Banks...question

TamTastic

I had posted this yesterday in another post......this was my past week before weighing on Thursday. This has been pretty average lately.

I am just trying to get a good idea of how many calories to eat, especially on the days I work out. I think I am fine on the days I don't. Also, the calories burned is based on the elliptical (which I enter my weight into).....I know it's not exact. Should I subtract like 150 calories from it to make sure I don't go over? I don't think I could ever eat ALL my exercise calories anyway but it's good to know.

Also, my numbers are, I am 195 lbs, 5' 5" and 33. I am not working but stay at home with my 17 month old. Not really sedentary! LOL! I can never sit for very long with him around.

Ok, here goes:
Thursday: 1520 calories consumed/ 814 burned
Friday: 1544 calories consumed
Saturday: 1361 calories consumed/ 784 burned
Sunday: 1671 calories consumed/ 762 burned
Monday: 1506 consumed
Tuesday:1609 consumed/805 burned
Wednesday: 1514 consumed

Thanks! I am just trying to get to the bottom of my plateau!

TamTastic

I had posted this yesterday in another post......this was my past week before weighing on Thursday. This has been pretty average lately.

I am just trying to get a good idea of how many calories to eat, especially on the days I work out. I think I am fine on the days I don't. Also, the calories burned is based on the elliptical (which I enter my weight into).....I know it's not exact. Should I subtract like 150 calories from it to make sure I don't go over? I don't think I could ever eat ALL my exercise calories anyway but it's good to know.

Also, my numbers are, I am 195 lbs, 5' 5" and 33. I am not working but stay at home with my 17 month old. Not really sedentary! LOL! I can never sit for very long with him around.

Ok, here goes:
Thursday: 1520 calories consumed/ 814 burned
Friday: 1544 calories consumed
Saturday: 1361 calories consumed/ 784 burned
Sunday: 1671 calories consumed/ 762 burned
Monday: 1506 consumed
Tuesday:1609 consumed/805 burned
Wednesday: 1514 consumed

Thanks! I am just trying to get to the bottom of my plateau!

kelpie06

Not banks, but just did some quick math. I took off the 10% that someone in the other thread said that their trainer said to subtract from what the machines say, and then took the average of your net cals over 7 days and you had 1125 cals average per day. I think that might be too low.

I tend to be on the low side too, and had hit a bit of a standstill, but for the past two weeks I have been eating about 200 or 300 more cals a day and I started dropping again. I find that if I listen to my body it tells me when I need to eat something.

TamTastic

Not banks, but just did some quick math. I took off the 10% that someone in the other thread said that their trainer said to subtract from what the machines say, and then took the average of your net cals over 7 days and you had 1125 cals average per day. I think that might be too low.

I tend to be on the low side too, and had hit a bit of a standstill, but for the past two weeks I have been eating about 200 or 300 more cals a day and I started dropping again. I find that if I listen to my body it tells me when I need to eat something.

Ok, so say for example, when the elliptical says I burned 800 calories, I will bring it down to about 700. And on the days I burn that much, when I normally eat around 1500, I should bump it up to 1800-1900 calories to keep my NET calories at 1200. Yikes. That seems like A LOT of calories!! hehe

kelpie06

That is the way I understand it. It is scary, but in theory it makes sense. These past two weeks I've felt like I was eating WAY too much, but for me it worked. I think your motabolism gets reved up when it sees your body getting good food often during the day.

There is a good post, I think it was yesterday about speeding up your motabolism. I'll try and find it....

kelpie06

This is the post that I found interesting:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/11174-hunger-is-a-good-thing

In the past few weeks I started getting really hungry during the whole day and at first I tried to ignore it, eat at my designated times and keep my calories at the level I thought I was supposed to. But then I thought, I'm going to eat when I am hungry, something healthy and low cal, but eat just the same. And like I said before I dropped off another pound. Our bodies are smart if we learn how to listen to them...

banks1850

Hi Tam,

so this is what I got for you:

You're calories for Maintenance right now should be somewhere between 2000 and 2100 calories for a relatively active lifestyle.

On days you don't work out it looks like you are consuming the right amount of calories (you could even go down 100 or so if you like).
On days you do work out it looks like you are consuming too few calories.

Since you work out more days then you don't work out that's probably tipping the scales for you in a negative sense. On days that you work out I would consider upping your calories by (and this depends on your workout) say 400 calories. That would bring you up to a total of around 2000 calories on days that you work out. The reason I say this is because on days that you work out it looks like you are burning somewhere in the neighborhood of 2700 to 2800 calories. An 800 calorie deficit should be enough to keep your body out of starvation mode. This will facilitate about 1.5 lbs per week.

The reason why I don't say go higher is this:
For most people with a BMI over 30, they have not started exercising or are exercising very lightly, which means while they have a lot of fat, they probably have a much lower ratio of muscle then someone who (you for example) has been working out vigorously for at least 3 months. Now that you have a higher muscle ratio, in order to feed those muscle properly you do need to intake calories. There will still be plenty of fat burn going on, but there is also new muscle growth, also, I would experiment with changing up your exercise types. Even if you do intervals with your eliptical, it's still the same body motion, and your muscles are probably getting VERY efficient at this motion, and that means they aren't working as hard as they could. Give the step machine a try, or try doing some swimming if you can (just once a week should do it). I imagine the muscles in your upper body are still relatively unused (I'm assuming that you pretty much use the eliptical exclusively). Changing up your routine even just once a week can have a large impact on your caloric burn.

I hope this helps.

SIDE note: Remember folks, I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. So take what I am giving for what it's worth. It's just an opinion, granted, I'm a big mouth and I do a lot of research, but I'm still just a layman. So take what I say, think about it, and if you find me in error, please, say it (nicely I hope :flowerforyou: ). I'm not above a little constructive critisism here and there.

TamTastic

Thanks Banks! I appreciate it!

banks1850

Thanks Banks! I appreciate it!

My pleasure. Let us know how it goes for you. :happy: