How many calories is too low?

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  • theshaleco
    theshaleco Posts: 39 Member
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    Don't eat lower than what it says your BMR is :-) I'm a similar height to you but weigh less now (as I lost 22 pounds) but I was your weight (or close) 176 pounds, 5'8, but my BMR is 1550 and I eat 1600. And obviously well, I've lost. 22 pounds doing it that way. There's no need to eat so low :-)

    Do you know if it's okay for your net to be lower than your BMR as long as your intake is higher? (Sorry for all the questions I am very new to this)

    Yes your net can be lower but I always try to net around 1400 at least. The minimum it should be is 1200, hope this helps!
    Also I eat back 75% of my exercise calories, and I recommend you eat back at least half of yours especially if you burn a lot :)

    That seems a little counter intuitive to eat back what you loose. What is the reason for doing that?
  • desidieter
    desidieter Posts: 195
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    That seems a little counter intuitive to eat back what you loose. What is the reason for doing that?

    You'll probably get multiple answers from different members...or some people will just straight up tell you not to do it, but one of the most common answers that I've seen in various threads is that the MFP exercise database isn't always super accurate; it supposedly overestimates on burns for certain activities, so folks have developed this system of eating back about 1/2 or more of their calories. That way, their net doesn't get too low.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    Don't eat lower than what it says your BMR is :-) I'm a similar height to you but weigh less now (as I lost 22 pounds) but I was your weight (or close) 176 pounds, 5'8, but my BMR is 1550 and I eat 1600. And obviously well, I've lost. 22 pounds doing it that way. There's no need to eat so low :-)

    Do you know if it's okay for your net to be lower than your BMR as long as your intake is higher? (Sorry for all the questions I am very new to this)

    Yes your net can be lower but I always try to net around 1400 at least. The minimum it should be is 1200, hope this helps!
    Also I eat back 75% of my exercise calories, and I recommend you eat back at least half of yours especially if you burn a lot :)

    That seems a little counter intuitive to eat back what you loose. What is the reason for doing that?

    Think of it this way... you need 1400 calories in order to lose your goal amount of weight/week. If you exercise you will now have a larger deficit and lose faster than intended (faster is usually not better as a higher % of your loss will come from lean muscle instead of fat)
    Eating 1400 and burning say 300 from exercise is the same as eating just 1100 calories with no exercise (which is not enough) So if you eat the 1700 (1400+300) it would be the same as 1400 with no exercise as 1400 = 1700-300
  • theshaleco
    theshaleco Posts: 39 Member
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    Ah okay that makes sense, thanks.

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