your calorie intake too low.
  • infamousmk
    infamousmk Posts: 6,033 Member
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    If you only have about 15 more pounds to lose, I would recommend upping your calories and lifting heavy weights in addition to cardio. Do a search for New Rules of Lifting For Women and read up about all of the ladies getting awesome results from strength training.

    Also, you may want to determine your TDEE and BMR, and use those numbers to estimate your appropriate caloric needs. I'm no expert in this, but someone should be along shortly to help you understand how these numbers work better than I can.
  • taso42
    taso42 Posts: 8,980 Member
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    There's a lot of helpful info the "Unofficial FAQ", if you haven't come across it yet
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/457

    If you're unsure about the accuracy of your calorie burn, you may want to use an online calculator to come up with your approximate TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), and then just subtract 500 cals from that and use it as your target. (.e.g, http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-metabolism-calculator)

    You're probably burning about 2224 cals/day (with exercise and all, assuming "moderately active"), perhaps more. So if I were you, I'd be eating around 1724. You would ignore exercise cals with this method, as they are factored in.

    Another thing I would suggest is replacing some of that cardio with strength training.

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