Am i overeating on exercise calories?

linsitidswell

Hi. I'm confused! I set my target to lose 1.5 a week and my calorie goal is 1200. I walk my dogs twice a day and earn around 3-400 extra calories. That seems a big difference to eat. Should I be aiming to leave spare each day? Or can I stuff my face?!?!

muppetalert

The theory is that the more you burn the more you can eat. If you're consistently burning calories daily to up your target, you should consistently eat more.

"[Stuffing] your face" is not the best idea though, consider snacking on relatively healthy bits to top up your calories. Remember, your goal is 1200 to lose weight, if you're burning 300, you can eat those back and still be at your target of 1200.

If you don't want to, you don't have to (though I'm pretty certain that's not the recommended way). Your body will tell you if you're doing something drastically wrong (also MFP will throw up it's anorexic warning as it did to me 1 day if you eat too little). I tend to eat up to my 1400 allowance and anything I burn is a bonus, but some people are going to say that's not how it's meant to work.

Ready2Rock206

I always recommend if you set your calorie goal to be the lowest absolute possible, as you have, that you eat back at least a portion of your exercise calories. You didn't provide enough details to guess whether 300-400 more is actually appropriate, but you could always start there and adjust as needed.

Angierae75

My advice is always eat 75% of them, wait a month, assess. Are you losing weight? Then you're fine. Go up or down if you're too hungry/not losing fast enough.

KetoneKaren

Different strokes for different folks. I don't eat back my exercise calories. It's personal preference.

linsitidswell

Thanks. Maybe I should have said. I'm 145lb and 5,3. I need to lose around a stone. I guess slowly losing that is the way to go. I'll try to leave the 25% and see how I do.

muppetalert

Good luck with everything!