Daily Calorie Intake & Excercise Calories

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Pennyp23
Pennyp23 Posts: 4 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi there

I have been doing MFP for a few weeks now and as like any diet for me it seems to work well the first week or 2 when I can lose around 2lbs per week. However, when I add in exercise it seems the more exercise I do the less weight I lose. Last week I did 5 days of 30 mins running/walking & swimming however, I only lost 0.5lbs and I more or less stuck to my 1200 daily calories and did not eat all my exercise calories.

As this seems to happen everytime, regardless of the diet, I was wondering if I am maybe not eating enough calories.

My plan is to do 4 days of 30 minute exercises per week (as doing C25K App & swimming lessons). Should I therefore still only be eating 1200 calories on the exercise days or should I be eating my exercise calories as well? Alternatively, I thought maybe I should up my calories to 1400 each day and not eat my exercise calories.

I have tried researching this but everything I look at seems to say different. Can anyone shed any light on this for me please?

Gemma

Replies

  • ShinjiruGhetto
    ShinjiruGhetto Posts: 54
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    If your daily intake is 1200 and you burn say.. 200 calories from exercising, then you may consume 1400 calories.
  • daydreams_of_pretty
    daydreams_of_pretty Posts: 506 Member
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    You can eat back the calories or not. Most people on here seem to eat them back because they see better losses when they do. Either way, you are not actually seeing a smaller loss or a gain due to exercise. The scale needs time to catch up to your loss, especially if you just started working out. You are probably retaining water. If you are tracking everything you eat and all of your exercise, then relax and let the process work. Some weeks you'll see a "gain" and other weeks you'll lose twice as much weight as is really possible. It fluctuates. You're not actually gaining weight if you're at a deficit. Also, the less you have to lose, the slower it comes off. It's normal.
  • gkaye17
    gkaye17 Posts: 4 Member
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    I am having much the same issue. My weight has stalled and I am staying right at or just below my 1200 calorie/day allotment. I started to do some weight training (upper body) and squats 3x/week. I don't get any extra calories for that and I know that muscle weighs more than fat but I can't imagine I've builit up much in the 16 days since I've been doing this. My weight goes up and down by .4 or .6 each way. I am 1.5 pounds away from 10 pounds lost and would love to see it but don't want to drop the calories any lower or go up much more. So incredibly frustrating!!!!! I am thankful for the 8.5 I've lost but need to keep going!!!
  • CLM1227
    CLM1227 Posts: 61 Member
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    There's a difference between fat and muscle mass. Some will gain muscle more easily than others. You just need to stick with it even if the scale stays the same.

    This is one of the hardest things for me. I'll start exercising and eating right, and 2 weeks into it, I'll cave because I've GAINED weight. Six years ago, I went for months running, resistance training, and counting calories not to lose a single pound in 2-3 months... and then in the span of 3, I lost 30 lbs.

    Now that won't be everyone, but as your body adjusts to the new activity levels, your going to be gaining muscle. When your sore and your new muscles are fatigued, you'll also retain some water... so you may not even see the loss with a measuring tape. Just keep on going. Eventually you'll see all that hard work come to a pay-off.

    Its easy to say and hard to do.
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/818082-exercise-calories-again-wtf

    MFP is designed to give you a lower goal than other calculators with the assumption that you'll log your exercise and eat back at least some of your exercise calories. But I'll add a caveat that MFP and gym machines have a tendency to overestimate the calories burned during certain activities. A lot of people eat back only 50-75% of those extra exercise calories just to be sure.

    As to why your weight loss stalls when you add exercise, it's probably not because you're undereating. That can have side effects, but stopping your weight loss isn't usually one of them (and certainly not short-term). More likely is that you're seeing some water retention because of the increased activity. Your body tends to flood sore muscles with extra water to help cushion and repair them, which can look like a stall or even a small gain on the scale. But it's really just masking the fat loss that's happening in the background and should go away as your body gets used to the routine (usually in a couple of weeks).

    As always, double-check your logging to be sure you're getting an accurate picture of how many calories you're eating and give your body a few weeks to adjust to any changes in your routine.
  • Pennyp23
    Pennyp23 Posts: 4 Member
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    This is my 4th week of MFP and have done exercise each week, it's just I have just up'd it recently and thought it may be what's different. I have also been comparing to weight watchers when I lost 17lbs previously at a steady rate of 1-2lbs per week as well as exercise so assumed it would work on the same basis.

    Ok so the gist of it is just keep doing what I am doing.

    Thank you all.

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