Confused about calories?

KimMc60

I'm fairly new to MFP and I'm really confused about the calorie system...I want to lose weight and eat 1200 calories a day. In order to lose weight, should I eat back the exercise calories or not? And when people say you should have a 'deficit' does that mean your net calories should be negative at the end of the day?

I'll make my food diary public in a minute, if that'll help. Thanks!

diannethegeek

You never want to have a negative net at the end of the day. That would leave your body with no fuel to do important things, like breath and pump blood. When people talk about a calorie deficit they mean the difference between your TDEE (the number of calories your body burns in a day) and your gross intake (the number of calories you eat).

Running too large a deficit between these two numbers for too long can cause your weight loss to stall out. Your body messes with your hormone levels or eats away some of your muscle to get the calories it needs, slowing your metabolism. You don't want that.

MFP sets a calorie goal for you assuming you won't do any exercise. Let's say your body burns 2000 calories a day and want to lose a pound a week, then MFP would tell you to eat 1500 calories/day. When you exercise, you increase the number of calories your body burns and MFP wants you to eat more so that the deficit between what your body burns and what you eat doesn't become too big.

tl;dr - yes, you can still lose weight while eating back your earned exercise calories.

KimMc60

Thank you for your response, I understand it a lot better now. So what is a healthy deficit?