Calories and Exercise Question

Ctripp86

I want to make sure I'm doing this correctly so I'm hoping you can all help me out. My calorie goal is 1200/day. Yesterday I consumed 1130 calories and then burned 552 calories in a 60 minutes spinning class so it said I had 622 calories remaining. A friend of mine said she thinks you're supposed to even out so that after deducting the calories burned, you should have close to 0 calories remaining. I don't want my body to go into starvation mode and hold on to fat. Please tell me what I should be doing. Thanks!

gngrninja

Hi there,

From what I've gathered you can fluctuate daily and cycle your calories as long as you're within range for the week. If you burn that much, you do have to eat that much more to meet your goal. Otherwise your body will not have the fuel it needs and you will be way under. Hope that makes sense.

harebearva

You have a target for daily calorie consumption to hit. You do have to add more calories to that number to account for exercise. as you said, if you're supposed to eat 1200 a day but exercise off around 500 then your net cals are 700. far too low to support normal metabolic function. Your metabolism can slow down and you will not burn calories as efficiently. If 1200 is your target and you burn 500 cals in exercise then you should eat around 1700 cals per day. Myfitnesspal makes it easy to figure in your posted exercise into your daily routine. Of course all numbers are ball park. It's trial and error. Eat a certain level for 2 weeks and see what your results are and adjust from there. Hope this helps

Ctripp86

You both helped a lot. I want to do this correctly so I see and feel the best results. Thanks!