If i sleep do i eat my 1,200 cals still?

jennbissonnette

Do I? If i sleep in till 11am, am i cheating? Or can i still eat the full amount of calories?

AlannaPie

When are you going to sleep? You better eat it anyway just to survive! I have always been curious about how many calories we burn while sleeping, if we burn say 2000 on a normal 24 day.

mamabear272

It doesn't matter what time you get up, you should still eat your full amount of calories. Your allowed calories is based on a 24 hour period. Actually, if you didn't eat your calories, you would probably find that you'd start gaining weight. You need a certain amount of calories every day in order to sustain yourself and if you consistently eat under this amount, your body goes into starvation mode.

drvvork

Yes, they suggest you should. If you go to your tools they have a calculator there:

"BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) Calculator
Your BMR is how many calories you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day — basically, how many calories you burn just to stay alive. Determine your BMR using our handy online calculator"

So it looks like that is the expected amount unless it is different for your profile. Check it out when you can. :happy:


Betty

MercuryBlue

I agree with PP to a certain extent. The average woman burns about 55 per hour when she's sleeping. The amount of calories that you're estimated to burn in a total day are usually based on an average night's sleep (8 hours). So if you're only getting an average night's sleep, regardless of when you went to bed and when you rose, yes, you wouldn't necessarily change your caloric intake.

However, if you're sleeping 10-12 hours a night, you would have to consider that during those extra hours sleep, you're burning far fewer calories than if you were awake. So yes, you should probably factor that into how many calories you eat during the day.

That being said, 1200 is the absolute minimum that MFP recommends eating in a day. So theoretically you shouldn't eat less than that, regardless of how much you're sleeping (though, know that- again- that's an average. Some people should eat more than 1200, some can get away with eating less. I'm using the 1200 number because that was the number of calories mentioned in your original post).

MisdemeanorM

For me (I wore my HRM to sleep) I burn about 60 cals / hr sleeping. I burn about 80 / hr sitting at work at my desk, and about 100 / hr if I am up and walking around. (These are of course MY rates - yours could/would be different). I add on any exercise calories on top of this. (I do not do a daily calculation based on how much I am awake- I stick with 1400 a day - but I did it just to know what my body is doing.)

So - on a day that I am up and moving around I am going to burn more than if I sleep for 12 hours (say 5 hours more than usual, meaning roughly about 150 more calories). So, if I am eating to maintain, I would want to eat less (though likely, I already slept through a meal, and my rate of eating would stay the same - ie, every couple hours while awake. Likewise, if I am eating to maintain and I am up extra hours for some reason, I may eat an extra 100 cal snack for some extra energy and to make up for some extra burned calories. (Note - if you have your exercise level set to sedentary (sit at a desk 9 hours a day), and one day spend a day doing some shopping and errands all day long, you may not consider those exercise calories, but you may want to go over your cals by 100-200 to compensate just like those are exercise calories.)

BUT - that is if I am in maintenance mode - if you are eating 1200, the odds are that you are eating to lose and are already at a somewhat significant deficit. If this is the case - you would not want to go under that 1200 because you are already getting close to just what your body needs to stay functioning at a low energy level (meaning, sitting around or sleeping). If you have your lifestyle set to somewhat active and you one day sleep for a lot of the day (say you are a waitress and sleep in and sit around on your day off) you will be burning less calories so you would want to eat less that day - but you also would probably be set to a level of more like 1400 cals / day because it already accounted for some exercise calories. Since you are already at 1200, you should not try compensate. Either way - we're really only talking a difference of about 60-150 calories - don't worry about it!