Exercise Calories. To use or not to use???

danricketts10

I have been doing a lot of walking. Trying to get over 15000 steps a day. When you are given calories through exercise should I be using some of those or ignoring them. I have been at least 2000 calories below my daily allowance plus those earned by walking...... will my body go into starvation mode as I don’t really lose anything even though eating well and exercising. PLEASE HELP!!

kgirlhart

If you used mfp to set your goal then you are supposed to log exercise and eat back the calories it gives you. If you have a tracker linked to mfp then you should eat back the adjustment calories. Starvation mode isn't really a thing. Under eating won't cause you to not lose weight. It can cause lots of health issues though.

Azurite27

kgirlhart wrote: »

If you used mfp to set your goal then you are supposed to log exercise and eat back the calories it gives you. If you have a tracker linked to mfp then you should eat back the adjustment calories. Starvation mode isn't really a thing. Under eating won't cause you to not lose weight. It can cause lots of health issues though.

Exactly this

AnnPT77

danricketts10 wrote: »

I have been doing a lot of walking. Trying to get over 15000 steps a day. When you are given calories through exercise should I be using some of those or ignoring them. I have been at least 2000 calories below my daily allowance plus those earned by walking...... will my body go into starvation mode as I don’t really lose anything even though eating well and exercising. PLEASE HELP!!

How long have you been doing this and not "really losing anything", and how much is "not really anything" (i.e., have you lost a bit, and in how much time)?

If you let MFP set your goal, and you're logging your eating carefully, and estimating your exercise reasonably accurately, you should be eating back the exercise calories. Doing otherwise risks your health and energy level.

If you have a slow weight loss goal (slow proportional to your size), and do relatively little exercise, then it's probably safe to skip eating the exercise calories, and let them increase your weight loss rate. If you have an aggressive weight loss rate for your current size, and do large amounts of exercise, not eating those calories would be very risky, indeed. Bad things can happen: Gallbladder problems, hair loss, etc.

In between those two extremes, it's about your risk tolerance, and how much abuse your body can take. Be cautious.

There is not "starvation mode" where you eat too little, hold onto fat, and can't lose weight. There's an effect where if you undereat persistently, you'll get listless, fatigued, weak, so move less and rest/sleep more (including subtle things like fidgeting). If that happens, you'll lose slower than you might have expected, but you'll lose weight anytime you actually eat fewer calories than you actually burn. (There will be times when water weight fluctuations, which are part of how a healthy body functions, will mask the fat loss temporarily, so you are only going to be clearly seeing fat loss over a longer periods of week(s).)

If people stopped losing weight entirely when they eat less than they burn, no one would ever starve to death. Sadly, many people worldwide starve to death every day, and they aren't fat when that happens.

Frankly, it's probable that either you're not logging accurately on the eating/exercise sides, expecting unrealistic reality-TV weight loss rates too quickly, or experiencing water weight hiding fat-loss progress. Any of those are things you can work to improve.

Best wishes!