how much are you eating and how much are you burning?

kaylaheiser16

how much calories are you eating? and how many calories are you burning? im eating 1,200- 1,300 calories a day and burning 1,200 calories a day will I lose weight or do I need to burn more calories? I need to lose 45 pounds. and also how much protein should I be eating a day?

diannethegeek

You might be interested in the advice being given in this thread: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10050316/will-i-lose-weight-by-doing-this

AllOutof_Bubblegum

I'm eating 1750 a day. I don't track or log what I burn because I consider that a bonus to my deficit. Plus it's difficult to accurately gauge burns.

williams969

diannethegeek wrote: »

You might be interested in the advice being given in this thread: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10050316/will-i-lose-weight-by-doing-this

^^This. "Eating less than you burn" doesn't mean the "burn" part comes from just exercise. Your body "burns" by just existing. For example, I eat ~1900 cals/day, my exercise calories are around 500 (5 days/week), and I lose ~1/2lb/week. That's because my body needs about 1700 calories just to live.

So, the math:

1700 + 500 = 2200--that's what my body burns in total (just existing + exercise burn)

2200-1900 = 300 calories deficit every day (approximately, I do take rest days)

I'm eating less than I "burn", hence I lose weight. These are my personal numbers, YMMV on what yours are (based on age, weight, lifestyle level of activity, exercise, etc.).

AllOutof_Bubblegum

Also, how do you know you are burning 1,200 calories with exercise? That seems very far-fetched, especially for someone only 45 pounds overweight and not morbidly obese. To give perspective, I can expect to burn about 500-600 calories in a solid hour of HARD, vigorous exercise with very few breaks.

Are you using a heart rate monitor? Calorie estimations on cardio equipment and the like are very notorious for reporting grossly overestimated and inaccurate numbers. Invest in an HRM, that's the only way to know for sure what you're burning, if it's important to you that you know what that number is.

shadow2soul

Let's see.
My BMR is around 1467. So I burn that everyday.

1467 + my daily activity = approx around 2000 calories per day

2000 + my workouts = approx 2400-2600 per day

It's safe to say on average my total daily calorie burn is 2400-2600 and I eat 1600-2000 on average (sometimes more, sometimes less).

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And you shouldn't be trying to burn off all the calories you consume. That is very unhealthy. Your BMR will be the biggest part of your calorie burn in a day. It's the calories your body burns to keep your heart, lungs, brain, etc functioning. Anything else you do is extra on top of that number.