Calorie question

heatherfoster22

So this may be a silly question, but I am just gonna ask lol. So lets say you burn 1900 calories a day just being alive and your food goal is to eat 1200 calories a day and you burn 500 calories a day working out. The food goal goes up to 1700 available to eat. Now, do you need to now eat 1700 calories because of your work out or do you still eat your 1200 calories? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

TeaBea

Think of NET calories as calories in VS. calories out.


1200 NET = 1800 eaten (in) LESS 600 exercise (out)

Just be careful about your exercise calories. Heart rate monitors are accurate .... MFP & machines are not. Many people eat a portion of their exercise calories for this reason.

TeaBea

So this may be a silly question, but I am just gonna ask lol. So lets say you burn 1900 calories a day just being alive and your food goal is to eat 1200 calories a day and you burn 500 calories a day working out. The food goal goes up to 1700 available to eat. Now, do you need to now eat 1700 calories because of your work out or do you still eat your 1200 calories? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

You eat the exercise calories because MFP does not assume you will be working out, the deficit is built in already. Think of the extra calories as fuel for your workouts. If your calories are too low, you may lose muscle along with fat.

MichaelFunaro

You are going to have a RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) that is what you would burn if you laid in bed all day and did nothing.

You will then have a burn of calories just doing daily activities. Walking to the car, brushing your teeth, etc.

Then you will have a burn of calories based on your exercise.

Add up those three and then subtract what you ate in calories for the day.

There are sites that will give you a close estimate on RMR based on height, age, weight, gender.

Use that as a guide and then add about 500 calories just for daily activities. If your RMR is 1500 and you add 500 for normal daily activities, that would be 2000. If you ate 1200, your daily deficit would be 800 or 5600 a week, which would be 1.6 lb loss per week (3500 cal deficit = 1lb). Add exercise to that and you might see another 100-500 calories depending on the exercise.