How many calories must I recover post-workout?

J___D_____

Here's my dilemma.

After dinner, I was right around 1800 calories. I then played basketball for 2 hours (which I counted as 1.5 hours of playing basketball). Fitness pal tells me that I burned around 1100 calories putting my NET calories at 700ish calories.

I know not getting enough calories is bad. And I ate around 500 calories post work out, but that puts me at 1200 calories for the day. I that bad? Good? I AM trying to cut weight.

Thoughts?

Snow3y

As a guy, you shouldn't ever be eating so little... I wouldn't really use MFP as a sole provider of how many calories are burned in a workout either..

I usually eat around 2/10ths of my left over calories or meals after a workout, and go straight to bed an hour later.. Some may argue that meal timing doesn't matter ever when it comes to weight loss, but for me this is personal preference, and I feel it helps me recover better.

If you have one day which is extremely deprived of calories, try get in what you can, but only eat what you feel your body may find necessary. Don't stay up all night trying to binge down what you still need to eat, one day won't kill you.

jacksonpt

Taking the numbers at face value, you should be eating more. However, if this is a once in a while occurrence (not every day), then there's no real reason to worry. Also, cals in/cals out rely on A LOT of estimating, so how you're feeling/progressing can be an indicator of whether or not something might be wrong.

kpw818

I struggled with this, so I went to a few other calculators and took an average of what they said, and added about 50 calories. Now, I'm not logging any exercise in MFP, eating less than what I've allotted each day, and going for a total goal at the end of the week. With my running workouts (only, I didn't count strength and weight training days), I will be at a deficit each week eating the average I took from the others.

This is really an experiment to see what my maintenance level truly is, as I am trying to gain strength and muscle and not lose weight. With my workouts, I have some crazy, crazy hungry days, so instead of yo yo-ing based on what activity I did that day, I decided to take a higher average overall. I workout 6/7 days a week though, so I'm eating pretty close to what I set.

As the others said, if you are feeling super hungry (like actual hunger) I would go ahead and eat. I would also go check out a few other calculators. If you are active, you might find their total numbers more accurate.