Left over calories

You can eat them back. Your calorie intake is very low. You might feel ok in the beginning, but as you lose more fat, your body will have less reserves to burn, and you will need to consume more calories. MFP is set up for you to basically zero out your calories at the end of the day, but don't worry if you leave a few on the table for wiggle room.

This is a hard one to really make a good statement on without knowing more information such as your current weight, height, and how accurate your logging is with intake and burns.

Generic answer would be yes, netting below 1200 (meaning intake-calories burned=net calories) is not good for your health.

But, it also fully depends how you're coming up with your intake and burns. Are you using a food scale? Where are your burn numbers coming from? If it's a gym machine or the MFP database, they often are overestimated.

My point is, if you are weighing your food and only eating back 50-85% calories burned, then yes, you need to add more to your intake. But if you are not doing these things, you may be eating more than you think, which would not yield a need to eat more because it might actually be over 1200.

melaniewallacera wrote: »

vespiquenn - thanks. I do weigh my food and use a fit bit to track calories burned.

Then yes, you should incorporate a bit more calories into your diet. Some things I have done in the past for this is grabbing so Greek yogurt (good for the protein), almonds, peanut butter, or even a protein shake if the idea of food just doesn't do it for me. If you continue to eat below 1200, your body will lose more lean muscle than necessary, causing the look of skinny fat. So definitely get the calories upped.