Am I doing this right?? The confusion of net vs gross

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gail200186
gail200186 Posts: 59 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I just need setting straight...lol.

I'm on a 1200 calorie a day allowance. Today I exercised enough that I burnt 825 cals. So right now MFP is telling me I have 461 NET cals and 739 remaining. Is it ok to leave such a deficit, or will I starve my body too much? I don't feel hungry, if that means anything?

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  • joshdann
    joshdann Posts: 618 Member
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    you should be fine. the real answer to your question requires longer-term analysis of how your diet is working for *you*, not how people think it will work for an average person. that 1200 calorie per day allowance probably needs adjustment. Go up or down based on how your body is reacting... and how quickly you are meeting whatever goals you have set for yourself. also, read this:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1077746-starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss

    It is one of the best posts on this board, IMO. Real science, not recycled crap that has no basis in reality.
  • gail200186
    gail200186 Posts: 59 Member
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    Yeah, its an interested article, though somewhat confusing for the average person needing a simple answer....lol.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    I just need setting straight...lol.

    I'm on a 1200 calorie a day allowance. Today I exercised enough that I burnt 825 cals. So right now MFP is telling me I have 461 NET cals and 739 remaining. Is it ok to leave such a deficit, or will I starve my body too much? I don't feel hungry, if that means anything?

    You should try and eat at least 1900 calories, IMO. Just make sure your exercise calories are accurate, if you're not using a HRM and count on MFP's estimates I'd maybe eat 1700-1800. 461 net is absolutely not fine though.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,868 Member
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    You are supposed to NET to your GOAL of 1200 calories. 1200 calories is already a huge deficit from maintenance unless you are a 4 ft nothing 90 year old. Most women maintain in the neighborhood of 2000 calories...more if they exercise.

    I do question your burn though...how are you measuring that? That is the difficulty with MFP...it can be difficult to estimate calorie burn. A HRM is the most accurate for an aerobic event, but still an estimate and you would need to deduct your BMR calories from that at minimum...I always just knocked off about 30% for estimation error. If I used a database then I knocked off quite a bit more...and I'd eat back maybe 50% - 60% of that burn to account for estimation error.

    Data bases can be highly inaccurate in large part because people overestimate their level of effort...they're tired, so they think they were really working it and burning up 900 calories in an hour of swimming. Truth be told, they aren't Michael Phelps and not swimming at that kind of intensity...they really burned maybe 450-500 calories swimming for an hour.

    It's really really really hard to burn more than about 10 calories per minute...10 calories per minute means you pretty much can't hold any kind of conversation...you're just working it. When you do things like HIIT, you can burn a few more, but it's such a short duration that it really nets out pretty much in the end. This isn't exact, but you can roughly estimate...say a good paced walk @ 4 MPH to be roughly 7 calories per minute....a 10 MPH run would be in the 10 calories per minute range. Of course, like I said...these aren't exact...just rough estimates that you can compare to the burn you're getting from your HRM, machine, or database.

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