i'm confused! Daily caloric limit?

StarlightAria

So the app that I got from this site tells me that my daily caloric limit is 1200 calories. If I eat less than my 1200 calories, it tells me that my body might go into starvation mode. I am almost burning 400 calories in the last two days that I've burned...can someone tell me how this works? I am exercising everyday. How can I lose weight this way? I'm so confused. I saw someone say that you have to eat less than you burned...

EngiAli

You have to include the calories you burned "existing" - breathing, heart beating, digesting, walking talking. Also known as you TDEE. On TOP of that you burn calories through exercise. If you take your TDEE + Exercise Burn that is the amount of calories you can eat in a day and maintain your weight. Eat less then that and you are loosing. So if you burned 400 calories at the gym you should have eaten 1600 calories.

StarlightAria

Can you dumb this down for me? I don't quite understand. I must really be thick in this area.

How do I know my TDEE? Am I adding the TDEE + Exercise burn to my daily caloric limit? Yesterday my goal was 1200 calories, 1386 from food, did 292 in exercise and the net was 1094. I had 106 remaining.

What does this mean in relation to what you are saying?

SDkitty

Try this:

http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/

or this:

http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

StarlightAria

/bump

StarlightAria

I did these but still not sure how the numbers relate

sirenical

Your body needs to burn a certain amount of calories every day to just exist.
If you add exercise, you burn even more calories.

To lose weight, you need to consume less calories than you burn throughout the entire day.

Example:
Your body burns 1570 calories a day just to exist.
Your body burns an additional 200-300 calories walking to the bathroom, fixing dinner, etc, etc.
So to maintain you need 1770-1870 calories a day.
You eat 1200 calories. That is a 570-670 calorie deficit.
You add in 400 calories burned. That is a deficit of 970-1070 calories and you didn't burn enough to exist.
Add 400 calories to your diet to consume 1600 on the day you burn 400 calories.
(These are just example numbers. Everybody is different and there are calculators provided by other commenters to help you figure it out.)

Anyone else, please feel free to jump in and add to my description. Hopefully this simplifies it for you!

StarlightAria

Thank you so much! I never knew this! Talk about lightbulb moment!

StarlightAria

the more you work out the more you can eat?!

SDkitty

the more you work out the more you can eat?!

Basically, hence the "burning off [any meal]" comments.

Once you figure out how many calories you burn on average day, you can calculate how much of a defecit you wan't to create (I do a littlle under 500 cals) each day and how many additional calories you are going to burn with exercise and you'll know just how much you need to eat.

TDEE + EXERCISE CALS = TOTAL BURNED CALS

TOTAL BURNED CALS - CALS EATEN = DEFICIT or OVERAGE

http://thefitgirls.com/tdee-calculator.aspx

SDkitty

It looks like you're pretty new, feel free to add me :flowerforyou:

StarlightAria

Thank you so much. I can't get over how helpful everyone is around here!