For those confused or questioning "Eating your exercise calo

this is an excellent read, thanks im having a hard time eating all my calories a day so far without adding on extras earned, but i have only been on this site for 2 weeks but im sticking to it and have actually noticed my tummy starting to grumble more now (i never really ate much before) so i guess its starting to work
thanks again
D x

If someone actually took the time and effort to figure something with me that would be great, I'm confused as too how much calorie i should actually be taking.

Age: 20 in two months
weight: 165
Height: 5'9
work: none
activity: Little due Christmas break and in January will be back in school
work out program: P90x (6 days a week, for 1 hour)
Goal: Burn as much fat and have a lean muscular body
Supplements: Jack3d for pre work out.
Whey protein after work out
Casein protein before bed

If you guys are familiar with the p90x program I would be burning 500 to 800 calories per hour session

Do i include my supplements as calories for myfitness pal? or are they seperate and don't need to be included.

So my overall question is, how much calories and so on should I be taking?

from your profile, it looks like you are trying not to lose any weight, just fat. That means a VERY small deficit (on the order of 250 calories or so). Eat healthy, exercise intensely 4 to 6 times a week, mix resistance (weight training or anaerobic cardiovascular training or plyometrics...etc.) with steady state cardio, and in your case EAT those exercise calories.

And most of all, expect it to take a while, don't look for instant results, months are needed, many months, to see real, positive changes.

If someone actually took the time and effort to figure something with me that would be great, I'm confused as too how much calorie i should actually be taking.

Age: 20 in two months
weight: 165
Height: 5'9
work: none
activity: Little due Christmas break and in January will be back in school
work out program: P90x (6 days a week, for 1 hour)
Goal: Burn as much fat and have a lean muscular body
Supplements: Jack3d for pre work out.
Whey protein after work out
Casein protein before bed

If you guys are familiar with the p90x program I would be burning 500 to 800 calories per hour session

Do i include my supplements as calories for myfitness pal? or are they seperate and don't need to be included.

So my overall question is, how much calories and so on should I be taking?

from your profile, it looks like you are trying not to lose any weight, just fat. That means a VERY small deficit (on the order of 250 calories or so). Eat healthy, exercise intensely 4 to 6 times a week, mix resistance (weight training or anaerobic cardiovascular training or plyometrics...etc.) with steady state cardio, and in your case EAT those exercise calories.

And most of all, expect it to take a while, don't look for instant results, months are needed, many months, to see real, positive changes.

Yeah but according to the amount of exercise i do, burning upto 500-800 calories daily for 6 days, how much calories should I be intaking daily and should i be counting the supplements as calories and proteins for myfitnesspal

any exercise you enter you should be eating, all of them, especially for someone in your situation this is important. And if the supplement has caloric value, enter it as food.

wmchick,

What is your goal deficit set to currently?

there are 2 links I think you should read, I list them below.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/61706-guide-to-calorie-deficits

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/142621-why-i-think-weight-isn-t-a-proper-goal

Essentially, it's difficult for me to give you any real solid suggestions because I don't know your body fat percent.
Considering you are well into the healthy weight range according to BMI (not the measure I would normally like to use but since I don't have BF% that's all I can really go on) all I can do is give general advice.

For a person that is at a healthy weight, there should be little deficit, if any at all. Since you shouldn't really be trying to lose weight. As I state in my second link (listed above), once you get down to a healthy weight, your actual weight is arbitrary and I don't think weight is a correct choice of goals any more.
I suspect, for you, it should be all about body fat %, and people trying to lose body fat without losing weight need to do higher intensity exercises to increase muscle mass while eating at their maintenance calories. Depending on how many calories you burn in a day, you can eat some, or even all of your exercise calories (I would never create a deficit of more than 300 calories, but that's a personal opinion, some tweaking may be needed).

What I can tell you for sure is that to lower the body fat, once your body fat levels are already well into the healthy range (around 24% or so for a woman) it takes a stricter nutrition program and a more rigorous cardio program. since I don't have access to your food diary, I can't tell how healthy your nutrition is, but seeing what your workouts are like, I can tell you that you probably need to do more if you want to shape up the belly. Yoga's fine, but you need resistance work, and 1 or 2 times a week you need to do something anaerobic like HIIT training to go along with the steady state cardio.


Basically I'm saying after reading the above posts, I would have a body fat % test done, then we can be more specific. Also, nix the weight goal, weight is arbitrary, you may very well lose the 6 or 7 lbs you are trying to, and it could have absolutely no effect on your stomach, because weight is arbitrary and not a good measure for a healthy person to judge their fitness levels.

-Banks

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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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