Should I eat ALL calories burned from exercise?

purplehair82

Hi folks, my weight loss is at a stand-still, and has been for awhile. I have been tracking on and off since May, but have done it every day since the beginning of September. I am very conscious about my protein and fiber intake.

I'm 5'3", small build 127-128 pounds, and I'd like to be down to 124. I eat 1200 calories a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. When it's more, normally my exercise cancels it out and I still have calories left on top of that. I run three times a week and do weight training. I'm also tracking inches lost.

In the past month, I have lost two pounds but then gained a pound back. I also lost an inch and gained it back. The week that I gained it back, I had eaten more calories earned from my running, with one or two non-running days that peaked around 1500. This past week, I was back eating at 1200 or a little more or a little less, and didn't eat my calories earned from running. I am still up that pound.

I know you're supposed to eat more when you exercise, but if I only eat until I'm full, I come in well below 1200 calories, regardless of my physical exertion for the day. And I KNOW women aren't supposed to eat under 1200 calories a day, but on most days, this does seem too much for me. Does anyone else feel the same way? Has anyone spoken to a doctor or dietician about eating less?

I'm tempted to try eating more on days where I'm physically active, but this would feel like forcing myself to eat when I'm not hungry, and I'm nervous that I would gain.

chriskaprys

I'm curious to see what informative replies are left here. I'm wondering along a similar line. I'm male, 5'6", and have recently given up a nearly-all junk food diet and started exercising properly and eating properly and keeping a food diary here. Though I never found it difficult to gorge myself before on sweets and junk, typically snacking all day long, now that I'm keeping a food diary and exercising, I find it very difficult to eat _enough_ calories! Today I had extra time to work out really hard, so I did two sessions, but that added over 1,000 calories to my daily total. I'd already eaten a great big breakfast, and in fact had to wait on my exercise for even longer than usual because I felt so full. Yet at the end of the day, since I've started keeping track, I'm still being told by the chart math that I'm not eating / missing between 600-900 calories of intake. I don't want to eat until I feel gross and bloated, especially when I plan to exercise not too much later in the day.

sbjmorgan

Eat only up to half of your exercise cals back, and if you're having trouble meeting calorie goals, add healthy fats like nuts and olive oil. That will get you there.

Adw7677

Don't ever eat when you aren't hungry. It took me years to figure that out. For me, it all works out thru the month. I'll be less hungry one week, but ravenous a few weeks later. I always seem to go over during that ravenous week. So if I was to eat "extra" during my not-hungry week, then that would really throw me over for the month.

But it also makes sense to me that 200 years ago - before calories and tracking and processed food and obesity and all this crap - people ate when they were hungry. Period. That's it. That should still hold true, as long as we're eating decent foods.

heybales

Try the spreadsheet on my profile page. Because MFP is going to stop at 1200 no matter your size, and you may have lost enough muscle mass through dieting plus being short, that there just is on option but going lower.

But you want accurate count of food eaten because you have narrow margin for error - must weigh all foods eaten, even packaged items and do the math for package size and serving size eaten.

In spreadsheet, stay on Simple Setup tab and Progress tab only.
Look at current sample data in yellow cells, change if desired to see how it effects daily eating goal.
Then delete all the yellow cell sample data, and get your own stats in there. Some is option, some you should have, some just think about. Like how many minutes of exercise do you generally do at different levels.

This gives a TDEE deficit method, same goal daily, based on what exercise you plan on doing. Many have found it better because then you don't need to know the exact calories burned in a workout, just close enough. The balance between days helps.

And then after a month of accurate food logging and weight loss, the Progress tab has a TDEE calculator based on actual results to adjust as needed and keep losing.

IsaCaliBel

You really don't have much to lose.
I'm curious if you should be focusing more on body composition/body fat % instead of weight loss? At least that's what I would do.

jeremywm1977

Try the spreadsheet on my profile page. Because MFP is going to stop at 1200 no matter your size, and you may have lost enough muscle mass through dieting plus being short, that there just is on option but going lower.

But you want accurate count of food eaten because you have narrow margin for error - must weigh all foods eaten, even packaged items and do the math for package size and serving size eaten.

In spreadsheet, stay on Simple Setup tab and Progress tab only.
Look at current sample data in yellow cells, change if desired to see how it effects daily eating goal.
Then delete all the yellow cell sample data, and get your own stats in there. Some is option, some you should have, some just think about. Like how many minutes of exercise do you generally do at different levels.

This gives a TDEE deficit method, same goal daily, based on what exercise you plan on doing. Many have found it better because then you don't need to know the exact calories burned in a workout, just close enough. The balance between days helps.

And then after a month of accurate food logging and weight loss, the Progress tab has a TDEE calculator based on actual results to adjust as needed and keep losing.

This, this, and double this..........I love heybales spreadsheet.
MFP needs to find a way to incorporate heybales macros into their website. Once I used his spreadsheet to figure out how to set up my macros, and hence, the number of calories I should be eating, I was losing weight steadily.......no more rollercoaster pattern.

purplehair82

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I will try the spreadsheet. Also, IsaCaliBel, I am measuring inches lost as well.

Another slight gain in weight and inches today. :-(