Net calories or total calories?

Net is food less exercise calories earned. Yesterday I ate 1700 and I earnt 500 through exercise so my net calories was 1,200.

If you do a lot of exercise it is important as it can be easy to drop below nett 1,200 if you are following a strict meal plan.

I did that for 2 months last year, I ate 1200 as per my set meal plan by burnt on average 400 cals per day doing purposeful exercise (some days I was netting around 400 cals). Yes I lost weight but I was also exhausted. I ended up upping my cals to 1500 and felt a lot better, weight loss didnt slow too much probably because now I had more energy to do things such as laundry which burnt energy anyway rather than veggie in front of the tv exhausted.

To begin with I found it too much to focus on macros (unless you are doing a diet such as LCHF or keto). Personally I would stick to CICO to start with. I did look at fiber when I was a bit backed up and now I pay more attention to protein that I've begun weightlifting. But for my it was one step at a time.

I'm allowing myself 1300 net a day but because I exercise daily and burn over 600 calories I can eat my normal 18-1900 calories I would usually eat. I feel really energized and happy, so much different than when I used to try and keep my total calories under 1200 while also exersizing.