Eating my calories

blazing2011

I just joined this site and am trying to loose around 30 pounds. I am currently 5'10" 233 lb. According to the calculator on this site I should be eating a little over 1500 calories a day to loose 2 pounds per week. I also go to the gym 3-4 times per week and do some weight training but mostly interval cardio. All of these seemed pretty straight forward until I starting reading all this stuff about making sure I eat all my calories and making sure I eat my exercise calories. I understand the science behind it and it makes total sense that my body would go into starvation mode and store fat if I don't eat enough. All this makes sense except for one thing: Yesterday I only ate 1100 calories and did 45 minutes of intense cardo on the stair master, and today I only ate 1300 calories, but I'm NEVER that hungry! According to everything I read on this sight my body would be going to starvation mode, but I am far from starving. It just doesn't make sense to me to go and eat more food just to get to 1500 or to 1900 if I do 45 minutes of stair master if I'm not even hungry. Wouldn't my body be telling me through hunger pains if it was going into starvation mode? It seems like people on this site know what they are talking about but I don't see what sense it makes to eat more food if I'm not hungry.

yayala66

I agree with what you are saying. When I watch The Biggest Loser, they are eating very little and exercising all the time. And they are losing a lot of weight each week. I don't get it.

Mrs_McFadden

I'm new to this as well but I read this around here, yesterday:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing

It's good for giving a little insight on how even with lower calories our bodies could refuse to cooperate lol.
Good luck!

inpaperclouds

If you aren't hungry, don't eat...
You don't NEED to eat more than 1200 calories (I've been eating under 1000 and my metabolism hasn't changed according to the electrical scale..)
I also never eat my exercise calories. I worked too hard to burn them, I don't want to re-eat them.

so if you eat 1200 calories and you aren't hungry, just stay at that.

jen051279

I completely understand where you are coming from. I am supposed to eat 1200 calories a day and some days I am burning 400-500 calories. I can't eat 1700 calories of food nd feel like I'm stuffing myself. I am looking forward to see what other people have to say

teawithtennyson

I just joined too and am having those same questions about the extra calories. I wonder if just drinking them would be okay (not in an unhealthy way...but fruit or veggie juice or milk)?? My first thought would be that your body will tell you when it is hungry and full, but I know that I have messed those signals up for so many years that I cannot fully trust myself to be in tune with whether I AM actually hungry or full right now. Hopefully we will both get some guidance here, but I suppose the scale will tell us something as well. If you are feeling good and losing weight and getting stronger, then that would be a good sign you are on the right track, correct?

Pandorian

To stick with the BL example they all tend to have large amounts of weight to lose, they can afford to exercise more without eating all the calories they're burning because they have built in fat reserves.

blazing2011

Glad to see that other people are thinking the same thing as me. I could maybe see eating enough of my exercise calories to keep my net intake above 1200, unless I feel like I need more food. Maybe the issue is that I am now eating super healthy food. Steel cut whole grain oatmeal and hard boiled eggs (whites only) in the morning, lean protein and veg's for lunch and dinner. I get pretty much all my carbs from oatmeal and using beans in things that I cook. I also started taking a good multivitamin. Just 2 weeks ago I was eating burger king, lots of white bread and pasta, snacking late a night. Maybe my body doesn't feel like it needs as many calories because all the food I am eating is healthy.

Spitfirex007

There are a bunch of threads on this topic. I don't eat them. I see no point in busting my *kitten* in the gym, then running home and stuffing my face when I'm not even hungry. A lot of people say it's to fuel your body. But I feel the same regardless if I do or don't. Maybe older people need those extra calories? I don't know.

anubis609

To keep it short and sweet, you're supposed to have a healthy deficit of 500 - 1000 calories a day for 1 - 2 lbs of weight loss a week. It's simple math logic. Not everyone likes math, nor do their bodies. For studies dedicated to proving that, a high percentage of the people they studied ended up having a rebound effect from having a huge calorie deficit in their daily intake, which included creating the deficit through exercise. A small percentage of people maintained their weight loss without any negative effects.

There are many people who can sustain themselves with a deficit of hundreds, and for a rare few, thousands, of calories in their daily intake. Using myself as an example, I knowingly and willingly created an approximated 3000 - 4000 calorie deficit almost everyday for several months, and did not rebound in the 10 months I started losing weight. Yes, the weight loss was rapid, but it didn't take a harsh toll on my metabolism. The consequences were there to begin with, such as a spiked elevated fluctuation in weight [usually half gained from what I would lose] for a few days, at the most, but it was never long-term. As my body adjusted to its new weight, actual weight-loss plateaus occurred, where there was minimal to no fluctuation up or down in weight. Those plateaus are normal for everyone, including the metabolic anomalies.

So, are you "supposed" to eat them back? For the slow progression of weekly weight loss, yes. Do you have to? It's your body and you're allowed to do whatever you want with it, regardless of opinion from society, so no. You don't have to.