Question about net calories

Not sure - your diary the past week looks great to me. I'd stick with that plan. I aim for around 1400 calories a day myself. Try incorporating some strength training with heavy weights and interval training for your cardio workouts. Works for me!

they told me that you needed to eat back your exercise calories to lose the weight, i try really hard to get there but sometimes i don't. Have been losing up till this week and i gained back 2lbs, but i had an injury to me knee and started a different exercise progam. hopefully this will help you.

I pretty much agree with everybody here. It looks like you're doing great but I would look to eat some more calories. Especially since it looks like you're doing some good workouts. Are you using mfp calculations for workout calories or do you have a hrm to get the exact number? If you're using the mfp calculation is safe to assume its a little high generally. I don't think you're being unhealthy but some more calories without changing anything else will probably help you lose more a little faster.

so I have looked at all the threads on eating back exercise calories. My calorie goal is set at 1,200 in order for me to lose 1.1lb per week. My current weight is 147 and my goal is 120 I have been netting 900 calories after exercise generally and not losing weight I am not sure what to do ? Should I make my net higher or lower and I recently changed my macros so feel free to look at my diary but the weeks before this week won't look as good macro wise or sodium wise but it wasn't until recently that I stopped losing...
Thanks !
Edit: I am 5'3"

Yes, eat more. You don't have a lot of weight to lose. You can even lower your weight loss goal (2lbs is not realistic at your weight). This will increase your calorie consumption. And it is very, very important to eat your exercise calories because you don't have a lot of weight to lose.

http://www.hussmanfitness.org/html/TPAdaptation.html

Working With Your Body - The Basic Strategy
By John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
All rights reserved and actively enforced.


The goal of this site is to help you to transform your physique by walking you step-by-step through everything you need to know about exercise physiology and nutrition. I know that a lot of you have “tried everything,” and because there are so many approaches that have failed you, there's a real risk that you'll quit again and again if you don't see results immediately, or if you don't fully understand why your fitness program should work. Worse, there may be some missing pieces in your program, which could lead to slow progress even though you're hard at work. My hope is that this information will help you to stay on track - to turn effort into results - and to reach your goal.

Want to change your physique? Start by realizing that whatever shape you're in right now is your body's way of adapting to the lifestyle you're living. It's your body's attempt to survive. So the strategy is simple. We're going to give your body a very specific “environment” – a particular mix of activities, nutrition, and recovery – and your body is going to adapt by becoming leaner, stronger, and healthier.

Every change you throw at your body triggers a response. The problem with many diet and exercise programs is that they can accidentally encourage your body to defend fat, shed muscle, increase appetite and even lower its metabolism. The key to fast results is to know exactly which actions will cause your body to adapt by becoming fitter.

Maybe you've tried before to get in shape. But for some reason, you didn't get the results you wanted. If you're like I used to be, you've repeated that cycle year after year to no avail. Maybe you've failed so many times that you think of yourself as a “special case.” You've started to believe your entire metabolism consists of a little turtle on a treadmill. You wonder whether you've got the fat gene. You're convinced that no matter how hard you diet, your cells can still be seen eating Twinkies when viewed under a microscope.

Look. You're not a special case. Even if you had the fat gene (common among Pima Indians but rare otherwise), you'd only be burning 50-60 calories a day less than anybody else. Even if you've been diagnosed with a metabolic difficulty such as diabetes or hypothyroidism, you can still be successful with proper medical support. Most probably, other approaches failed you either because they were missing important pieces, focused on the wrong things, or produced results so slowly that you just gave up. What you need most is good information. You're in the right place.
The law of unintended consequences

Your body is an amazing feedback system aimed at balance and survival. Humans are at the top of the food chain because they are able to adapt to their environment. Every action produces a reaction. Every change in its environment triggers a survival response. It's important to keep that in mind when you plan your fitness program. If you treat your body as an enemy to be conquered, you'll produce unintended results.

For example, if you severely cut off the supply of food to your body, it will defend itself by slowing down its metabolism to survive starvation. The body will shed muscle mass the same way that you would throw cargo from a plane that was low on fuel, and it will reduce its thyroid activity to conserve energy. The body will also actually defend its fat stores. In anorexia, muscle loss can be so profound that fat as a percentage of body weight actually rises. Extreme carbohydrate restriction also causes muscle loss, dehydration, and slower metabolism, which is why even successful Atkins dieters can have a significant rebound in weight after they stop the diet (don't worry – the advice on this site will prevent that from happening).

As another example, if you put your body under stress through overexertion and lack of sleep, it will respond by slowing down, reducing muscle growth, and increasing your appetite for junk food, carbohydrates and fat. If you feed your body excessive amounts of sugar and quickly digested carbohydrates, and it will shut off its ability to burn fat until those sugars are taken out of the bloodstream.

This website will show you how to work with your body to quickly produce the changes you want. In order to do that, you need to take actions that push your body to adapt – to build strength, burn fat, and increase fitness. You need a training program, not an exercise routine. You need a nutrition plan, not a diet. You need a challenge, not a few good habits you usually try to follow except when you don't.
Setting the right goal

John Dewey once said that a problem well-stated is half-solved. If you want to reach your goal, you have to define it correctly. See, a lot of people say “I want to lose weight.” Well, if losing weight is your goal, go on a no-carb diet. You'll lose a lot of weight – some of it will be fat, a lot of it will be water, and a dangerous amount will be muscle tissue. You'll lose weight quickly, but you'll slow your metabolism and gain fat more quickly once you go off the diet. Trust me on this. I've been there, done that.

The problem is that you've set the wrong goal. If you want to look better, have more energy and enjoy better health, the goal is not simply to “lose weight.” The goal is to improve your fitness level and body composition. That means losing fat, improving your aerobic capacity, training your strength and defending your muscle tissue. You can't do that with a no-carb diet. You will do it using the approach you'll learn on this website. Trust me on this one too. I know what it's like to feel fat, tired and helplessly out of shape. The whole point of this site is to help others avoid that, by sharing lessons that I had to learn the hard way.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/TrainerRobin/view/myth-or-fact-calories-in-versus-calories-out-3500-calories-one-pound-and-should-i-eat-my-exercise-calories-62012 (she also has a blog called "An email response that might help some..." that has some good info).

And incorporate strength/resistance training with weights into your exercise routine. (intense cardio is overexertion)

I looked back over your diary for the last week (not including Sunday because it looks like you didn't complete your diary that day), and you actually averaged a net of 790.5 calories. One day, you only had a net of 539 calories. That is really not enough food.

Your calorie goal from MFP is meant to be your NET calorie goal for the day, so I really think that you need to be eating more. Personally, I am a firm believer in eating back the vast majority of exercise calories, but I understand that it doesn't work for everyone. That said, I think you should try eating back more of your exercise calories and figure out how many of them you need to eat back to make your body respond and lose weight.

so I have looked at all the threads on eating back exercise calories. My calorie goal is set at 1,200 in order for me to lose 1.1lb per week. My current weight is 147 and my goal is 120 I have been netting 900 calories after exercise generally and not losing weight I am not sure what to do ? Should I make my net higher or lower and I recently changed my macros so feel free to look at my diary but the weeks before this week won't look as good macro wise or sodium wise but it wasn't until recently that I stopped losing...
Thanks !
Edit: I am 5'3"

I am 139 my goal is 125 and I'm 5'2 I work out 6 days a week, my calories are set at 1500 seems to be working nicely for me.

BflSaberfan do you eat your exercise calories back so that you net 1500 ?

No I dont, this is my second week doing it this way, if at the end of next week I dont see a change I'm going to bump it up to 1700.