How to get a calorie deficit?

A deficit isn't eating less than you burn at the gym, its eating less than you burn over a day. That 500 at the gym isn't the only burn you have, you burn a crapload of calories simply being alive! Depending on your height, weight and activity level, you will probably burn between 1300 and 2000 calories just by breathing, walking around, lifting your books, sleeping... do nOT try to eat less than 500 calories, that's silly and dangerous.

Google BMR calculator. Your BMR is how many calories you burn just by being alive. You shouldn't eat less than that number. then google TDEE calculator. This is your total daily energy expenditure, meaning how many cals you burn by doing whatever it is you do all day. Eat less than this number, and that's your deficit.

You can figure your TDEE and take a % cut from it or you can set up your MFP with an appropriate "Job" activity level and appropriate loss per week for your weight. The deficit will be built into what MFP tells you to eat. Then when you go to the gym and burn those 500 calories you log it and then eat them back to keep your original deficit. Days you work out you end up eating more to fuel the workouts.

You can keep it simple - enter your info here at MFP, log your food and exercise, and eat to goal, or close to it, every day. That means eating back exercise cals so that your NET cals are near or at goal.

The deficit is already built into the daily goal that MFP gives you - meaning eat to goal daily, do zero exercise, and you'll lose weight. That's why the exercise cals are added back in when you log your activity.

Food is fuel!

Eat well, drink water, exercise, get good rest.

Hey Chrissy!

I actually snuck a peak at your profile, too, and I've been working out for the past year or so as well, and with very little results aside from some built up muscle. I'd even tried cutting down on carbohydrates, the whole diet game. But it turns out, even though the food I was eating was healthy, I was simply eating too much of it - going way over my "calorie goals" for the day, even if I had worked out a lot that day. And then would eat way less than what was healthy on the other days - what I now recognize as an amount that put my body in "starvation mode," making weight even harder to lose.

Everybody else seems to have explained it pretty well, but the long and short of it is this: that 500 calories at the gym is simply added to those you already have in the bank by just breathing and being alive. Your body needs a certain amount of energy to survive! What I mean to say is, I've found that if you're honest and diligent in keeping track of what you eat and the exercise you engage in, using MFP will help you keep on track to lose weight by letting you know how close you are to going over your net calorie goals. It'll tell you what calories your body needs just to maintain weight, and then keep your daily goal slightly below, so the calories you have stored are burnt along with those healthy ones you eat during the day.

At least that's what I've gathered.

Granted, I've just started on here! haha So I guess we'll see together (:

Laurel

Fill out your mfp profile and it should do the calculating for you.

If you do decide to fill out the MFP profile info and go with what they tell you, be careful to avoid one pit I fell into early on in this program.

Your calorie goal is based on the assumption that you are doing a certain amount of exercise each week. If you have a few days where you burn a lot more, then eating back all those calories might get you into trouble.

For example, based on my height, weight, rate of loss, etc. MFP suggests I have a daily goal of 1350. It's assuming I'll be working out like I said I would and earning about 200 to 300 calories most days (I exercise 6 or 7 days a week) which I eat back. So my total caloric intake is close to 1500-1600 calories, which is about right for me to lose weight.

Well, one week I did a lot of extra exercises on 3 or 4 days and ate back those caloriesI ended up consuming 1800 - 1900 calories on those days and my weight started to climb. So now I only look at my total calorie count for the day and make sure I stick to my goal of around 1500 - 1600 calories, even if I happen to do lots more exercise on one day.

The way MFP is set up, one could fall into the trap of exercising to eat. In other words, you want dessert so you go out for a quick 5 km bike ride. Or you are going out for dinner and know you'll be eating a calorie rich meal so you throw in an extra hike that day. IME this doesn't work, and you just end up overeating. Mind you, if you consistently exercise more then of course you will need to up your daily calorie goals, but IME when it was just sporadic I was simply overeating and it affected my weight loss. Anyways, this is just my own personal experience.

My starting stats were very close to yours. I was 215 at 5'4". I workout now 6 days a week for 30-45minutes and eat around 1900-2000 calories on an average day. I've been steadily losing at that rate and not starving myself. It can be a bit of experiment to see where you lose the best but don't start too low.