help with calories!

lol i asked this question to as well never got any advice so let me know if you hear anything please

Yes you should, especially since you're nursing. You already have a deficit to lose weight, so if you exercise, you need to eat back those calories to keep from impacting your milk supply.

As far as non-nursing people go, I personally feel that you should, but it's a huge debate that I don't want to get into.

You should eat back some of your calories that you got from working out. If you don't, your body could go into starvation mode. I don't recommend eating all of the back, but some of them is a good idea. I hope this helps.

I'm also nursing, though likely significantly less than others (my son is 2.5). I'm not as worried about diet impacting my milk supply, as my toddler is mostly nursing for relaxation and comfort than for nutrition, so my scenario is a little different.

However, I have found that a) not getting enough calories will impact your milk supply, and b) not eating back my exercise calories has moderate impact on my weight loss. Personally, if I were nursing a child under 18months (or any child still significantly breastfeeding), I would be eating back every calorie I can - not overstuffing myself, but if I were hungry, I'd be eating. I wouldn't want to take the risk of a negative impact on milk supply, and you want to avoid the potential for eating too little and entering starvation mode, thus stalling the bejeebus out of your weight loss. If I recall, kellymom.com has some information with respect to eating / dieting while nursing, and apparently the eating of exercise calories is a Huge Can Of Worms on this site (though my personal experience says I should eat mine, your experience may be different ^_~).

Yeh, thanks everyone for the replies, it has helped to explain things better. I'm still confused by starvation mode and not sure how many calories I have to eat to avoid it. Also, if you were to eat low cal foods which would not add much to your score but would this stop the body going into starve mode or not? It's sooooooo confusing and perhaps explains why a lot of diets work.

Also, what is the best time to exercise?

I've noticed that a lot of people can't seem to get their heads around the exercise calories principle - so I'll try my best to clarify the matter as best as I can. If I came across as a pontificating condescending **@% - my apologies in advance! ;o)

There's a basic principle to grasp first though and that is: 2lbs of fat approximates to about 7,000 calories of energy. So to burn the maximum recommended amount of fat to lose per week you have to burn 7,000 calories that week. We do it by creating a DEFICIT of 7,000 calories which equates to 1,000 calories a day. We could alternatively do it by increasing our calorie expenditure by 1,000 a day - but most of us would find that hard to do. Labourers who are physical all day long could do it (so long as they watch what they eat from the roadside cafe's which is their downfall!)- but in general the deficit method is the easier option for the majority.

750 calories less a day means 1.5lbs lost that week. 500 calories less per day means 1lb lost that week and so on...

Next you have to calculate your BMR - or Basal Metabolic Rate - (sometimes also called the resting metabolic rate) This is the amount of calories your body would burn during one day (24hours) if you were doing nothing at all but simply existing. Humans are HOT! In the sense that our bodies need to create and generate heat - we output the equivalent of 2 x 50 watt light bulbs in heat every hour - it's just it's all over and it doesn't seem that hot to us.
A lot of people will argue over the absolute minimum that women and men need per day - citing many things in their favour as to why they think they are right. But the formulas were calculated via such methods as looking at overall mass and volume and how much energy would be required to maintain body heat for a physical being of that size coupled with other biological process etc... and basal minimums were agreed upon for the average man and woman. Granted there will be exceptions but unless you deviate from the average by a significant amount you should really just grudgingly come to terms with the fact that you should be getting at least 1200 (women) and 1500(men) every day as a MINIMUM. If you are uncomfortable ingesting that amount of calories there may be other issues at work that need addressing - like food choices and whether your metabolism has already taken a hit and is now perpetually low amongst may things that can (and DO) happen to people on severely low calorie diets.

Now it is important to realise that if you are big already then you will have a higher BMR every day than a smaller person. This means that if you are overweight by say 2 stone - that extra 2 stone contributes to your BMR - because that is extra mass that needs to be kept alive and comes with a calorie burden to boot.

Now the MFP BMR calculator is pretty good - I have cross checked it with many internet sites and BMR formulas; and the results are consistent and I'd say fairly accurate. You just need to bear in mind that as your weight comes off your BMR will get lower as a direct consequence - so regular weigh ins to the app are recommended. Myself I made an update to the app every time I lost 1 stone in weight and let the app's BMR calculator give me a new BMR figure to work with.

So now you have decided upon your calorie deficit and you know what your BMR is - this is the figure you should strive to meet at least every day - you should really treat it as a MINIMUM for the day. It doesn't matter if you regularly go over by about 100-200 calories on some days - so long as you are consistent and try and stay close to the minimum you will lose weight that week. Maybe 1-3 ozs less than you could have but in the grand scheme of things that little discrepancy doesn't matter!

Now, any "exercise" that you do during the day - is extra calories burned OVER and ABOVE your BMR. So if you burn say 500 calories extra that day from some type of exercise then you have in effect "earned" some calories back!. It's simple maths - the exercise is over and above your BMR -it's additional calories burned and you can safely supplement your daily calorie intake to accommodate that extra energy expended. And the app mirrors this conclusion as it automatically adds this to your daily calorie allowance.

Now you don't have to exactly eat ALL the calories back that you have burned off through exercise. but if you fancy some more food that particular day and you have earned it - then by all means have some and there is no need to feel guilty about it either (so long as you don't over compensate naturally!) - there will be some days when you simply won't be able to eat those calories back. Last summer I was laying a floor in my attic and the work involved saw me burning 1500-2000 calories a day! Every day I ensured that I had 1,000 calories more than I would normally have had to keep my body fuelled and those two weeks resulted in a great fat loss period - nearly 10 pounds...

Now the MFP app doesn't list ALL known physical activities in the cardiovascular section - so I use this website to calculate calories burned for exercises according to my height and weight:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calories.htm

Enter your body weight and select the exercise category you want to know about - (selecting none will produce results from all the categories). scroll down and enter the amount of minutes in the step 3 part - I usually put 60 minutes as when entered into the MFP app as a custom exercise it's clever enough to work out the calories burned for whatever time you enter.

Now before you add a bunch of custom exercises using that site - it's worth bearing something in mind - most of the estimates for these calories burned exercises probably don't take into account BMR as they measure what an individual burned with monitoring equipment as they performed that exercise or activity for a set amount of time. So to ensure that I don't reward myself with too many calories - I take away my BMR from the results before I enter it as a custom exercise.

Example. My size according to the result shows that I would burn 472 calories in an hour if I was non-stop cutting shrubs with a hand shears. But my BMR is 2500 or approximately 104 calories per hour - so I would enter the custom activity/exercise with a calorie expenditure of 472-104 which is 368. Now I may be wrong and it may already account for BMR - but at least I am erring on the side of caution - I know for fact that I am NOT over rewarding myself but at the same time earning "something" back for any work I have done. ;o)

Using this methodology I have entered a bunch of activities that have a fairly decent calorie expenditure to them:
Driving a car
riding a motorcycle (more calorie intensive than you might think!)
Mowing grass with hand mower
general carpentry
light housework
heavy housework
ironing clothes
general gardening
etc...

I also use a free IPhone app called Pedometer which logs how long you have ACTUALLY been walking and at what average speed so I can monitor how much "exercise" I have done whilst out shopping in ASDA with the wife for example.

So of the select few activities that I tend to do a lot of in my personal life I regularly add them as custom cardio activates in the app.

So does this work? Can you still lose weight? Well yes it does work - it's simple math and in the last 8 months doing exactly what I have mentioned I have managed to drop 75lbs ;o)

There are other things to consider - like the importance of protein - calorie counting on its own is not enough, the importance of muscle tissue and why you should be growing it; foods you really should avoid and only have as a treat; the importance of keeping regular records of weight measurements and body fat percentage; why you should get a good body fat calliper and learn how to use it etc.. (but only if there is interest in hearing it! )

So I hope that helps some of you out and alleviates the angst you may have been facing regarding these "earn back" calories...

Great post darthpistachio. Thanks for that.