Listen up, guys. You’re putting in the work at the gym. You’re tracking every meal. You’re doing everything “right”, yet the scale won’t budge, and that stubborn belly fat keeps hanging around like an unwelcome houseguest.
Sound familiar?
If you’re using MyFitnessPal to track your calories (and chances are you are), there’s a hidden feature that might be quietly sabotaging months of hard work.
It’s called “exercise calories,” and it’s probably the biggest reason why dedicated men over 50 struggle to see real fat loss results.
The Problem: MyFitnessPal Is Working Against Your Fat Loss Goals
Here’s what happens every time you log a workout in MyFitnessPal:
- You crush a 45-minute weight session
- You log it in the app
- MyFitnessPal says you burned 400 calories
Then it does something sneaky, it automatically adds those 400 calories back to your daily food allowance.
Suddenly, your 1,800-calorie day becomes a 2,200-calorie day. The app is essentially telling you, “Great workout! Now you’ve earned the right to eat more food.”
This might work for a 25-year-old trying to maintain weight. But for a man over 50 whose metabolism has downshifted and whose primary goal is torching body fat? It’s a recipe for spinning your wheels indefinitely.
Why This Destroys Fat Loss Progress After 50
Your body doesn’t care about the theoretical calories MyFitnessPal thinks you burned. It cares about the actual energy balance you create. When you eat back those “exercise calories,” you’re essentially:
- Erasing your calorie deficit – The whole point of fat loss is creating a sustained energy deficit so your body taps into stored fat for fuel. Eating back exercise calories can wipe out that deficit entirely.
- Trusting wildly inaccurate numbers – MyFitnessPal’s calorie burn estimates are often inflated by 20-50%. That “400-calorie” weight session might have actually burned 200 calories. Now you’re eating back twice what you actually burned.
- Creating inconsistent intake – Your calories fluctuate dramatically based on whether you worked out or not. This makes it nearly impossible to dial in your nutrition and identify what’s actually working.
The Metabolism Reality Check for Men Over 50
Here’s the truth nobody wants to talk about. Your metabolism isn’t what it used to be. Starting around age 30, men lose roughly 1% of their muscle mass per year. Less muscle means a lower metabolic rate. Lower metabolic rate means your margin for error gets smaller every year.
At 50+, you can’t afford to play fast and loose with your calorie tracking. Every extra bite matters more than it did when you were younger. The days of “I’ll just work it off later” are behind you.
This is why the MyFitnessPal exercise calorie feature is so dangerous for our demographic. It gives you permission to be less precise exactly when you need to be more precise.
How to Fix Your MyFitnessPal Setup
Stop letting an app algorithm dictate your nutrition strategy. Here’s how to take control:
Step 1: Turn Off Exercise Calorie Adjustments Go to Settings > Diary Settings > Exercise Calories and toggle it OFF. This prevents MyFitnessPal from adding calories back when you log workouts.
Step 2: Set Your Own Calorie Target Instead of letting MyFitnessPal calculate your calories, determine your own target that already accounts for your activity level. Whether you work out or not, stick to the same calorie target every single day.
For example, if you’re a guy over 50 and weigh somewhere between 160 to 200 pounds, your fat-loss calories will probably land around 1,600 to 2,000 a day, give or take, depending on how active you are. But if you’re closer to 225 or 260 pounds, that number’s going to be way off.
Want to get it right without doing all the math? That’s exactly what Macros Magic helps you do — quick, accurate, and tailored to you.
Step 3: Treat Exercise as a Fat Loss Accelerator, Not a Food Permit. Your workouts serve multiple purposes: building lean muscle, improving insulin sensitivity, boosting metabolism, and enhancing mental clarity. What they’re NOT is a license to eat more food.
Let your body use stored fat for energy instead of immediately replacing what you just burned with more food.
The Bottom Line
Consistency Beats Perfection.
You don’t need perfect calorie tracking. You need consistent calorie tracking. When your intake stays steady regardless of your workout schedule, you can actually identify patterns, spot plateaus, and make intelligent adjustments.
MyFitnessPal’s exercise calorie feature creates chaos in your nutrition plan. It makes every day different, every calorie target a moving target, and every meal decision unnecessarily complicated.
For men over 50 serious about fat loss, the solution is simple: set your calories, stick to them daily, and let your workouts drive results, not dictate your dinner portions.
Your future self will thank you when you finally see that stubborn belly fat start to disappear.
