Calories Burned?!

zacpants

This is so confusing to me!

So for example.. my goal is 1200 calories. I've eaten 781, burned 785 so my net is -4.
Now that ISN'T good? Should I be shoving 1204 calories down my throat by the end of the day?

From what I have learnt this week you need too add 785 cals to your daily intake. If you look at your diary it will automatically calculate it for you! So in total you will eat 1985. Hope i'm working out ok!

GenerationD05

I agree with the mentality of "If you're hungry, eat" I understand that you're burning the fuel that is considered food when you exercise, but when I work out two separate times of the day, especially at night (11pm EST) and lose around 500 calories with the latter time, I'm not going to eat all that back. I eat when I am hungry and when I am, I make sure that it's healthy. That might not be the "right" thing to do, but why would I do something that I don't want to? haha. I've never gotten my net to 1200 and I don't feel hungry or drained of energy or like I'm going to pass out or anything else that's bad. I feel like I usually do. If anything, I'm going to bed earlier but I think that's because I'm exercising and that has always made me tired. Everyone is different. What works for someone, might not work for another.

tigersword

This is so confusing to me!

So for example.. my goal is 1200 calories. I've eaten 781, burned 785 so my net is -4.
Now that ISN'T good? Should I be shoving 1204 calories down my throat by the end of the day?

Yes.

Look, it's very simple. Let's try an exercise. Go to your goals and set them to maintain weight. Now look at the calories you are supposed to eat. That's how many calories you are supposed to eat every day to maintain weight (hint, it's a lot more than you're eating now.) Now you set it to lose x pounds a week. MFP automatically subtracts those calories required to lose that weight. So instead of eating 2000 calories a day, it sets you at 1500. That equals one pound a week weight loss. So you eat 1500 calories in a day. Now you exercise and burn 500 calories. So of the 1500 calories you ate, you just burned off 500 of them, so you've only left 1000 calories for your body to use for it's normal daily functions (ya know, breathing, pumping the heart, the little things...) So now you need to eat those extra 500 calories to get back to 1500. The other way to do it, is to eat 2000 calories, then exercise and burn 500 calories, and either way, your net is 1500.

You can't do both, because then the human body panics. It doesn't understand "dieting." It works in instinct. You're eating much less. You're exercising hard, burning most of the calories from eating. Now you aren't eating any more. To the human body, it's taking much more effort to procure food, and it doesn't know when food is coming next, so it starts to slow down. One energy source for fuel is protein. Muscle is made of protein. Muscle also takes quite a bit of energy to support. Therefore, when the body isn't getting enough food, and is suddenly having to work hard to get that food (you think of it as exercising, as far as the body's physiology is concerned, you're hunting for food, and having trouble finding it,) then it starts to break down muscle, as it can convert that to energy relatively easily, and use it for fuel, and it has the added benefit of saving energy, since with less muscle, less calories are needed to support the body.

You need to eat your goal calories every day. If you exercise, you need to eat them back in order to properly fuel your body.

It's like someone else said, if your car can go 300 miles on a tank of gas, and you fill it up (eat) and drive 100 miles (exercise,) then you don't fill it up again, you can't drive 300 miles without running out of gas.

Personally, I eat back all of my exercise calories, and I even go over on my calorie goal about 50% of the time, but I'm averaging just over 2 pounds a week loss over the last 3 months.

Locky17

Guess what the majority of those people who follow very low cal diets myself in the past included can not healthily stick at this calorie level, due to illness or starvation and gain all the weight back plus more. Would it not be better to just lose the weigh slowly with a small deficit and keep it off for life, which is a hell of a lot better for their health. eating a healthy balanced diet and not fully restricting yourself is a much more successful way to lose weight, which will more likely just be fat mass instead of muscle when combined with exercise be it light or intense!
People need to get around this, and I'm slightly sickes by a programme I watched about big babies, a mother feeding her child a full bag of chips at 1 years old is sick and setting child up for a life of obesity and unhappiness from a very young age.
I'm glad I have only 1 year left at Uni, then I can start to help the fight against childhood obesity!

jg627

Unless you're using a heart monitor 24/7 and you have a lab that can tell you exactly how many calories you need, then the numbers are never going to be all that accurate anyway. I use the numbers as a guide, but I listen to my body first.
Are you hungry? if yes, eat.
Did you complete all your reps and progression in the gym? if no, eat.
Your body's built-in calorie calculator is probably more accurate as long as you're eating healthy.

sharilgreen

I think this website has to say you will put your body into starvation mode just incase someone gets sick and trys to sue them! lol

mikerouse

I try not to eat the extra cals, but instead just look at the net figure.

jg627

It's not about how many calories you eat in a day... it can take longer than that for what goes in to come back out anyway. Calories / week would be a better way to look at it.