Net calories vs. calories consumed

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  • bluejones
    bluejones Posts: 25
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    Finally, this makes sense to me... thank you for clarifying!!:smile:
  • anaisgh12
    anaisgh12 Posts: 3 Member
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    Ok, I'm confused too...
    This is what I'm doing, please let me know if it's ok

    Since I've read that you're supposed to eat your BMR I upped my calories to eat above it, mine is 1,602
    My age is 27
    Female height 5'7
    My current weight is 176.8
    My Goal weight is 140


    Calories consumed 1,620
    Calories Burned 420 (with HRM every day)
    Net Calories 1,200

    So, are my consumed calories supposed to match my BMR, or my Net calories need to match my BMR????
    What about the rule of netting 1,200 calories (that's what I was trying to do)
    I need help
  • kaervaak
    kaervaak Posts: 274 Member
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    Ok, I'm confused too...
    This is what I'm doing, please let me know if it's ok

    Since I've read that you're supposed to eat your BMR I upped my calories to eat above it, mine is 1,602
    My age is 27
    Female height 5'7
    My current weight is 176.8
    My Goal weight is 140


    Calories consumed 1,620
    Calories Burned 420 (with HRM every day)
    Net Calories 1,200

    So, are my consumed calories supposed to match my BMR, or my Net calories need to match my BMR????
    What about the rule of netting 1,200 calories (that's what I was trying to do)
    I need help

    Your net calories (i.e. Calories eaten - calories burned through exercise) should be equal to or higher than your BMR. There are situations where this general rule can be broken, but for the vast majority of people, this is the minimum amount of food you should be eating in a day for healthy sustainable weight-loss. Also, make sure you recalculate your BMR every 10 or so pounds you lose.

    However, as a caveat, most people over estimate calories burned during workouts and underestimate calories consumed from food, so keep this in mind and as with anything like this, adjust and customize until you find something that works for you. Everything here is just a general guideline and not specific to your body, so you need to be flexible and experiment a little until you find what works for you.
  • anaisgh12
    anaisgh12 Posts: 3 Member
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    So you mean I need to eat those exercise calories back? I would have to eat a total of 2,040 calories a day (when I burn the 420 calories)?
  • kaervaak
    kaervaak Posts: 274 Member
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    So you mean I need to eat those exercise calories back? I would have to eat a total of 2,040 calories a day (when I burn the 420 calories)?

    Assuming you're lightly active (on your feet for a few hours a day not including your workouts), then your TDEE is about 2200 calories. Add your 420 calories a day from exercise and that brings you up to 2620 calories per day to maintain your weight. If you ate 1600 calories, you'd have a 1000 calorie per day deficit which would give you about 2lbs per week of weight loss. With 30+lbs to lose, this is probably alright, but once you start to get to lower body fat levels, you should up your calories and slow down your weight loss a bit. If you ate 2040 calories per day, you'd have a 600 calorie per day deficit, which would have you losing a little over a pound per week and it would be pretty sustainable. You could likely keep to that kind of diet all the way down to your weight loss goal without too much trouble.
  • ammyteatan
    ammyteatan Posts: 2
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    Hi, I'm sorry but what I'm super confused about is all these acronyms!
    What is a HRM?
    What does BMR and TDEE mean?

    Thanks~

    P.S. While I'm here, I might as well confirm whether what I'm doing is okay.
    Current Weight: 223
    Goal Weight: 130
    I want to lose about two pounds per week and I was given 1,300 calories by MFP.
    I'm a teacher so I'm lightly active during the day outside of my workouts.
    Say I burn about 600 calories a day. If I don't eat them back at all, this would be bad for me, correct?
    If I eat about half or so of those 600 calories back, that is good? D:

    I'm worried that I'm sabotaging myself somehow by not doing this correctly....
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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    Calories burned tend to be inaccurate, and so I don't recommend eating back your exercise calories.

    They may not be perfect estimates. Neither are calories - even when you measure and weigh carefully. Neither are the models of our bodies that give us BMR estimates.

    But if you are exercising hard you need to eat back your calories or you know it because you get VERY hungry and feel VERY weak. Trust your body.

    I'm not fanatical about eating back all my calories - but then again I don't exercise that hard most of the time. But when I hike all day I'm starving and need to eat and feel completely comfortable eating any of those calories back that I want. Or if I work in the cold. Or if I do hard work out in my back yard cleaning out the chicken pen.

    You can't run a body without fuel.

    You also can't maintain muscle mass at a calorie deficit if you don't exercise.
  • FitForLife81
    FitForLife81 Posts: 372 Member
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    HRM=Heart rate Monitor
    BMR=Basal metabolic rate=How many calories you would burn in a coma (to live without moving around)
    TDEE =Total daily energy expenditure=your BMR and all other activites =)
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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    Hi, I'm sorry but what I'm super confused about is all these acronyms!
    What is a HRM?
    What does BMR and TDEE mean?

    Thanks~

    P.S. While I'm here, I might as well confirm whether what I'm doing is okay.
    Current Weight: 223
    Goal Weight: 130
    I want to lose about two pounds per week and I was given 1,300 calories by MFP.
    I'm a teacher so I'm lightly active during the day outside of my workouts.
    Say I burn about 600 calories a day. If I don't eat them back at all, this would be bad for me, correct?
    If I eat about half or so of those 600 calories back, that is good? D:

    I'm worried that I'm sabotaging myself somehow by not doing this correctly....

    All of our bodies are a little different.

    As a teacher, you might put yourself down as 'active', eat those calories, plus log any EXTRA exercise like going to the gym or walking. Eat enough so your net calories average about what they recommend - 1300 calories per day. Do that for a few weeks and see if you are losing what you want.

    If you are not losing enough and you aren't that hungry, drop down your activity level to lightly active or even sedentary. But keep logging those exercise calories and eating them up. Again, try it and see if its working.

    That way you are fitting the general model to your very real body. I'm a professor and run around a lot. But at moderately active I wasn't losing. Changed to sedentary (and logging my exercise) and the weight came right off. That's because I'm older and my metabolism is probably slower than someone who is younger than me.

    When you are closer to your goal you'll have to drop back to a pound a week as it will get harder. Good luck!
  • Lilyxx1
    Lilyxx1 Posts: 3
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    Can someone clear the air for me because reading all this back and forth has got me even more confused. MFP has me at a goal of 1200 calories a day. I am a barista at Biggby Coffee and I wore my HRM to get a look at how many calories I burn on a 6 hour shift; it came out to 1218. So for example yesterday I worked that 6 hour shift then did a very short cardio workout burning about 250 or so calories. Mfp tells me I need to eat back 1468 calories?! That seems a bit much and not possible unless I grab a pint of Ben and jerrys. So at the end of the day it said my net calories were -75 but my calories consumed were 1318. Ugh its a mess.. I just need to lose 10 lbs. Help please.
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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    What you wrote is wrong, but I can understand why you're confused.

    That 1218 you worked on your shift is your regular - I'm Alive - basic calories. If you put yourself down with an activity level above sedentary, that would be your basic calorie needs from which MFP would subtract your 500 calorie deficit from. MFP estimates it. You have an exact number.

    On top of basic I'm Alive, base activity level calories, you also exercised in your cardio workout for an addition 250. THOSE calories you eat back.

    If you want to work accurately and entirely off your HRM, take all the calories your heart rate monitor says you burn. Subtract 500 calories from that. If you ate that (HRM calories used - 500 calories) you would lose one pound a week because you are NETTING 500 calories less than you are burning. That includes wearing HRM while you're asleep.

    If you want to make your life easier, you can count calories used one day to determine what to eat the following day.

    Personally, I'd just set a baseline and then use the HRM to measure my exercise accurately.
  • furtlebet
    furtlebet Posts: 4
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    I don't get why eating back calories is recommended by anyone on here? The biggest loser contestants as an example work out for 3-4 hours a day to burn up in the 1000s of calories (and have lots of rest periods in between). Do they eat their calories back? No.

    The whole idea of sustainable 'slow' weight loss has been challenged by the latest research. In their words - Militant weight loss is better than small steps.
    http://sciencenordic.com/researchers-rapid-weight-loss-best

    The body is more than capable of breaking down fat stores and turning it into energy. The metabolic pathways always prioritise sugars and fats over protein (i.e. Muscle). Muscle is extraordinarily difficult (and inefficient) for the body to turn into energy, so unless you aren't eating at all for days muscle wasting is unlikely.
  • tryclyn
    tryclyn Posts: 2,414 Member
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    Modest calorie deficit for fat loss.
    Exercise for health.
    The deficit should already factored in, but exercise is extra and works better when you actually fuel it.

    More info here
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/912914-in-place-of-a-road-map-3-2013
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/10118-eat-train-progress
  • boboff
    boboff Posts: 129 Member
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    I so love this debate.

    I am so please the biggest looser thing was given as an example.

    Would it not be just best to say.

    "if you are Obese or more, all rules are out, do as much as you can eat as little as you can"

    "if you are overweight or normal and want to loose a little, take it steady, slow is best, keep your body topped up as you haven't got a bucket of lard on your *kitten* to keep you going"

    Innit?
  • tryclyn
    tryclyn Posts: 2,414 Member
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    I don't believe that The Biggest Loser plan is the best plan for people living in the real world. I would rather take the slow road, less likely to say "*kitten* it" and give up. My own opinion, of course.
  • Lbriggs82
    Lbriggs82 Posts: 58
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    " as you haven't got a bucket of lard on your *kitten* to keep you going"

    Innit?

    Class!!! :laugh:
  • ladyraven68
    ladyraven68 Posts: 2,003 Member
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    I don't get why eating back calories is recommended by anyone on here? The biggest loser contestants as an example work out for 3-4 hours a day to burn up in the 1000s of calories (and have lots of rest periods in between). Do they eat their calories back? No.

    The whole idea of sustainable 'slow' weight loss has been challenged by the latest research. In their words - Militant weight loss is better than small steps.
    http://sciencenordic.com/researchers-rapid-weight-loss-best

    The body is more than capable of breaking down fat stores and turning it into energy. The metabolic pathways always prioritise sugars and fats over protein (i.e. Muscle). Muscle is extraordinarily difficult (and inefficient) for the body to turn into energy, so unless you aren't eating at all for days muscle wasting is unlikely.

    What an odd first post - resurrecting a dead thread.

    Welcome to MFP.
  • furtlebet
    furtlebet Posts: 4
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    One of the reasons why the faster is better theory has been supported by research is that the faster we loose weight, the more likely we are to stick to it.

    Think of the psychology of grinding out the weight loss over a year vs in a few months or weeks (depending on what you've got to loose).

    If the problem is unassailable then it is all too easy to lose interest. If however, we can see changes on a short time scale, it is self reinforcing.
  • furtlebet
    furtlebet Posts: 4
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    Another interesting article... Bear in mind, I'm not suggesting that anyone starve themselves, but the numerous suggestions that there will be instant catastrophic muscle loss etc etc if we drop a few hundred calories below some magic number is a crock and not based in science.

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.htm

    "After two or three days of fasting, you get your energy from two different sources simultaneously. A very small part of your energy comes from breaking down your muscles — but you can avoid this by doing some resistance training, otherwise known as pumping iron. The majority of your energy comes from breaking down fat.

    But very soon, you move into getting all your energy from the breakdown of fat. The fat molecules break down into two separate chemicals — glycerol (which can be converted into glucose) and free fatty acids (which can be converted into other chemicals called ketones). Your body, including your brain, can run on this glucose and ketones until you finally run out of fat."
  • furtlebet
    furtlebet Posts: 4
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    In other words:

    eat good healthy food keeping between the starvation mode minimum and your goal calories each day
    exercise as much as you can
    rinse and repeat

    Don't worry about muscle loss (even if it was a problem you could always just gain it back later anyway)
    Don't worry about losing weight too fast (if you are still eating every day, then in practical terms for most people there isn't a 'too fast')
    Don't 'eat your calories back'. (That just means you'll have to burn them off another day. All that hard work wasted!)

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