Eating all of your Calories?

Many people on here proport this starvation mode myth. I emplore you to do your own research on this. I did, and I have found it to be myth. Also this whole you shouldnt eat under 1200 cals is a myth also. What you SHOULD go on is your BMR. There are many more reliable calculators out there than the one MFP offers. I dont use theirs, and I set my own calories. Google BMR and a good one is on wiki about BMR. my BMR with activity level is 1800 or so. My BMR w/o activity is 1300 or so. You need to subtract calories from your BMR with activity level. I am small so I only subtract 500, so i'm down to my 1300 basically. I eat that, and whatever I work off I dont eat back. I only usually work off 200-300 cals a day. I lose about 1 or so a week. (i dont workout every day).

There is a study where this starvation mode myth came from. Called Minnesota study. Read up on it, and you'll find how erroneous it is. According to them 3500 a day calorie diet is normal, and 1600 a day is considered starvation. But the 'study' was only done on 36 some MEN. Other than this, and maybe 1 other 'study' there is NO scientific proof we go into a 'starvation mode' when we dont keep 1200 cals a day. The other study was a study on starvation. It was bascially a POW style starvation, a Ghandi starvation. ACTUAL starvation. so that there doesnt prove anything.

If you're using an HRM to calculate your calorie burn, I'd say eat back almost all of your calories. Remember that you'd burn about 80ish calories (depending on your daily BMR) just existing for an hour, so if you work out for an hour, that's 80 calories that are already accounted for in your daily deficit that MFP gives you, plus I always leave a few extra just for safety's sake since no HRM is 100% accurate.

If you're using the machine's calorie readout, I'd only eat back half to two-thirds of the exercise calories since they tend to way over estimate. When I started using an HRM the difference was astounding in some cases, definitely made me glad I hadn't been eating them all back.

And then some days, throw caution to the wind and eat all of the exercise calories. It'll be a tasty day and the extra boost of food will make your body happy. Plus, you won't have "gone over" and have little red minus signs mocking you since you're still within your net calories. It's sorta like giving yourself a cheat meal without really cheating.

Some people are going to come in and say eat 100% of them back, 100% of the time. Others will say it's counter-productive to eat them back at all. Ultimately, do what's best for you and keeps you on track and losing weight. The above that I described is what worked for me, but that doesn't mean it will work for you. But it's at least a reference point of something that you can try.

Good luck!

I appreciate the feedback, but I'm still a little confused, I always thought that in order to lose weight you have to burn MORE calories than you take in, is this not accurate? I was honestly very proud of myself that I had like 400 or more calories left a the end of the day and I wasn't hungry, I thought that was point, I mean it's not like I'm eating "rabbit food", lol or anything I'm eating real food but I workout sometimes twice a day.

MFP already gives you a deficit when it tells you how many calories to eat each day.

For example, I work at a desk job, so I entered sedentary as my activity level. Using that and my age/weight/gender info that I entered, MFP calculated that I burn 1,660 calories a day. I told it I wanted to lose 1lb a week, but since 1,200 is the lowest net they'll give you, I was given a deficit of 460 calories and 1,200 calories to net each day.

So anything that I burn in exercise is then additional on top of that deficit that MFP has already created for me, so in order to maintain a healthy deficit amount and loss rate, then I need to be eating back some to all of the calories I burn while working out.

My plan is to eat my exercise calories (after all, I do like my food). However, not I'm a bit leery of doing it because MFP seems to be a bit generous when calculating exercise calories and I'm afraid I'm overestimating calories burnt. I'm thinking if I can be consistent with my tracking, I should tell by the rate of weight loss whether this is true or not. If I lose crazy amounts of weight I'll eat more of my exercise calories, if not, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, which is eating back some but not all.

When you are close to your goal weight (usually within 30-40 pounds is considered "close"), it's EXTREMELY important to ensure that you don't give your body too big of a deficit or it will turn to burning muscle instead of fat because muscle is easier for it to burn and there's not as much fat as if you were a higher weight.

That's not a 'myth". That's science. Google it if you'd like. You'll find hundreds of sources of people explaining that the body will usually do whatever's easier for it. Burning muscle is easier when there's less fat available. And the way to get the body to release fat instead of burning muscle? Ensure your deficit is not too large, which is what happens when you burn off too many calories without eating the majority back.

ETA: to save you some searching, here's a link from Lance Armstrong's website about why low calorie/heavy workouts is NOT the answer, especially when you're at or near a healthy BMI.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/220416-how-to-burn-fat-instead-of-muscle/

What would Lance know about fitness though, right?