Net or Total calories?? Help please!!

You are supposed to eat all your calories and all your exercise calories. If you don't you will eventually plateau.

A plateau is when you stop losing weight even though you are eating less calories than your burn in a day. Some people has this last for a month or more. The key to losing weight and keeping it off is to have a moderate caloric deficit (that is eat slightly less than you burn in a day). For people who are obese according to their BMI, their body can handle a fairly large deficit so they can effectively have a goal of losing 2 pounds per week. Overweight people by BMI cannot handle a deficit that large and should probably only try to lose 1 pound per week. When a person is close to the top end of normal even that is too much and they should only go for a half pound per week or perhaps even less. The danger is that if your eat too little (have too large a calorie deficit) their body will after a week or two (sometimes more, sometimes less) stop losing weight, or it will lose muscle which will slow down your metabolism so you have an even harder time losing weight. Worse yet, if you lose substantial amounts of muscle it will cause you to gain weight if you stop dieting and you will likely end up weighing more but actually being more fat since your muscle weight will be less.

The key to all of this is to eat the calories that MyFitnessPal says you should. When you look at your food for the day it will tell you how many calories you have left for the day. A pretty safe bet is to seek to eat within 50 or so calories above or below that number. An occasional low day won't hurt, but consistently eating much less than that number will cause that slow down or stop of weight loss call a plateau.

At the very least keep your net calories above 1200, but it would be better to eat all your calories.

It's interesting to hear that response. I have set myself at 1500 calories per day and I stick to this whether I exercise or not. But I am only two weeks in so a future plateau is obviously possible. I have lost 8lbs in 2 weeks and I am having my assessment at a gym tomorrow and then will be doing regular exercise. I just had in my head that exercise was an extra bonus to aid my weight loss but I keep seeing that I should eat my exercise calories. Somebody who has lost over 80lbs obviously knows what they are talking about. Would just half my exercise calories be ok?

This may seem snarky but I promise it's not, this website helped me when I first got here:

http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/

Click the "How about now?" link and read all of the threads they have linked. It's a ton of useful information and it will help you in your lifestyle change. I've been eating my exercise calories and consistently losing. A little bit ago my sleep schedule was severely messed up and I was eating under my net calories by 400-800 a day for a week. The next week, I saw a .05 loss compared to previous weeks where I was losing anywhere from 1.5 to 3 pounds. I've sorted out my sleep schedule and I'm eating normally again, I've already seen a difference on the scale but I won't officially weigh in until Friday.

My Net calories today are at 1150.. but I took in a total of 1750 today. I walk 2- 3 miles a day at about 3.5 mph. and two days a week I do thirty minutes of elliptical on top of the walking. I've been doing this for about 2 months, slowly increasing my walking times and distance to what I am at now. But my BMI is like 40. I do carry a lot of muscle. I just started my fitness pal this past saturday. I have lost 12.3 lbs in two weeks. So you think my body should handle the deficit because my BMI is higher? Sorry for all the questions, but you are a biggg help!!

If you know your Bodyfat % that is more helpful, because if you have a lot of muscle BMI is not that useful. The reason I mentioned it is because for most people that is all they know and there is some correlation for many people between BMI and BodyFat%. Basically lower body fat % means you need a smaller calorie deficit or you have to do some major bouncing around with your calories with something called zig-zagging by some people. Here is a blog post from one of the fitness blogs I follow that deals with things from a body fat % http://www.bodyweightcoach.com/02/eating-for-fat-loss/ It might help you.