Help! I only ate half my allotted daily calories today.

tssa

I'm a little confused on this calorie thing. I admit I've never counedt calories before and a little insight on the subject would be great.

I entered all the food I ate today, piece by piece, even disected meals. At the end I only ate half of my allotted calories for today. I worked out today and burned 135 calories.

Ok so.... is this a good thing or should I eat something else tonight? I'm honestly satisfied and not even hungry.

Any feedback is appreciated....

Thanks

***Feel free to add me***

Balishdear

I havent really gotten the hang of getting it just right, there was one day that I ate almost double, and then today I had 550 calories left.

pixietoes

There is a learning curve when you start counting calories and some days you are going to find that you just haven't done enough eating. Especially when you're at the beginning of a new nutrition program it's easy to be over enthusiastic and fail to eat enough to sustain your body. Also when you're sick it can be hard to eat enough. But here's the thing to remember, you're not on a diet, you're learning to eat in a way that helps you to be healthy for the long haul.

Your body needs a minimum number of daily calories to be healthy. It will not thank you for eating less than that and it will not reward you with fast, permanent weight loss. Also, you will get "diet fatigue" if you deprive yourself (even if you don't feel deprived at the moment). So in my timezone today is almost in the bag and I say don't worry about it, but learn from this experience. You need to eat meals that are roughly twice as big as you did today, or you need to eat twice as many meals.

Good luck.

anewmeat50

you should eat at least 1200 calories a day plus eat your calories that you exercised. so your body dont go in to starvation mode.

mamagooskie

If you ate over 1200 calories (net) I'd say you are okay but honestly you will find the closer you eat to your goal the more you will lose. if you workout eat those too or at least some of them. Try never to eat less than 1200 in a day.

tssa

Thanks ladies for the feedback.

I've been making healthier food choices lately, nothing so drastic where I feel deprived but just healthier options. So basically what you all are saying is just eat a little bit more of these healthier foods to meet or at least get close enough to my daily calorie target?

In addition....so drinking the after workout protein shake or fruit smoothie is not going to disregard the calories I burned right?
:huh:

Pebble321

No, drinking a smoothie or taking in more calories is not going to undo all your hard work exercising! Think of it as giving your body good fuel to do good work - you don't expect your car to drive when the petrol tank is empty, right?

The important thing to remember is that MFP has calculated a calorie deficit for you, in other words it has done the maths already to give you numbers of calories that will let you lose weight.
When you add in exercise that means you need to eat more calories, but you still have the deficit as long as you are at or close to your NET calorie goal.

tssa

No, drinking a smoothie or taking in more calories is not going to undo all your hard work exercising! Think of it as giving your body good fuel to do good work - you don't expect your car to drive when the petrol tank is empty, right?

The important thing to remember is that MFP has calculated a calorie deficit for you, in other words it has done the maths already to give you numbers of calories that will let you lose weight.
When you add in exercise that means you need to eat more calories, but you still have the deficit as long as you are at or close to your NET calorie goal.

Makes perfect sense now, Rubybelle. Thanks!