Question about calories & exercise

lzvbeantown

Hi All!

I'm new to this website and have a question regarding the calories and exercise. So the website told me I need to eat 1,200 net calories a day. Yesterday for example I ended up eating 1,150 (1,515 from food minus the 365 from exercise). Am I doing it correctly? I use a heart rate monitor to be accurate on my calories burned from the cardio exercises but usually don't track strenght training and play tennis some days together with going to the gym. Should I be eating more?

I got a little confused with the goals section here that state the normal daily activity etc so any tips you guys have to be sucessful would be great! I'm 31 y/o and ideally want to lose 15-17 lbs.

Thanks!!

mulecanter

I think you are ok. I'm no expert yet but most of what I've seen other really successful folks say is that you should get your net calories close to your MFP goal. The weight training doesn't log calories because its too variable. I'd call that margin for errors in food logging. Most advise that you will need to see how your body does in terms of weight loss based on your net. If you have the rate you are shooting for (say 2lbs a week), then its working. If you don't lose you can either be eating too much or too little. I think you are probably pretty close now, see how it goes.

ChangingAmanda

Yep, that's the way it works. Using a HRM will give you a better estimate of cals burned than the MFP calculator. Also, if you find that 1200 cal goal is too little for you, this post is a great read and has wonderful resources for calculating calorie needs: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/974888-in-place-of-a-road-map-2k13. MFP put me at like 1280 when I started and it was way too low for me. I now shoot for 1600+exercise based on my HRM and have been doing really well.

Good luck!

lzvbeantown

Thank you so much guys!!! I will stay close to my MFP calories after working out and then see how it goes then!