How many calories to net?

jess9897

How many calories do you guys net and why? I'm still trying to figure out a good number of calories for me each day.

Thanks for the help!

ccckwalk

I pretty much do as MFP says to do. I eat back half of my exercise calories. For me that has been working. I am 5'6 and 153 pounds. I only want to lose a five more pounds. When I was farther from my goal I wouldn't eat my exercise calories unless I was hungry. It is a good idea to eat close to what MFP says(in my opinion, of course !). ~CC

Pandorian

Enter your info and since you're using MFP tell it you what rate you want to lose at and use the numbers it gives. I eat my exercise calories and aim to hit my MFP generated calorie goal daily

mark03264

You shouldn't have to "figure out" how many calories to net. Plug in your starting weight, plug in your goal weight, plug in how much weight you want to lose a week (this should be 1 pound), plug in your normal daily activity level. Every day enter your food intake and exercise. Take in enough calories so that your daily intake equals your daily goal. For the vast majority of the people using MFP it is that easy. Some people like to make it way more complicated than it needs to be though.

If you set up MFP right to start with then the daily calorie goal that MFP gives you already has a calorie deficit built in to lose weight. That said, you should eat close to the calorie goal MFP gives you each day including eating back most of your exercise calories. Depending on how far under the daily calorie goal you are, you are very likely to cause your body to hang onto the fat it has by either slowing down or even stopping fat loss. It may not happen right away but eventually you will most likely plateau. If you have a lot of weight to lose you can probably get away with it longer but as you have less to lose your body will plateau easier. May sound counter-intuitive but that's just the way it is.