Confused re calories

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Jo25369
Jo25369 Posts: 39 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Im confused with how many calories I should be eating...

MFP says I should have 1200 a day, which is fine, but then when I exercise its telling me to eat more... why is that? Is it not better to eat a certain amount and then exercise to lose weight??

I have read some people on here saying you have to eat what mfp says you should eat, including the calories from exercising otherwise you will enter into starvation mode and you wont lose weight and for me that doesnt make sense at all. For example, the biggest loser contestents eat 1200 a day and the women work out to burn off 6000 calories a day and they are able to lose weight..

Hmm

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Replies

  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    The biggest looser contestants are monitored daily by physicians, and most are morbidly obese, allowing them to live off of their fat stores. You can try a variety of ways to loose weight by trial and error to see what works for you but in general eating your exercise calories is the way to go, as MFP already has you on a caloric deficit according to your goal when you set up your account. Not eating your exercise calories will change your net cals from what you set out to do.
  • CasperO
    CasperO Posts: 2,913 Member
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    1 pound of fat contains 3500 calories - and those biggest loser guys have 100's of pounds. Let's do a little math:::

    I'm a healthy guy in decent physical condition with a 5'8" frame. My BMR is about 1800 cal's a day. So that's what I need just to lay in bed and breathe and maintain my weight at 205 pounds.

    Now let's pretend I was carrying an extra 100 pounds. Wow,,, that's a lot. My extra 100 pounds is (100 pounds X 3500 calories) 350,000 calories of "gas in the tank". So if the healthy base calorie needs of a guy my size is 1800, That's enough to live 194 days. That's enough to bicycle for over 400 hours,,, which should take you about NY to LA,,, and back! That's an awful lot of stored energy to get rid of.

    That's why those guys can do that stuff - they have tons and tons of calories to get rid of. You have 18 pounds, which is 63,000 calories. If you carry an easy deficit of 500 calories a day you'll lose that weight in about 4 months, and you'll be strong and happy and healthy and feeling great. :smile:

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