CICO

bgonzalez_2016

Hi guys maybe you can help me I'm 5'2 185 lbs looking to loose 40 lbs. MFP put my daily calorie intake at 1420 a day. My ideal goal is to lose 1.5lbs a week. I started working out and usually burn about 500~600 calories with 30 minutes cardio and 45 min strength training. Since I burn about 500 calories working out, does that mean I have to consume about 2000 calories a day in order to lose weight since MFP says I need to consume 1420?
1420 - 500( exercises) = 920 calories so I would need to eat back the 500 calories I burned while working out? Any advice would help... Thanks

SCoil123

Since most exercise burn estimates tend to be slightly inflated I would suggest eating back part of you earned calories and see what happens.

For me my Fitbit, after years wearing it, is very accurate and I eat almost all my exercise calories back. I know others though who can only eat half because the number it says they burn is off

VintageFeline

Yes that's how it works in theory but as above, best advice is to be slightly conservative to begin with and see what the trend is over 6-8 weeks (longer than I might advise a male because women are more sensitive to hormone fluctuations which can mask losses on the scale).

It also of course depends on logging accuracy. So not eating them all back can act as a buffer too.

So track the trend and adjust as necessary.

TR0berts

That's pretty much how it works. How, exactly, did you determine your Calorie burn for your entire workout? I ask because the strength training burn depends on a number of factors that MFP doesn't really know and therefore isn't necessarily very accurate. As such, it might be a decent idea to only consume the Calories burnt through cardio, which will probably be somewhere in the 250-300 Calorie range for 30 minutes. So ~1700 Cals on training days.

Of course, the best thing to do would be to do pick something, stick with it for a month or two - provided you can, of course - and assess how you did. Since your goal is to lose 1.5 lb per week, after 4 weeks - did you lose about 6 lb? Or, after 8 weeks, 12 lb? If so, keep doing what you're doing. If not, then adjust your Calories up or down a little, if necessary.


edited, as VF had a good point about ~8 weeks

KetoPhillip

I agree with scoil123 eat a portion of it back. Also if you arent hungry maybe just a light healty snack.