Net calories or total calories?

tolose21702

What is more important?even if your under your total calories are macro nutrients just as important? I'm just starting out learning about these things And yes I read the nutrient 101...but at the moment I'm barely trying to just keep my total calorie under So far but now I'm worried about the net calories

thunder1982

Net is food less exercise calories earned. Yesterday I ate 1700 and I earnt 500 through exercise so my net calories was 1,200.

If you do a lot of exercise it is important as it can be easy to drop below nett 1,200 if you are following a strict meal plan.

I did that for 2 months last year, I ate 1200 as per my set meal plan by burnt on average 400 cals per day doing purposeful exercise (some days I was netting around 400 cals). Yes I lost weight but I was also exhausted. I ended up upping my cals to 1500 and felt a lot better, weight loss didnt slow too much probably because now I had more energy to do things such as laundry which burnt energy anyway rather than veggie in front of the tv exhausted.

To begin with I found it too much to focus on macros (unless you are doing a diet such as LCHF or keto). Personally I would stick to CICO to start with. I did look at fiber when I was a bit backed up and now I pay more attention to protein that I've begun weightlifting. But for my it was one step at a time.

tolose21702

Thank you...I'm on a 1200 calorie diet at the moment so it's very overwhelming trying to watch the calories I take in

ftwjessicat

I'm allowing myself 1300 net a day but because I exercise daily and burn over 600 calories I can eat my normal 18-1900 calories I would usually eat. I feel really energized and happy, so much different than when I used to try and keep my total calories under 1200 while also exersizing.