How many calories do you usually have "remaing"?

rebrcca3434

I am a bit confused with how many remaing calories you are supposed to have? I've read quite a bit about eating exercise calories ect but I look at people's diaries and some have huge caloric deficits? Is the idea to achieve 0 remaining cals?? I apologize if this has been asked before but haven't found anything to answer my question.

teagirlmedium

You are supposed to eat under your calorie intake. However, you are supposed to eat close to your calorie alowwance. Did you choose your current weight and then say how much pounds you want to loose a week? It should have given you a number for your calorie allowance per day. Thats is the amount you should stay close to, but try to stay under. If you save your daily food alowance it will tell you what you will way it you eat like that everyday.

MoreBean13

MFP builds in a daily deficit of 500 calories per weekly pound weight loss- so 2lb weight loss/week = 1000 calorie deficit per day. "Remaining" calories increase this deficit, which is not necessarily a good thing- too big of a deficit can cause your metabolism to slow down to accommodate. You should aim to eat all of your allotted calories. 1000 calorie deficit is already too much for a lot of people!

tenunderfour

Depending on the day I usually have 200-600 leftover at the end. It really depends on my workout. I try to eat 1500-1600 calories per day. And if i've gone running or worked out particularly hard I will have a balance left at the end of the day. I don't usually "eat back my calories" or at least not completely.

DavPul

You got it. The goal number is 0. For me, I normally end up in a range between 200 calories under to 500-600 calories over the goal. I just try to get reasonably close, but if I'm hungry I have no qualms about eating over. And every Friday so far I lose the weight I'm supposed to lose. Starting out on this program back in February, it was a nice surprise to find that I seemed to lose more weight the weeks I was over calories almost every day.

Starqueg

The goal is to have the number remaining at zero, if you have it set a certain way. I know people who have their calorie goals above the minimum that they need, and they tend to eat below their goals. Mine is set at 1200, unless I exercise, so I really try to stay around that number. If I were to eat far below my goal, my body would go into starvation mode and I'd stop losing weight.