understanding my fitness pal

Can anyone help me ? i have started using MFP (its great) to log food and exercise. i have been going to the gym with the intention of burning off between 750 & 1000 calories a session. MFP says i have earned an extra xxx calories because of exercise - question is does anyone have these extra cals on the NHS plan or not? i'd hate to do this workj eat 2400 cals and not lose weight HELP!!!!!!!

[OlsBean]

I'm not sure I can answer your question but just to say you have to really go some to burn a 1000 calories through a session of exercise, watch out that MFP is not overestimating it when you are logging it.

If you are doing that level of exercise daily then you should be eating something extra to fuel it, not necessarily the whole 1000 calories as it's not an exact science but you will need some additional nutrition to continue to maintain that level of activity.

[Hidden in reply to OlsBean]

I use the stair walker at the gym and this tells me how many cals burned - is the machine wrong (60 mins = 1081 cals) ? am i being conned?

[OlsBean in reply to Hidden]

I'm not familiar with the machine but it sounds like a beast. All I can tell you is that for a piece of equipment to have any chance of accurately predicting calories it needs to know to a little about you (age, sex, height, weight) and I think more accuracy is obtained with heart and lung rate monitoring. Are you entering this information or logging onto it before you commence exercising? If you are not then it's probably not accurate.

Like I say I am not familiar personally with this machine, I do know though from a runners point of view that the average person would need to run about 15-16km in 1 Hours 30 minutes to burn on average a 1000 calories. But like I said it's not an exact science, at it's very much dependent on a number of factors.

[Anna999]

Hey, to be honest I don't use the fitness log on the app I literally use it to track the calories and macronutrients. And I'm going for length of good cardiovascular exercise as I'm pretty sure the amount of calories you burn varies from person to person depending on metabolic factors and build etc. I wouldn't eat the extra calories you are earning as it is not a like for like swap. Especially if you are trying to lose weight, 2400 calories is a lot! I'm guessing but it might be OK if you're just maintaining a healthy weight.

But don't make yourself feel faint, take some fruit with you to snack on after your work out and maybe time it so you're going a couple of hours after a meal?

Good luck🍀

[Hidden in reply to Anna999]

thanks = that was my worry. 2400 is a lot when trying to lose weight (whoops nearly put loosing weight - hate to waken up the spelling titans on this site)

[Judywood]

I just log exercise out of interest - I don't actually eat the extra calories - I stay within my recommended limit - 1400 currently - but think that will have to come down soon as nearing my target!

[Hidden]

thanks for all the helpful replies - i have a personal user id for the gym machines and i have input; age; sex; height and weight so these are part of the calculation. but i do wonder if the final calories burnt was optimistic and i'd be loathed to be lulled into a false sense of security from MFP, eat an extra 1000 cals and then find i hadn't lost weight. having struggled for years with my weight i am finding the nhs plan one if the easiest to stick to; the gym and cardio are just to give me a bit of a boost as i can be quite lazy given the chance. so i'll take the machine outputs with a pinch of salt (do i log this on MFP ;)) and maybe have a couple of ginger nut biscuits as a treat. once again thanks for taking time to respond.

PS the machine is a beast its a revolving set of stairs so essentially walking upstairs for an hour!

[Anna999 in reply to Hidden]

You're welcome☺ that machine sounds evil lol! 🌻

[gingernut49]

NEVER eat back your exercise calories burned on MyFitnessPal when you're trying to lose weight. Ignore that part of it and just stick to the food calories ingested.

Exercise calories are a bonus!