Burn more calories than you eat??

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misskimlilac
misskimlilac Posts: 306 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Burn more calories than you eat?? What does that actually mean? Seriously, everything that I read on here talks about eating back your workout cals but these two things seems to be opposite. Never have I had a day where I ate 1200 cals but burned 2400, THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! Truthfully, I can't eat back my exercise cals usually either but there are days when I dig into them.Can anyone explain this?

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  • idream2bgwen
    idream2bgwen Posts: 424 Member
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    A typical woman's body needs 1200 calories to function in a day. So when you burn an additional 1200 and only eat 1200 you have a -1200. Kind of in simpler terms...but does that make sense?
  • WildFlower7
    WildFlower7 Posts: 714 Member
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    Check out this website:wink:

    http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com
  • Xaspar
    Xaspar Posts: 726 Member
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    take a look at your goals page.

    It shows how many calories you would burn in a day at your normal activity level without additional exercise.
    I am 5'6" 167 pounds and generally have a sedentary day, so my body burns roughly 1800 calories a day (if I did NOTHING else but live)
    So if I only eat 1200 calories a day, I am burning more calories than I am eating EVERY DAY. (roughly 600 calories more). If I exercise and burn an additional 200 calories, then I am actually at a calorie deficit of 800.
    If I burn 600 calories of exercise, I have burned a total of 1800 + 600 (2400 calories) If I am only eating 1200 calories, then I have too great of a deficit and need to eat back some of those calories or my body will get disgruntled. It's like asking it to work overtime, but not paying it for more than the regular 40 hour work week. And then it won't do its job as effectively as it could if I was giving it proper fuel to do the extra work.
    Does that make sense?
  • jrueckert
    jrueckert Posts: 355 Member
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    Your body burns calories every day just to function...it's called your BMR (mine is around 1800). MFP gives you a set amount of calories that is less than your BMR which is what you should consume daily. If you follow that, you're already burning more than you eat. THEN, if you exercise, you've burned even more calories, meaning you can eat them back. MFP already gives you the deficit so you don't need to increase that more. Search around on this site and you'll learn about how it works.
  • erinhale
    erinhale Posts: 137 Member
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    I am a professional, this is my living, this is what I went to school for 4 years for, this is the truth:

    My fitness pal already figures out a caloric deficit for you, around 500 calories based on your weight, activity level and goals. When you exercise you have to eat back those calories. You need to NET what mfp has for you.

    Use the program, don't modify your calories manually- some people don't want to eat their 1650 so tTHEY modify it to say 1200- this is wrong!

    If you replace calories burned, let myfitnesspal do the math for you, and exercise correctly you will lose weight.
  • otaylor10
    otaylor10 Posts: 4
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    OMG. After about an hour of researching, you have explained it perfectly in one short post. I am very grateful. I don't know how comfortable I would be with eating that many calories. I work out a lot. I am very heavy though, so right now the scales are still going down. I have a lot of fat stores though. Again, thanks.....:smile:
  • SuperMoniMonk
    SuperMoniMonk Posts: 467 Member
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    bump

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