calories vs exercise

fmccorkle
fmccorkle Posts: 3
edited September 26 in Health and Weight Loss
I have gotten a bit discouraged becasue I enter the calories and then record my exercise for the day and then I get messages saying I haven't logged enough calories. I try to stay right at 1200 calories a day, but then if I walk and do stair stepping, or even a couple hours of gardening it totally wipes out the calories. Then I get the messages about the calories issue. Do I just ignore the messages? Or am I doing something wrong?

Replies

  • DKBelle
    DKBelle Posts: 585
    You are not eating enough calorie! Check out this site.
    http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm
  • hensonsc87
    hensonsc87 Posts: 2
    I am having the same problem. and My weight loss has stalled for 2 weeks now, not sure what to do
  • Hmf414
    Hmf414 Posts: 30
    You need to eat back the calories that you lose, that's probably why it's giving you that warning. So if you eat 1200 calories but you burned 600 calories you need to eat back at least half of those calories!
  • fteale
    fteale Posts: 5,310 Member
    Ignore the messages.
  • strandedeyes
    strandedeyes Posts: 392 Member
    Its simple... eat more calories...

    MFP already installs a deficit to your cal goals, so you do need to eat your exercise cals back the best to your abilities. So say this... your daily goal is 1200 cals... and you burn 500...your body is going to believe you only ate 700 (that is if you eat the full 1200 which you should)....so you need to eat the 500 more to get your body believing that you have inputed into your system the 1200...

    I am sure someone will be awesome enough to post threads with better answers but eat more cals!
  • WifeMomDVM
    WifeMomDVM Posts: 1,025 Member
    Please read this:

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

    It's EYE OPENING!!!!
  • gfes
    gfes Posts: 1
    Your body needs fuel to be able to do all the exercising. The more you exercise, the more calories you can take in. It's not just about counting calories. You need to factor in the exercise too.
  • WifeMomDVM
    WifeMomDVM Posts: 1,025 Member
    Ignore the messages.

    Please don't - that WARNING is there for a reason! Your body WILL start to hang on to every calorie you feed it if your NET consumption is below 1200/day, resulting in difficult, if not impossible, weight loss.
  • jkestens63
    jkestens63 Posts: 1,164 Member
    You need to eat most of the calories back. When Mfp figures out your daily calorie goal, it already accounts for the calorie deficit you need to lose weight. In addition if you don't eat what you burn, your body doesn't have enough to function on so your weight loss will stall.

    Think of it this way. If you eat 1200 calories and then burn 1100 (which is what I do most days) exercising, that leaves 100 calories for your body to function on for every other thing you do like breathing, showering, walking around the office at work, etc. Obviously you need more than 100 calories to do that. So you might say great, I'll use up my fat stores and I'll lose weight faster. But it doesn't work that way. For whatever reason ( I'm no scientist) your metabolism shuts down and holds onto every calorie/ounce because it doesn't know when it will get adequate nutrition.

    I eat on average 2100 calories a day because I exercise hard and I've lost a lot of weight.
  • Ms_Natalie
    Ms_Natalie Posts: 1,030 Member
    Hi there, I've moved your post to the "General Diet and Weight Loss Help" section as you may gain more replies from this area of the forum.

    :flowerforyou:
  • rmhand
    rmhand Posts: 1,067 Member
    i've never had it say that as long as I eat all 1200 calories... I suppose I might not be burning enough...
  • btmixon
    btmixon Posts: 55 Member
    BUMP
  • anniebnannie
    anniebnannie Posts: 85 Member
    Since being on MFP (and I'm not a pro at this) it seems that there are TWO different schools of thought on this.... one is that you need to eat the calories you burn back and that if you don't you're body will "believe" it's starving and hold onto the fat... though so far there is no scientific proof of this, though I can see how it makes sense.

    Others disagree and don't eat the exercise calories back. I think if you are HUNGRY then you need to eat something... small healthy meals or snacks throughout the day keeping it at 1200 (for a woman average) makes the most sense to me if you want to lose weight and then you have a buffer of those exercise calories if you happen to go over on some days. If you want to maintain then your calorie intake should be more.

    I would ignore the warnings...
  • blakgarnet
    blakgarnet Posts: 343
    many have already addressed the problem, and I am sure there are others who will also add and do so better than I can.

    Your body needs to net 1200 calories to avoid starvation mode (more for some of us, I have mine set to 1400), if you burn some of those through exercise, your body needs more to avoid starvation mode. If you don't want to eat all your exercise calories back, then at least eat some of them to get yourself back up to a net of 1200.

    search around for starvation mode, plateau and other key words to find more on this topic, it's been addressed a bunch so there's tons of good info out there.
  • olyrose
    olyrose Posts: 569 Member
    One thing, though, if you do eat back your exercise calories (it really works for me and as soon as I figured it out the weight started dropping) is make sure you really know how many calories your exercise is burning. If you add up all the little things you do through the day as is categorized by MFP, likely you are over-estimating how many you burned. So if you eat back that amount, you could go over. I only count the intentional exercise, like a brisk walk, elliptical, workout video.
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