Goal calorie minus exercise calories opinion needed

lms32164

I am becoming more acitve as summer has arrived and try to do as much as I can while healing a bad knee. Right now my goal calories are set for 1750 a day and I have my goal set to loose 1 lb a week. I am progressing nicely. Today I have burned 484 calories between my recumbant bike and swimming. The swimming makes me more hungry so I just make wise choices and have a snack of baby carrots and hummus or something light on calories like that. Today I have eaten 1800 calories so 50 of that was taken from my burned calories from exercising. I was hoping to be about 100 under my goal calories but I have been real hungry today. Should I worry about that as long as I know the rest of my day is already journaled and accounted for in my 1750? Thanks for you advice.

tmarie2715

I am by far an expert, but I had similar questions a lot before I got some good answers I could understand.

MFP already calculated that 1750 as your goal based on your fitness profile and how much / fast you want to lose, so you should be eating back your exercise calories and not adding to that with a deficit every day. I know their "you've completed your day and been under the calorie limit!" makes it sound like a great thing. It is a bit misleading, IMO, but the above is what I hear from people who seem to know more than I do.

Hope that helps.

barbiecat

:flowerforyou: when I exercise more, my body tells me I need more nutrition and so I eat more.......I only eat nutritious foods and it works for me.:bigsmile:

Midimoho

This is the exact thing I was wondering. My target calories per day is 1200 and I thought that including my exercise if I stayed around a 400-500 deficit every day, I should be losing faster. I've only been doing this for a month and while most days I stay under my 1200 limit, some days I go over by 100. I haven't lost one pound! I am doing cardio and strength training and getting stronger but I had hoped to have lost at least a pound or 2.

cheshirechic

In my humble and far-from-expert opinion, I'd eat them back with something healthy-- try to balance the macronutrients out that you have left. For example, if you have protein left, eat some extra chicken (carefully weighed, of course) at dinner. Carbs? Then have fruit or veggies, maybe some extra brown rice with dinner.

I always eat back my exercise calories, and avoid any deficit that's over 100 calories, given that MFP already has me at a deficit of 500 (so, I never eat less than 600 calories for my BMR, which would put me at about 1270). I'd rather lose a little slower than be hungry. I hope this helps, and good luck!

tigersword

MFP already includes a calorie deficit/surplus for your specific goal you set. So if you set to lose weight, it already counts that. So if you eat 1200 calories and you burn 500 from exercise, essentially you've only eaten 700 calories for the whole day. The key to remember is "net calories." Net calories are the calories you've eaten minus the calories you've burned from exercise. So if your goal is 1200, and you burn 500 at the gym, you need to eat 1700 that day to reach your net goal of 1200. Eating too little can cause you to stop losing weight, as your body hangs on to energy because it worries about running out.

lms32164

Thank you everyone. I feel better now. : )