Calories

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iammordakais
iammordakais Posts: 2
in Health and Weight Loss
I thought you had to eat less calories than you burn to lose weight, I was just wondering if this was true or not, losing weight get too confusing...Help...:noway:

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  • SueInAz
    SueInAz Posts: 6,592 Member
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    Short answer: Yes, if you eat less calories than you burn you should lose weight. There are other nutrition plans that don't necessarily have you counting calories, of course.

    Is there a specific reason you asked this question? You seem confused about something.
  • KristysLosing
    KristysLosing Posts: 683
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    I do believe you are correct....you have to burn more calories than you take in. I don't think I met that goal today...maybe. Today didn't go so well. :-)
  • babygurl48
    babygurl48 Posts: 1,236 Member
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    calories in versus calories out. if you eat less calories than you burn you should lose weight .everyone is different. some people will eat their excercise calories back and lose weight and some won't. some will only eat more cals if they are still hungry. i was eating my excercise calories back and noticed i was maintaing, no i don't and i am losing very slowly, but i'm losing.

    just stick with what MFP gave u and go from there. see what works for u.
  • Sararainmaker
    Sararainmaker Posts: 48 Member
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    I thought you had to eat less calories than you burn to lose weight, I was just wondering if this was true or not, losing weight get too confusing...Help...:noway:

    Burning calories is actually quite confusing because technically you do not "Burn Calories."

    In Basic (as I understand it, I am not a nutritionist or MD): A calorie is a unit of measurement. Your body will produce calories throughout the day. The calories that a piece of food "has" is actually how many calories your body has to use to digest and process the food... If you do not have enough calories left, your body can not use the food, and stores it for later use. If you have TOO many calories left over, your body will slow down it's metabolism to compensate.

    HOWEVER...

    Every food is different. It does not JUST have calories. You also have to consider the other properties of the food, like fat content, protein, carbs and sodium. Too much of any of these can be bad. you want to find a nice balance, that your body seems to agree with. It's different for everyone... but in general if you follow ALL the recommendations of MFP, not just the calories, you will be on a good track, and you can adjust them from there.

    Also, you NEVER want to starve yourself... set a goal and stay within those goals here on MFP and you should do well. :)
  • BrewerGeorge
    BrewerGeorge Posts: 397 Member
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    ]

    Burning calories is actually quite confusing because technically you do not "Burn Calories."

    In Basic (as I understand it, I am not a nutritionist or MD): A calorie is a unit of measurement. Your body will produce calories throughout the day. The calories that a piece of food "has" is actually how many calories your body has to use to digest and process the food... If you do not have enough calories left, your body can not use the food, and stores it for later use. If you have TOO many calories left over, your body will slow down it's metabolism to compensate.

    ...
    I'm sorry to say that you have this almost exactly backwards. :embarassed:

    A calorie is a unit of heat - of energy. Scientifically, it is the amount of heat required to raise 1 gram of water 1 Celcius. The calories in food are actually kilocalories or Calories (with the capital) which is the amount of heat required to raise 1 kilogram of water 1 Celcius. Wood has calories, so does gasoline, our bodies just can't use it. When we describe the calories in food it is a proxy for the amount of chemical energy stored in that food. One way to experimentally measure calorie content is to burn something in a sealed environment and measure how much energy is release. Our bodies for-all-intents-and-purposes burn (oxidize) the food we eat to extract this energy for their own use.

    Many things we eat are used as building blocks directly without being broken down for pure energy, of course. The confusing thing is figuring out what is "burned" and what is used for building. Factor in that it takes energy to do this breakdown and the whole thing becomes complicated enough to support the life's work of thousands of people.

    This is probably more than you wanted to know, but a simple analogy is to think of Calories as electricity and fat as a battery. It takes so much power to run the motor all day. If you eat enough calories to break even the car just goes along and maintains. If you eat too many, the battery gets charged (makes fat). If you don't eat enough, power is pulled out of the battery (lose fat).

    Bottom line is that if you eat less than you burn you WILL lose weight 99% of the time. All the other stuff is just enhancements to this basic equation.
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,554 Member
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    I thought you had to eat less calories than you burn to lose weight, I was just wondering if this was true or not, losing weight get too confusing...Help...:noway:

    You are correct, you do have to burn/use more calories than you eat to lose weight.
    BUT, this doesn't mean you have to go to the gym and burn 2000 cals and then eat 1500.

    It means that you have to allow for all the calories that your body uses in a day( for things like keeping your heart beating and for you to breathe and digest food and walk around) plus the calories you use to do your regular daily activities.
    This is the number that MFP will set as your "maintenance" calories. As long as you are eating less than this number you will lose weight.

    If you do extra exercise that isn't accounted for in your daily activities you can eat these calories too because MFP has already calculated a calorie deficit for you to lose weight.
  • Nette_54
    Nette_54 Posts: 265 Member
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    I thought you had to eat less calories than you burn to lose weight, I was just wondering if this was true or not, losing weight get too confusing...Help...:noway:


    One very important thing to remember is do not eat too little calories, a female needs at least 1200 calories a day make sure you don't go under that or your body goes into " starvation mode " the food you eat will be stored as fat. You also need to shake up your metabolism too so every few weeks eat about 2000 calories for a couple of weeks, if you gain 1 and half lbs then go back to eating 1200 again It is supposed to kick your metabolism into action
  • psychmz3
    psychmz3 Posts: 55 Member
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    One very important thing to remember is do not eat too little calories, a female needs at least 1200 calories a day make sure you don't go under that or your body goes into " starvation mode " the food you eat will be stored as fat. You also need to shake up your metabolism too so every few weeks eat about 2000 calories for a couple of weeks, if you gain 1 and half lbs then go back to eating 1200 again It is supposed to kick your metabolism into action

    Yeah, don't listen to this information. Sorry to say.
  • Sararainmaker
    Sararainmaker Posts: 48 Member
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    I'm sorry to say that you have this almost exactly backwards. :embarassed:

    Thanks for the correction. the metric system always does confuse us Americans. :D It shouldn't... but it does ^_^ not to mention the book I read the information from, a long time ago, was probably a bit higher on the science ladder than I should have been reading :D
  • Sararainmaker
    Sararainmaker Posts: 48 Member
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    One very important thing to remember is do not eat too little calories, a female needs at least 1200 calories a day make sure you don't go under that or your body goes into " starvation mode " the food you eat will be stored as fat. You also need to shake up your metabolism too so every few weeks eat about 2000 calories for a couple of weeks, if you gain 1 and half lbs then go back to eating 1200 again It is supposed to kick your metabolism into action

    Yeah, don't listen to this information. Sorry to say.

    Indeed. Pretty sure if I went from 1200 a day to 2000 for a week i'd get violently ill in no time.

    Also, that 1200 is a generic number. The true number for any given person is dependent on your sex (as was stated) and current weight, height, age and activity level.
  • psychmz3
    psychmz3 Posts: 55 Member
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    One very important thing to remember is do not eat too little calories, a female needs at least 1200 calories a day make sure you don't go under that or your body goes into " starvation mode " the food you eat will be stored as fat. You also need to shake up your metabolism too so every few weeks eat about 2000 calories for a couple of weeks, if you gain 1 and half lbs then go back to eating 1200 again It is supposed to kick your metabolism into action

    Yeah, don't listen to this information. Sorry to say.

    Indeed. Pretty sure if I went from 1200 a day to 2000 for a week i'd get violently ill in no time.

    Also, that 1200 is a generic number. The true number for any given person is dependent on your sex (as was stated) and current weight, height, age and activity level.

    Exactly. A lot of people on here keep trying to use a generic number for EVERYONE.
  • SueInAz
    SueInAz Posts: 6,592 Member
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    One very important thing to remember is do not eat too little calories, a female needs at least 1200 calories a day make sure you don't go under that or your body goes into " starvation mode " the food you eat will be stored as fat. You also need to shake up your metabolism too so every few weeks eat about 2000 calories for a couple of weeks, if you gain 1 and half lbs then go back to eating 1200 again It is supposed to kick your metabolism into action

    Yeah, don't listen to this information. Sorry to say.

    Indeed. Pretty sure if I went from 1200 a day to 2000 for a week i'd get violently ill in no time.

    Also, that 1200 is a generic number. The true number for any given person is dependent on your sex (as was stated) and current weight, height, age and activity level.

    Exactly. A lot of people on here keep trying to use a generic number for EVERYONE.
    Agreed. I have a very hard time believing that a 4'11" female needs the exact same number of calories to maintain her body as a 6'2" woman. 1200 might be an average, but it's not a whitewash number.
  • iammordakais
    iammordakais Posts: 2
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    Thank you all for your input, you have definitely helped a ton...Its great to know that if I have any dounts ther's a community more than willing to help....yay!!

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