How many calories do you eat when you are exercising daily?

avedabean85

Good morning!
I currently have 1250 daily calories as my target and my negative adjustment turned on. I'm just feeling like 1200 is low. I do great all day then at night I feel starved... even before that actually. Just curious what you guys are doing daily while you have an active lifestyle?
I'm a 5 ft 3 female currently trying to lose 15 more lbs. thanks in advance!!

shadow2soul

-set mfp to 0.5 lb per week loss
- eat at least 50% exercise calories burned

sijomial

I always ate back all of my exercise calories and set a slow rate of weight loss.
Not surprisingly I never felt starved!
My exercise calories vary from c. 250 for an hour of strength training to 4500 for nine hours of cycling.

It's not a race to lose quickly and the "prize" for rapid weight loss can be worse body composition when you get to goal or simply giving up because it's unsustainable.
My other tip would be to eat now as close as possible to how you intend to eat for the rest of your life.

marylouquinn1

What is "negative adjustment"?

cmriverside

If you have any kind of a job or have kids or go to school, you need more than 1200.

Seriously, listen to your body. I agree with shadow below:

shadow2soul wrote: »

-set mfp to 0.5 lb per week loss
- eat at least 50% exercise calories burned

If you feel like it's too low, it is.

deannalfisher

I do 30-1:30 exercise a day - endurance triathlete - take in 2100-2400 a day and losing approx .25-.5 a week - my goal is more focused on fat loss than weight loss

AmyOutOfControl

I have my baseline set for 1470 and eat my exercise calories so my actual intake varies. I can burn anywhere from 250 (recovery yoga day) to 1000 (long run day). So far, i have lost 32 pounds doing this

jroth261

I eat back at least half. Since many burns are overestimated, whether I eat more or all depends on how I feel. If I'm genuinely hungry and borderline feeling faint I eat more. If I only have that slightly uncomfortable twang of hunger I stop. If you're at 1200 now that's generally what's believed to be your cal needs just to function and keep up on body repairs not including any activity. So if you are exercising and not eating any of the burn cals back you are stressing your body's resources to meet proper functioning, and that equates to damaging your metabolism in the long run and making maintenance significantly harder than necessary. You may reach your goal that way, but your basal metabolic rate may likely end up lower than it would if you lost slower, meaning less cals to eat just to maintain! I am not overweight, just pudgy, so I totally get how much patience it takes to lose at less than a lb most weeks. It is the more sustainable way though and you won't feel so tortured at that.

jroth261

BTW if 85 is your birth yr (so is mine) you could raise your base goal to 1300. (mine is currently 1400). Unless you're 40 or above and are experiencing major metabolism slowdown due to aging, 1200 is unnecessarily low in my opinion.

CeeBeeSlim

I'm at 1270. 5'3, 135 trying to get to 125 - but happy with goal range of 123-128. I do Strong Curves 3 days a week, and a back to back interval training/TRX class on a fourth day. Lite exercise (abs, walking, arms) on the 5th. I feel ok but I may be older - 52 - and "sedentary" when not exercising.

nrbutton

I'm 5'3" and my maintenance calories for a sedentary lifestyle is only 1385, that's maintenance! If I workout vigorously an hour a day 5 days a week I can safely eat 1800-1900 calories a day without gaining weight, but I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a small woman and my body is more efficient on less fuel than a 6 foot tall man. I'll never be able to eat 2000 calories a day unless I dedicate my life to fitness training.

It's the gas mileage difference between a Toyota Kia (me) and a Hummer H1 (my husband).

Not everyone can eat their exercise calories back and still lose weight. I hit a plateau at 1100 calories plus eating my exercise calories back (averaging 1600 calories per day). I finally realized if I was ever going to reach my goal weight, which I was 15 lbs away from, I had to stop eating back my exercise calories.

The only way to know if your calories in are too high or low is trial and error. Right now I do 5 hours of cardio at max heart rate per week. I have a sedentary lifestyle besides my time in the gym. I eat an average 1000 calories daily (zigzag calories with high and low calorie days) and am currently losing 1.8-2 lbs per week. I know once my weight gets closer to my goal i will lose weight much slower unless I spend more time working out because I literally can't drop my calories any lower.

It all depends on how much weight you are currently losing and how much you want to lose. If you eat 1200 calories a day and stop losing weight, your only choices are decrease intake or increase output.

ChelzFit

2,100-2400 depending on how much I worked out. I usually burn between 350-400 per workout and on those days I eat around 2,400. The other days I don't work out but just walk I might only eat around 2,100. I am maintaining. I know if I go under 2,000 a day I feel like crap, I am a stay at home mom so lightly active.

SCoil123

It really depends on the workout. I usually work out 5-7 days a week and daily calories range 1400-2000 depending on my burn. I usually eat back almost all of my fitbit adjustment.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

nrbutton wrote: »

I'm 5'3" and my maintenance calories for a sedentary lifestyle is only 1385. [...] I eat an average 1000 calories daily (zigzag calories with high and low calorie days) and am currently losing 1.8-2 lbs per week.

You are using a very low estimate for daily need and it is no wonder you are losing weight so fast! (It sounds like you are exercising a lot as well.) At a more moderate loss (<1 lb per week), I feel better, can sustain the diet longer, and keep up the muscles. As I always write here: what's the big hurry?

Asher_Ethan

I've been logging everything daily for over 2 years and I've found this is the most accurate calorie burn for me.
I'm set to lightly active because I'm a dance teacher.
I don't count my dance classes as calorie burn unless i dance for over an hour.
Anything over and hour i log 75% of that time.

shadow2soul

nrbutton wrote: »

I'm 5'3" and my maintenance calories for a sedentary lifestyle is only 1385, that's maintenance! If I workout vigorously an hour a day 5 days a week I can safely eat 1800-1900 calories a day without gaining weight, but I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a small woman and my body is more efficient on less fuel than a 6 foot tall man. I'll never be able to eat 2000 calories a day unless I dedicate my life to fitness training.

It's the gas mileage difference between a Toyota Kia (me) and a Hummer H1 (my husband).

Not everyone can eat their exercise calories back and still lose weight. I hit a plateau at 1100 calories plus eating my exercise calories back (averaging 1600 calories per day). I finally realized if I was ever going to reach my goal weight, which I was 15 lbs away from, I had to stop eating back my exercise calories.

The only way to know if your calories in are too high or low is trial and error. Right now I do 5 hours of cardio at max heart rate per week. I have a sedentary lifestyle besides my time in the gym. I eat an average 1000 calories daily (zigzag calories with high and low calorie days) and am currently losing 1.8-2 lbs per week. I know once my weight gets closer to my goal i will lose weight much slower unless I spend more time working out because I literally can't drop my calories any lower.

It all depends on how much weight you are currently losing and how much you want to lose. If you eat 1200 calories a day and stop losing weight, your only choices are decrease intake or increase output.

You are actually losing pretty fast for only having 15 lbs to lose.

Your rate of lose suggests a daily deficit of 900-1000 calories per day. If eating an average of 1000 calories a day, your maintenance is 1900-2000 calories per day.

If you want mostly fat loss, you shouldn't be aiming for more than 1% bodyweight loss per week. Your body can only use so much of it's fat stores a day (roughly 30 cals per lb bodyfat). If your deficit exceeds what it can use from fat, your body will start using lean body mass for fuel.

Be careful. Be safe. Good luck.

shadow2soul

I'm 5'4.5" and lost most of my weight eating an average of 2000 calories a day. I stayed active and worked out for 30-90 mins a day 6 days a week. Mostly strength workouts with cardio randomly.

nrbutton

I "was" 15 lbs from my ultimate goal of 125 which I have not seen since I was 13 years old when I got pregnant with my last baby. I was at 140 when I got pregnant this last time and gained 85 lbs (only 35 of it was regular pregnancy byproduct). I've never been able to maintain even 140 lbs long term and I realized 3 years ago through tracking calories in, exercise calories, and trial and error that a 2000 calorie diet with 5 days of exercise weekly allowed me to maintain 140 lbs within about 5 lbs a year, but I would still have to cut back for a month just to get back to 140. So through trial and error I know my body will gain weight (albeit slowly) even at 2000 calories which common sense would then deduce my maintenance calories are less than the "recommended daily amount".

With this last pregnancy my local gym had closed down and I honestly didn't care to cut back on what I ate coupled with little to no exercise I gained 10 lbs per month eating an average of 2500-2600 calories per day which stands to reason by calculations that I consumed 35,000 calories more than my maintenance each month. (10 lbs of fat times 3500 calories per pound) Divide that by roughly 30 days per month and that's an average of 1100 calories more than maintenance per day even while pregnant which totals a sedentary maintenance level of 1400-1500 calories per day.

That's just my body though, everyone will have varying degrees of activity and BMR to consider. Mine just seems to be extremely efficient in storing and retaining fat.

nrbutton

Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »

nrbutton wrote: »

I'm 5'3" and my maintenance calories for a sedentary lifestyle is only 1385. [...] I eat an average 1000 calories daily (zigzag calories with high and low calorie days) and am currently losing 1.8-2 lbs per week.

You are using a very low estimate for daily need and it is no wonder you are losing weight so fast! (It sounds like you are exercising a lot as well.) At a more moderate loss (<1 lb per week), I feel better, can sustain the diet longer, and keep up the muscles. As I always write here: what's the big hurry?

I weigh 183 right now and I have to get my BMI down to no more than 27% by August for an abdominal surgery I need so yeah I am in a bit of a hurry. Normally no I wouldn't be so strict, but I'm on a timetable to get down to 150 at least by August.

JaxxieKat

I typically burn around 200-250 calories every day I work out, with the exception of one night a week I dance. My calories are set at 1240, I eat back most or all of my calories burned (except on dance days. I usually eat back half of those) and I still lose 1-2lbs per week. The one day a week I rest, I stick with my 1240. You just have to experiment. If you eat back all of your workout calories and your weight loss plateaus, try eating back 75% and see how that goes.