A Little Confused... Please Help :/

BushidoDragon
BushidoDragon Posts: 5
in Food and Nutrition
Hi! :smile:

I’m seeking to lose ~2 lbs/week.

After inputting the necessary information into MFP, I was allotted a 1,200 calorie/day quota. :sad:

With regards to exercise, I plan to work out 6 days/week for ~60-90 minutes/day. MFP calculated that I should lose up to 468
calories/day or 2,810/week.

As you know, whenever a certain amount of calories are expended during a workout, you earn them back for meals and such.

Now for the confusion:

I often try to stick to my 1,200 calorie/day quota. To be honest, it’s really not that difficult, especially since I can plan my meals and snacks in advance, tweaking here and there where needed until things are just about perfect.

However, since I exercise in the evenings, by the time I’m through with my workout I often have anywhere from 200-300 calories “leftover.” I complete my workouts late at night, usually after 9:30PM, and I go to bed around 11:00PM because I have work the next day. Since I don’t want to eat anything “heavy” before bed, I often end up being a couple hundred calories under my quota. (I usually have fruit or nuts after a workout, with water and sometimes a little soy or almond milk).

Now, while I want to lose weight quickly, I want to do it effectively. I understand that 1,200 calories is on the low end, and I’m certainly not trying to kill myself over this, lol. :laugh:

I want to lose weight and become fit the proper way, and, once I get to my ideal weight, I want to keep it off. (i.e. I don’t want to lose weight quickly only to have it come back just as fast).

Also, since I do Resistance Training (RT) and Interval Training (IT) 3 days/week, I can’t accurately measure how many calories I’m losing during these days. I often lose maybe 200 calories by doing 40 min. of IT (20 min in the morning; 20 min in the evening)
in addition to my RT where I efficiently work out every major muscle group (chest, back, abdomen, shoulders, triceps, biceps, quadriceps, calves, hamstrings, and glutes).

As quoted from a website “Although a higher percentage of the calories burned doing low intensity cardio for long periods of time are fat calories… way more overall fat calories are burned doing intervals mainly because of the after burn effect where the body burns calories both during & after the workout. Fat-burning metabolism stays elevated for 12-to-48 hours after an interval workout.”

So (and I apologize for my long winded-ness), I guess the overall question is, should I cap myself at 1,500 calories/day since I’ll most likely burn off the excess 300-400 calories during my workouts? I just don’t want to be significantly under my caloric quota and suffer any negative results, whether soon or in the future.

TIA! :bigsmile:

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