Calories in and Out Help

dreamob

Hi guys,

I just recently got my metabolism tested to help me determine approx how much I burn day to day in order to create an equation that I can track to help with my weight loss since I have been struggling to lose weight.

According to the results, I burn about 1292 calories a day just from living (sedentary), and another 387 doing light day to day tasks (walking around..etc). Totaling 1679 a day, so that's what I burn on a daily basis without exercising.

So my question is this, if I track my calories burnt from working out (polar heart rate monitor), would I add that number to 1679 and then subtract the 500 calorie deficit from that to determine how many calories to eat in a day?

Let's say I burned 300 5 days a week, then would that be 1,479 calories on the days I worked out, and on the days I didn't, I would have to eat 1,197-- that seems really low.

Is this correct? Any advice/suggestions would be greatly apprecitated!

futuremanda

There are a few ways to approach it... but if your ticker is correct, you're only looking to lose 10 lbs, yes? Then I'd aim more around 250 deficit (0.5 lb a week).

So that's 1429 on a non-exercise day. 1729 on a workout day.

The other approach is to spread them out -- if you know you'll burn 300 x 5, then that's 1500 each week. Well, that's about 214 spread evenly throughout the week, giving you 1643 a day, every day. Eat that, do your workouts, live your life.

I would suggest using a food scale though, especially if you do the 250ish deficit. Little errors really add up to kill that deficit. Often a package will say "2 tbsp (30g)" but *really* the calories are based on the 30g and 2 tbsp might be more than 30g. Food scales can be had for pretty cheap, and are so quick to use once you get used to them, so I'd get one if you don't have one already!

grandma107

Why not put your stats in MFP and see what number it gives you as MFPs calculation includes a deficit built it. Blessings.

dreamob

futuremanda wrote: »

There are a few ways to approach it... but if your ticker is correct, you're only looking to lose 10 lbs, yes? Then I'd aim more around 250 deficit (0.5 lb a week).

So that's 1429 on a non-exercise day. 1729 on a workout day.

The other approach is to spread them out -- if you know you'll burn 300 x 5, then that's 1500 each week. Well, that's about 214 spread evenly throughout the week, giving you 1643 a day, every day. Eat that, do your workouts, live your life.

I would suggest using a food scale though, especially if you do the 250ish deficit. Little errors really add up to kill that deficit. Often a package will say "2 tbsp (30g)" but *really* the calories are based on the 30g and 2 tbsp might be more than 30g. Food scales can be had for pretty cheap, and are so quick to use once you get used to them, so I'd get one if you don't have one already!

Spreading it out makes a lot of sense, thank you!

I do have a food scale that I use but I mainly just weight my proteins and carbs but im going to start weighing everything to make sure Im as accurate as possible.