Eating at 1200 Calories, Exercising regularly, not losing we

ironanimal

Read this and understand it;

Your body requires a certain amount of calorie intake in order to perform it's basic functions and to power processes such as fat burning. If you eat at such a low level and then blitz your body with exercise day after day, you need to eat your exercise calories.

Need to.
Eat them.

There are so many posts at the moment about this same issue and it's always the case the OP doesn't think they need to eat their exercise calories. They think the bigger the defecit, the better - when it's simply not true. 1200 is the lowest MFP will set you for a reason - because anything below that starts to become dangerous.

MFP also gives you extra credit for exercise INTENTIONALLY to prevent people undereating. It calculates your calorie defecit for a week without any exercise being factored in. So it's very important you stay above that 1200 number.

Eat your exercise calories.

So to be clear, your Net Calories need to meet 1200 a day.
Net calories = Calorie Intake - Exercise Expenditure.

Eat them.

If your body doesn't have enough fuel coming in, it won't realease anything stored on your body. Simple as that.

Next point; you gain weight temporarily after exercise. It's water weight. Chill people - you haven't magically put 3lbs on over night. To do that, you'd have to eat 10,500 Calories OVER what MFP tells you. I'm a big guy. I can't do that.

3,500 calories makes 1lb of fat.

Also; don't weigh every day. Really. You're just torturing yourself. Stressing yourself. Stress creates Cortisol. Cortisol contributes to fat gain. Relax.


That is all.

Nana_Booboo

Agreed~~~everyone should eat back your exercise calories.
Simply stated MFP has already figured out your total calories you need to eat per day to lose 1lb etc. a week.
That's WITHOUT exercise. You'll notice that when you actually add exercise in, the calorie limit goes up.
Why? Because it's telling you to eat your exercise calories.
Large deficits aren't really good to do because while you will lose weight, what kind of weight will it be?
In many cases you'll lose lean muscle tissue which LOWERS your metabolic rate even more.
Then you have to eat even less to compensate for less of a calorie burn to continue to lose the same amount
of weight each week.

Be efficient.
Exercise hard and eat back the calories. The hard exercise will RAISE your metabolic rate and burn more fat at rest.