calorie question

zfitgal

Hi, i always believed inside to lose weight consistently you need to eat the same number of calories everyday for your metabolism to be consistent...when i train weights (4× a week) I burn 400 calories during the hr, on the other days i do HIT classes where I burn 750-800 during the hr. this is monitored with my heart rate monitor...i put myself as lightly active with .5 pound of fat to lose per week which gave me 1650 net. with my weight training I should be eating 2000 a day? and on cardio days i should be eating 2300? just confused because that a big diffedifference... Looking forward to everyone's help

olive1968

You don't have to eat the exact amount of calories a day.

MFP is set for you to eat back a part or all of your exercise calories. Many here find that the calorie burn estimates for exercise run high, so I personally don't eat more than 50% back (as a goal).

In your examples above, I think the burns sound high, so I would eat back half that. Then you watch and see how it goes and adjust as needed.

zfitgal

I was eating around 1850 everyday and lost my period...

cwolfman13

As I mentioned in your other thread, your HRM isn't going to be accurate for the activities you're listing...spikes in HR are going to inflate your burn...your HR has no direct correlation to energy expenditure...if it did, I'd just have someone come into my office and give me a good scare every 5 minutes...

SideSteel

zfitgal wrote: »

Hi, i always believed inside to lose weight consistently you need to eat the same number of calories everyday for your metabolism to be consistent...when i train weights (4× a week) I burn 400 calories during the hr, on the other days i do HIT classes where I burn 750-800 during the hr. this is monitored with my heart rate monitor...i put myself as lightly active with .5 pound of fat to lose per week which gave me 1650 net. with my weight training I should be eating 2000 a day? and on cardio days i should be eating 2300? just confused because that a big diffedifference... Looking forward to everyone's help

1) You don't need to eat the same calories daily for any particular metabolic benefits. There's no harm in cycling calories up and down if you want to and considering how variable we are with tracking accuracy and considering that our energy expenditure varies from day to day, I'd say it's actually less common to eat the same daily.

2) Assuming the expenditure estimations are accurate, yes that would be correct. I tend to think of about 20% as a pretty reasonable day to day fluctuation. More than that isn't bad either, just to be clear. But about 20% variance isn't really that large.

3) Here's the most important part: As long as you monitor what your weight is doing as a result of your intake, and you adjust your intake accordingly, it will lead you to a reasonable calorie intake over time

zfitgal

so best thing I take it to do is start with h9gher tdee ( because everythin I'd estimation) and work it down from there, like 250 a time)...si I'd put myself at very active then?

quiksylver296

If you are using TDEE, and not MFP's NEAT, you do NOT eat back exercise calories.

zfitgal

right, that I under stand