New Year/New Me but I have a ?

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stacyk
stacyk Posts: 12 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Okay, I'm off to a good start. Not the Jan 1 start I would have liked but I was still celebrating with bowl games & food and it wasn't a Monday. I know I need to get over that. I ran and then had breakfast this a.m. I went to input my info but here's what I don't understand....Why do you gain calories when you exercise? Isn't that the point of exercising while you're trying to lose weight?.... to burn more than you intake? I allow myself 1200 calories per day to lose 1.5 lbs per week and when I exercise I may hit 2lbs per week instead of just the 1.5. But if I intake more calories wouldn't that defeat the purpose of exercising. I'm a little confused on this....can anyone explain?

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  • stacyk
    stacyk Posts: 12 Member
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    Okay, I'm off to a good start. Not the Jan 1 start I would have liked but I was still celebrating with bowl games & food and it wasn't a Monday. I know I need to get over that. I ran and then had breakfast this a.m. I went to input my info but here's what I don't understand....Why do you gain calories when you exercise? Isn't that the point of exercising while you're trying to lose weight?.... to burn more than you intake? I allow myself 1200 calories per day to lose 1.5 lbs per week and when I exercise I may hit 2lbs per week instead of just the 1.5. But if I intake more calories wouldn't that defeat the purpose of exercising. I'm a little confused on this....can anyone explain?
  • mablesyrup
    mablesyrup Posts: 286 Member
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    Try and re-think how you view calories.

    Take the number of calories you should be having a day and think of it as your Target. Your goal everyday is to get as close to that number of calories as you can. SO if you are exercising- it's putting you farther away from your target- so you need to eat more calories in order to move closer/at your target for the day!

    Not having enough calories in a day is just as harmful as eating too many calories in a day!
  • rheston
    rheston Posts: 638
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    Every 3,500 calories is equivalent to one pound. In order to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit. It is easier and healthier to cut back your calorie intake a little bit at a time.

    So, if you were to cut back 500 calories a day, you should lose about one pound per week. That said, If you exercise to burn off 500 calories a day you should lose approximately one pound per week. Do both, and ... you get the picture. Ideally, you should do a combination of both, (such as cut back 250 calories; burn an extra 250 calories).

    Your weight loss will vary from week to week and at times you may even gain a little weight -- if you're working out you could be developing muscle, which weighs more than fat.

    Here's the glitch. MFP tries to calculate your exercise and eating habits to provide you a balanced return and in theory it attempts to have you eat to a bonus level of food based on your exercise with the idea of helping you achieve your goal for weight loss.

    The problem that many of us have found is that this general rule of thumb doesn't work equally for all of us because we gained instead of losing weight. Many of us found that we need to just eat to our food calorie goals and not include the bonus calories MFP provides us for working out.

    This glitch in the algorithms of the site could be a disconnect between what you entered into your profile and how it reads or recalculates that data into your exercise and eating routine.

    This will take some experimentation on your part to see what works best for you while remembering that if you take the route many of us have gone down (in opposition to the published norm) that you don't want to starve yourself or go through the day feeling hungry.

    Not all plans and suggestions work the same for everyone so you need to sort through what works for you and go down that path.
  • stacyk
    stacyk Posts: 12 Member
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    I'm a slow responder......I get busy with kids, house, etc. but thank you for your reply. It was very helpful! the last thing I want to do is gain weight when my goal is to be healthier and lose. How discouraging would that be! I do understand that you do have to eat to lose but eating extra just didn't make sense to me. I suppose if those extra calories came in the form of green veggies & carrot sticks as opposed to say...brownies they wouldn't be necessarily be bad calories. Again, thank you for your input. I saw your ticker...congratulations on your weight lost!
  • rheston
    rheston Posts: 638
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    Thanks for your comment. I still have 25lbs to go and I was a bad boy over the holidays :blushing:

    The biggest thing to remember is that everything out there on weight loss is a general rule of thumb and you have to find your own level of achievement through experimentation. Don't fool yourself into thinking that vegetable calories will not make you gain weight because a calorie is a calorie no matter how you look at it. Some calories do work their way through your system faster than others but it may slow down your progress.

    Set yourself a 21 day goal both in exercise and eating trying not to over do either of them until you've gotten into a routine then re-evaluate yourself against what you read on MFP and what your success / failure has been. Also remember that, unfortunately, men lose weight far more quickly than women so don't measure yourself against what guy has done -- especially me!

    Good Luck, you will do well. Bob

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