Calories consumed versus burned. Am I eating enough?

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jdmerritt84
jdmerritt84 Posts: 12 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Forgive me for my question but I am new to this diet and exercise thing. I do know that I must eat a certain amount of calories every day and I do good hitting my goal each day. But when I exercise I burn off about half of what I consumed. My question is, is this healthy or should I eat more

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  • John8188
    John8188 Posts: 54
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    You should eat more. The more you work out the more you should eat. I try to end the day with 300 cals left over, if I can.
  • CFAITH_WARD
    CFAITH_WARD Posts: 281 Member
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    There are many schools of thought on this.....What I do is I always make sure I eat atleast 1200 ca and more then half the number of ca the website gives me after I enter my exercise.....and I feel fine and yes i am loosing at about a pound a week.....Others will say we should eat all of our exercise ca but I cannot imagine eating that many ca everyday...It is up to you....Do you feel good?....Oh and 'starvation' is defined as eating less then half the ca you need each day...so that is my reasoning with more then half.....I hope this helps.
  • rachelcordova
    rachelcordova Posts: 19
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    I *like* to eat all of my exercise calories hehe... but I do find it often slows my progress. Eat if you're hungry and need the energy, but if you're eating just because you "can", then that's probably not a good reason. I often use the excuse "I excercised, so I have 300 extra calories today" as a reason to eat more even if I'm not hungry. I don't think that's a good way to look at it, and it doesn't seem to work in my favor either! Haha. But certainly, if you're legitimately hungry and need the energy, then eat your extra available calories. I think you just have to gauge how your body feels, and I think that's something that is going to be a little different for everyone.
  • BlackStarlight
    BlackStarlight Posts: 554 Member
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    I personally agree with Rachel and her notes above. I find that if I stick to the amount of calories im given (and ignore the excercise calories i've earned my weightloss is better but if your seriously hungry eat you ovbiously need too and on occasion I like too hehe hope this helps x
  • jdmerritt84
    jdmerritt84 Posts: 12 Member
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    Thanks for the help y'all I am just so worried to doing this the wrong way. I have done enough damage to my body I don't want to do more ony quest for health
  • MisdemeanorM
    MisdemeanorM Posts: 3,493 Member
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    My feedback:
    1) if you eat back your cals make sure that you have an accurate count (ie Heart Rate Monitor) so you are not unknowingly sabotaging yourself by overeating because the machine told you you burned 600 cals, but really it was 320.

    2) The problem with not eating your exercise cals comes into play when there is a consistent deficit. I'm over at least once a week on my cals, so I don't worry if I am severely under a day a week or so. Overall I try to keep my average throughout the week at not too low of a deficit that it's detrimental. If I burn 1500 extra cals on a really active Sat, I don't worry about them, but if you are eating 1400 cals a day and regularly working off 400-600... you're going to want to eat them back. Just keep your metabolism guessing. It's why a fasting day every now and then won't screw you up but eating a net 300 cals a day long term will. (I dont do them personally, I like food too much).

    3) Your body will tell you when you are not eating enough. You will plateau or be lethargic. Don't hesitate to realize that the answer might be eating more.

    4) Remember that you would have burnt a certain # of calories that hour anyway. If you burned 250 cals, you might only want to log 150. In heavy cardio you'll burn more cals the next hour - for me it's usually 2 or more times normal the resting hour after - so I will log all 500 or 600 cals and eat some or all of them back. But Yoga for an hour and 250 cals, I only log 150 since I return immediately after to normal resting metabolic rate and don't want to count the 100 calories I would have burned anyway twice

    5)

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