How many calories to eat - confused!

rsergeant79 wrote: »

Btw I have been losing weight doing what I'm doing - just interested in the opinions on this - 175cm female 36 currently weighing 13 stone 11

My opinion - Don't fix what isn't broken. If you're getting the results you want doing what you're doing then don't mess with it. It is all trial and error anyway.

Counting calories as well as counting your macronutrients is important. A toned body comes from consuming enough protein, fats and carbohydrates. A diet dominated by high carbohydrate calories isn't as effective as a high protein diet. I am 5'2 126lbs and currently eat, 1700 calories 127g of protein, 174g carbs and 57g of fat. I work out 4 times a week and only do about 1 hour of cardio a week, the rest is weight training. So don't just count calories, count macronutrients.

the way MFP is designed is that it gives you a calorie target as per your goals WITHOUT exercise activity in your activity level. this is why you get calories to "eat back"...that's how you account for that activity.

other calculators and most trainers utilize the TDEE method where an estimate of your exercise IS included in your activity level and thus an estimate of those calories would be accounted for up front in the equation.

i would be highly skeptical of 1,000 calorie exercise burns...at least initially, you should be trying to compare your burns from that activity to several different sources...1,000 calories in exercise is basically training like an athlete...and if that's truly the case, then you would need to eat like an athlete too. that said, most people vastly overestimate their burns...they take whatever the database spits out or what their app says or whatever as gospel when in reality, exercise burn for the vast majority of people is rather insignificant to anything else you do. this is one of the reasons people say to only take a % of that burn...it's a way (as arbitrary as it is) to have an allowance for estimation error.