For those confused or questioning "Eating your exercise calo

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I'm wondering, you're saying that you should be eating your exercise calories and eating 1200 calories a day. I would be starving at 1200 a day, I'm starving as it is eating 1500 a day! Noting that I am at 1500 cal/day, should I still be eating my exercise calories? I'm basically in the high end of the healthy weight scale for my height and age and I've been stuck at the same weight since October, but I've found that if I do eat into my exercise calories I gain weight back.

I never said you should eat 1200 calories a day. I don't really ever advise people on a calorie number unless I first have all their information, then I would give my best guess based on that limited information. What I tell people is figure out your maintenance, find a goal that fits your profile, and use that goal (1 lb a week, 2 lbs, 1/2 a lb...etc) exercise calories burned and eaten are a net zero to that deficit, calories burned but not eaten increase the deficit, possibly larger than your body can handle.

Put it this way, think about it logically. If you're at a calorie deficit, and you exercise, then you eat those exercise calories back and gain weight, you're essentially saying that if you didn't exercise you would gain weight at that calorie deficit. How can that be unless you either A) incorrectly figured your statistics on the site, or have been inaccurately reporting your calorie intake, or C) have a medical condition that leads to a change in your metabolic rate, or D) are in starvation mode and your TDEE isn't what you think it is.

think about it like this.

say your maintenance calories are 1800 (just a random number I pulled)

say you're eating at a 500 calorie deficit every day to lose 1 lb per week
that means you're eating 1300 calories a day right?

ok now you exercise for 300 calories, so instead of your body burning 1800 calories that day, it now burned 2100

so if you eat 1300 calories on the day you exercise, your deficit is no longer 500 now it's 800 (2100 - 1300)

but if you did eat those exercise calories, the deficit would be (2100 - 1300) - 300 = 500
the same deficit that you originally planned for.
This is all contingent on my four assumptions above. In other words, you have to be sure your numbers and activity level are correct, you have to be sure you're reporting your calories correctly (people are off more than you'd think), you can't have any underlying medical conditions or on any medication that would disrupt the metabolic rate, and you can't be in starvation mode. Any one of these 4 these issues will change the TDEE (maintenance calories) that you are at, therefore invalidating your deficit number.

Add to that the fact that as humans, we don't fit nicely into any generic formula and a little tweaking is almost always necessary and you have the reason why I never give out a blanket number like 1200. 1200 is simply the number the WHO gave out in the 80s as the average minimum amount of calories FEMALES needed in order to maintain nutrient levels, please note that is the average minimum. Meaning taking all women in the world, averaging their weight and giving you the lowest number that a woman should be eating just to keep from starving over the long term. It's not a very telling number and certainly not something I would ever give out without at least having a specific conversation.

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bumping to add to my topics. Thanks for the info.

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