Deficit and exercise calories

motiv8td18
motiv8td18 Posts: 14 Member
edited November 17 in Health and Weight Loss
How much is too much? My goal is to lose 2 lbs per week, so that is already built in to my goal as you all know. I burn about 300 calories 6x per week doing cardio. Do I need to eat all of those calories so my body doesn't go into a starvation mode? I usually have a 200-300 calorie deficit on days I work out and eat approx 1400 calories per day.

I have had a recent stall in weight loss despite no change in diet or exercise, except for 10 days from 3/5-3/15 when I was out of town and did not exercise daily though I followed my calorie goal. Could I be seeing that slump reflected one week later?

Replies

  • pupntot
    pupntot Posts: 25 Member
    Starvation mode doesn't exist so you can stop worrying about that. Nothing more than a myth.

    Losing 2 pounds a week, depending on how much you have to lose, might be a bit too steep a loss. And MFP doesn't tend to let you have the full 1000 calorie deficit you need to have in order to lose 2 pounds per week.

    A stall in weight loss can be caused by so many different factors, are you weighing everything with a food scale?

    I tend to eat back most of my exercise calories, because I know everything I eat is weighed accurately and I've given myself long enough to learn how the numbers work with my body.

    Trial and error is a good move if you're in this for the long run.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    How much weight do you want to lose total?
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    Please realize that even though MFP allows you to choose to lose 2 lb per week, that requires you to maintain a -1000 calorie deficit daily. It has already been shown that 8 weeks of a calorie deficit of only -500 causes metabolic damage in the form of a 10% reduction in NEAT beyond the reduction due to weight loss. At the point of 10% damage, you start noticing that weight loss is harder and slower than before. This is not the end of the world, as simply eating at the maintenance level of calories for a week is sufficient to undo the damage.

    With you trying to build a deficit of close to -9000 weekly counting your exercise, you should expect that 8 weeks of that will cause more than 10% damage and be harder to fix. Please allow yourself to have a weekend of eating at maintenance, that's a zero deficit, each month. It'll help.
  • motiv8td18
    motiv8td18 Posts: 14 Member
    Kshama- id like to lose 40 total, 18 down so far.

    JeromeBarry- will eating at maintenance for one or two days per week throw off my weight loss progress?
  • amtyrell
    amtyrell Posts: 1,447 Member
    Have you recalculated needs based on now smalled weight? 18 lbs down means your calorie needs are going down too.
  • motiv8td18
    motiv8td18 Posts: 14 Member
    Yes I recalculated today using my current weight and goal weight. It took 100 off my daily allowance to keep at a pace of 2 lbs per week
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