Calories burned to maintain

hml_rachel

I'm 18 years old, 5'5 and weigh 131lbs. I just started to try and maintain and MFP said to eat around 1860 (not including exercise). I use fitness blender for most of my workouts and if I use their calculated number of calories burned (the lowest number) I burn 1542 calories in a week. About 250 - 280 a day/6x a week. My workout includes 3 hiit workouts and 3 total body strength training workouts in a week. Each workout is around 30 min. Should I include a bit more exercise into my workout to increase by calories burned or is 1542 ok?

Also the number 1542 is just an estimate of course but do you think this should be enough to maintain?

PaytraB

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking.

You'll have to find out (through trial and error) where your maintenance calories are. MFP gives an estimate but your body and lifestyle will be different and may need more or less calories than MFP says.

If I'm reading your post correctly, MFP says you need 1860 calories/day (no exercise) and you work out approx. 200 calories a day (on average). This wold mean that if both are true, your daily calorie limit would be closer to 2000 calores/day, which sounds about right.
In reality, you may find that at 2000 calories/day, you're still losing or you are gaining. You'll have to watch that and find what works for you.

I'm at the point myself. I find the MFP's estimate of my daily calories is low and by following it, I'm still slowly losing. So I've upped my daily calories and am now monitoring it for a month to see what happens.