Burning Calories

I have spoken to my doctor and a personal trainer and they both agreed that with my current body weight I am able to handle this many calories a day.

Why are you asking us then?

If you are eating 1200 cals and burning 2000 -- you are NETTING -800. Meaning you are exercising off MORE THAN you ate. Is what the other poster was saying. Are you netting 1200 after exercise...? Meaning -- eating back your exercise calories.

Do you mean your netting at 1200 calories a day or only eatting 1200 calorie and burning over 2000 ?? if thats the case your not eatting enough you might lose weight in the first little bit doing this but your body can't keep this up

Im on a 1200 a day life style change and heres what i do MFP has set my calories at 1200 a day I eat ALL of these then when i excise i eat All those calories back as well BUT! when i say excise i dont mean walking the 10 min walk from the car park to work as i did this before getting healthy didn't help me then so dont see how it will now i also dont count "cleaning" as excise or shopping as walking or things like that as i done all them before my life style change and well they didn't keep my skinny then so i dont see how they are going to keep me skinny now

Things i do log is walking with the dog , Sprints up the sand dunes when at the beach with my family , etc things i do over and above a "normal" day and of cause every little bit of food/drink that hit my tummy! ...

Ive had great loss in nearly 4 weeks ive now lost 5kgs (10Lbs) Im 25 year old women with 30Lbs to lose ! I really hope this helps but just remeber every body is dff and what works for one person might not work for the next

Why not just do it and see the results. We didn't put the Wgt on overnight. Be patient with yourself and let nature take its course. You want to make life style changes you can live with after you reach your goal.

Honey get yourself a HRM. I weight more then you and workout 2 hours a day. I am lucky if my HRM tells me I burned 800. Don't trust MFP exercise calculations they are very inflated. If anything cut MFP exercise calories in half that will get you close.

Honey get yourself a HRM. I weight more then you and workout 2 hours a day. I am lucky if my HRM tells me I burned 800. Don't trust MFP exercise calculations they are very inflated. If anything cut MFP exercise calories in half that will get you close.

Agreed! I weigh 170 and an hour of HIIT exercise only gets me about 600 calories at the most. And strength training doesn't burn anything close to that. Even when I weighed 260 pounds, I'm not sure I would have burned 2000 calories in three hours. Buy a HRM and get an accurate reading. Netting -800 calories per day is not sustainable over even a short period of time. Your body won't have the fuel to do those workouts.

I'm 5'1" 180lbs and netting -800 is NOT okay and no, your body isn't going to handle it well.

Even at my heaviest - 245lbs - this would not have been acceptable.


ETA: Trying to lose this way means that the weight you are losing isn't just fat, but muscle. Aside from that, you are going to be looking at some nasty side effects. I would do research and talk to a physician and a registered dietitian.

Once in a while burning way more calories than you eat is probably ok, BUT you probably won't be able to keep it up for long. Maybe try going at it just a little slower. Exercise every day, but not so much ( 3 hours is a lot for EVERY day) and try switching up the types of exercise day by day...Some days eat a more than the 1200 calories if you are feeling tired, etc. It can be really tempting to start out weight loss full throttle, but it's hard to keep that intensity up. Slow and steady wins the race... I lost my weight by sticking to about 1200-1400 cal (I'm 5'3" and 46) and didn't eat all my exercise calories back, BUT I did occasionally. You have to fuel your body to be able to work that hard. Good luck!

Also side note, you're very pretty in your profile picture. ????

I was heavier then you when I started at this and the most I ever burned was 600 in a day and I ate most of them back.

Welcome, ahopen.

I would like to encourage you to stop exercising so much and eating so little. This is very dangerous for your body.

Burning 2,000 calories in exercise is an awful lot. For example, based on my body weight, the other day when I ran 4 miles at 5.2 miles per hour, it was calculated I burned around 500 calories or thereabouts. In order for me to burn 2,000 in one day, I would have to run 16 miles, or do some other combination of workout.

If I ate only 1210 calories, I would get sick. I might lose weight at first, but my body would soon plateau and I'd probably not lose a pound.

When I had a trainer, he taught me how to eat right, eat enough, and exercise well. In fact, I was about 180 lbs at the time and i worked out three times a week and he had me on 1360 calories a day. I lost weight slowly.

It's just that over the last few years I'd forgotten those good habits and gained some back. Luckily I have been remembering how to eat right and exercise and have lost 18 pounds.

I wish you the best of luck.

Assuming you are 5'4" (about average) and lead a sedentary life, you burn about 1985 base calories a day. That assumes that other than the 3 hours of exercise, you spend the rest of your time laying on the couch watching TV or sitting at a desk job. This number from the calculator at www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/BMR

1985 base calories + 2000 exercise calories = 3985 TDEE (total daily expenditure) - 1200 calories eaten = 2785 daily deficit
That equals 19,495 calories per week or 5.6 pounds per week (3500 per pound).
That represents a whopping 3% of your body weight.

I'm very surprised your doctor thinks that's healthy. When your doctor okayed the 1200 calorie plan, did you disclose to him/her that you also planned to burn 2000 calories a day in exercise? Or did you just say you planned to do "some" cardio, weights and yoga?

Because, without the 2000 burned, your numbers look like this:

1985 base calories burned - 1200 cals eaten = 785 daily deficit
That equals 5495 per week or 1.5 pounds per week

If your doctor was under the impression that you were going to do a typical level of exercise (for example 2 days of cardio burning 500-600 calories, 2 days of strength burning 200 cals, 2 days of yoga burning 100 calories, 1 rest day), you would burn another 1500-2000 calories a week. That would put your weekly weight loss in a healthier 2-2.5 pound range.

Think 3% of body weight is a healthy weekly weight loss? Read this article:
http://www.weightymatters.ca/2012/04/biggest-loser-destroys-participants.html

Two things: (1) I think it is very unlikely that you are burning 2000 calories a day. If you are using the calorie burn that MFP gives you, you should probably cut it in half because it is WAY overinflated. Invest in a good heart rate monitor so you can accurately track how many calories you are actually burning. (2) When you do figure out how many calories you are burning through exercise, eat at least half of those calories back or even all of those calories back if you are hungry. Like other people have said, you didn't get overweight overnight so don't expect to lose weight overnight. If you still don't trust the advice on MFP, go see your doctor. I don't know any single doctor who would approve of eating 1200 calories and burning 2000 calories (although I think that's an inaccurate number) on a daily basis! Good luck with your weight loss journey!