Calories

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Jayj180894
Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
If I eat 1200 a day and burn 200 a day in exercise, will this be the equivalent of eating 1000 a day?

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  • Slasher09
    Slasher09 Posts: 316 Member
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    You are still eating 1200, you just are burning 200 of those off.
  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    So is it equivalent to eating 1000 calories and doing no exercise?
  • HedgehogsAreCute
    HedgehogsAreCute Posts: 6 Member
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    ^ What she said!

    If you're just getting into weight loss (New Year's and all that), then you're probably going from something like 2500 calories (or more!) per day to 1200. You will be hungry. It will suck. You will think about food. You will drive by fast food restaurants and think about how good a burger or burrito would be. You will try to use any reasoning you can to get more calories; that's just your body reacting to the sudden loss in food you're eating. So that 200 calories from exercising means a candy bar, and that's going to be really hard to say no to.

    But you need to. Be disciplined, stick to those numbers, don't get discouraged when your weight doesn't go down, and don't get complacent when it does. You can do it!
  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    I'm not going to be eating 1200 I'll be having 1800 lol! Just I new if I put "if I burn 800 kcal while eating 1800, is equivalent to eating 1000" everyone would laugh thinking I could burn 800 a sesh lol! I just wanted the math, thanks for the info though :smiley:
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    Jayj180894 wrote: »
    I'm not going to be eating 1200 I'll be having 1800 lol! Just I new if I put "if I burn 800 kcal while eating 1800, is equivalent to eating 1000" everyone would laugh thinking I could burn 800 a sesh lol! I just wanted the math, thanks for the info though :smiley:

    Don't do that ^^ either. It's worrying that both your examples seem to be aimed at producing a net 1000-calorie intake.
  • Slasher09
    Slasher09 Posts: 316 Member
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    Jayj180894 wrote: »
    I'm not going to be eating 1200 I'll be having 1800 lol! Just I new if I put "if I burn 800 kcal while eating 1800, is equivalent to eating 1000" everyone would laugh thinking I could burn 800 a sesh lol! I just wanted the math, thanks for the info though :smiley:

    Also remember that your body is always burning calories. That's why looking at it simply by "if I eat X and burn Y, it's like I ate Z" isn't getting the whole picture. Your BMR is going to depend on a lot of factors and if you set your MFP for your goals it will calculate based on that. So because you are ALWAYS burning whether you intend to or not, it gets messy to look at it that way.

    I find it much simpler to look at "am I in a deficit?" Adjust the cals or the fitness to get there, much simpler than juggling all the math IMO

  • dinadyna21
    dinadyna21 Posts: 403 Member
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    Wouldn't you rather use that 200 calories burned for a small portion of your favorite treat or an extra baked chicken tender on your dinner plate? That way you don't feel deprived.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,070 Member
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    Jayj180894 wrote: »
    I'm not going to be eating 1200 I'll be having 1800 lol! Just I new if I put "if I burn 800 kcal while eating 1800, is equivalent to eating 1000" everyone would laugh thinking I could burn 800 a sesh lol! I just wanted the math, thanks for the info though :smiley:

    It's still a bad idea to net 1000 calories, unless your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is very, very low in the first place, as it might be for someone tiny and old. (*)

    Heck, it may even be worse to do it as 1800-800 (vs. 1200-200), because a calorie deficit of any sort puts stress on one's body, and intense workouts stress the body, too. Your math is correct, your plan not so good.

    (* As a pretty-old (62) and pretty-small (5'5", 120s) person, 1000 net calories would half kill me if I did it consistently. I can handle 800 calorie workouts, but not the 1200+ calorie daily underfueling of my 2200-ish NEAT, let alone the resulting estimated 3000 calorie TDEE. While losing around 3 years back, I tried 1200 net briefly at around 150 pounds, eating back 400ish exercise calories most days on top of it, and even that caused problems).

  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    No no no don't worry, I'm not planning on doing 800 kcal workouts, I don't want to be 1000kcal daily, I was just trying to workout in head if a workout that burned x amount of calories wold be the same as not eating x amount of kcal. Just thought it'd be easier to explain that way. Atm I'll be eating at 1800 and to be honest at this moment in time, whatever exercise I do whether it burns 50 kcal or 300 kcal Ill be happy
  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    It's just the round numbers helped it in my head if you get me lol!
  • Jayj180894
    Jayj180894 Posts: 286 Member
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    My net will be well above 1000, and more than likely be between 1600 and 1800, I was just using examples, Sorry I should of put that in the first place lol
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    Jayj180894 wrote: »
    No no no don't worry, I'm not planning on doing 800 kcal workouts, I don't want to be 1000kcal daily, I was just trying to workout in head if a workout that burned x amount of calories wold be the same as not eating x amount of kcal. Just thought it'd be easier to explain that way. Atm I'll be eating at 1800 and to be honest at this moment in time, whatever exercise I do whether it burns 50 kcal or 300 kcal Ill be happy


    Jayj180894 wrote: »
    It's just the round numbers helped it in my head if you get me lol!

    OK, that makes sense. Good luck.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,070 Member
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    Jayj180894 wrote: »
    My net will be well above 1000, and more than likely be between 1600 and 1800, I was just using examples, Sorry I should of put that in the first place lol

    Good: I'm relieved to hear it! :)

    (We get too many people coming here with crazy-extreme ideas, maybe from reality TV weight loss shows, I dunno. Gotta nip that nonsense in the bud before it spreads like an infection and makes even more people unhealthy. ;) )

    If you have a very slow weight loss rate going (much slower than your healthy moderate maximum loss) and you have small exercise calorie burns, it's probably OK to let your exercise add to your calorie deficit (not eat the exercise calories back). If your estimates are accurate, the effect on weight loss of 100 calories not eaten is similar to the effect of 100 calories extra exercise (just a little less nutrition).

    If your weight loss target is high (near healthy maxumum), or exercise burn is high, not eating back exercise risks getting weak, fatigued, sick, losing muscle, and other bad things. It would probably make you down-regulate daily activity (i.e, lay around doing less in between exercise and minimally required chores) and not achieve the expected weight loss rate, as a consequence, besides.

    Strategies in between those extremes have risk levels in between too.

    Keep it safe & healthy, as you say your real plan is, and all will be well.

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