Eating up all exercise calories or not?

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caitlintooher
caitlintooher Posts: 5 Member
in Getting Started
Between MFP and Fitbit I am told I use +/-1800 calories a day, I am 51, 5'4", 140 pounds . I want to loose about half a pound to one pound a week, so I figured I'd eat less and exercise more. My BMR is 1350 calories a day, TDEE a bit under 2000, but I don't want to scare my body into a famine reaction by going too low. So while MFP figures I should go for 1200 calories, I decided on 1400. However, I am using up about 500 extra calories per day from exercise, sometimes more, and I have so far not always eaten all the calories back.
The question now is, even though I might eat nearly 2000 calories on my very active days, when I subtract the exercise calories I do often fall under 1350 calories. That makes me wonder, am I putting my body under too much stress? Seems to me I am to deep in deficit, but I am not sure. Should I make sure I always eat my 1400 calories + the exercise calories, or does my metabolism do just fine if I stay lower?

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  • trmatthewsphatgirl
    trmatthewsphatgirl Posts: 21 Member
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    I would like to read the comments to this because I have been working out and many of time eat up my exercise calories and not noticing anything
  • MBrothers22
    MBrothers22 Posts: 323 Member
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    I would assume you'd be fine. Just listen to your body. If you get weak or light headed, EAT.
  • corgicake
    corgicake Posts: 846 Member
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    Mow down unless the numbers aren't happening and you already checked your diet for unlogged calories. In that case, don't mow down as much. I find that the figures the system churns out work for me but keep in mind these numbers are based on averages.
  • matuskap
    matuskap Posts: 131 Member
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    Actually, i have my calories set so that they already contain 5x a week training. So i only eat back if i do more than one training a day. And even so, i dont eat back all of it, because apps dont count calories burned on top of regular basal cals. You would burn calories either way even without training, just not as many. So what i do is i substract 200 calories for every hour of exercise, that would be burned either way without a training. Thats the REAL added value of training when considering calories..

    Example: Burn 300 cals in 30 mins. I eat back 300 - (200*0.5) = 200.

    and those 200 cals per hour i got there is pretty much daily calories divided by 16(hours of awake state) which gives me amount of cals eaten per hour through the day +-.
  • jlvanderstoel
    jlvanderstoel Posts: 24
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    You should eat a little under your total energy consumption.

    So if your BMR is 1500, your exercise(total including walking etc.) is 1000. Total = 2500
    You want to lose some weight so you skip 300. Total= -300

    You should consume: 2200 kcal a day. Do the math!
  • ash190489
    ash190489 Posts: 587 Member
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    I found that I lost the most weight and have kept it off now for over 2 years by eating between 1200-1400calories per day and very rarely (once per week maybe) eating my exercise calories back. It's probably not the right way to do it, but if i was hungry etc I would eat a bit more. I tried to listen to my body as well as control my calorie intake and portion sizes.

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