Calories with exercise
MarcyTheGreat88
Posts: 20 Member
So my goal is around 1200 calories a day, and I've been losing weight no problem! My question is, when I exercise, MFP tells me to basically eat the calories I burn. Is this something I have to do to stay healthy? Or can I keep it at 1200 if I am feeling alright? Do I have to eat extra calories when I burn calories exercising?
Thanks everyone 😊
Thanks everyone 😊
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Replies
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This depends a bit on your height and weight and intensity of your exercise. But in general, you shouldn’t net below 1,200 calories regularly. Eating back at least a potion of your exercise calories is usually a good idea. That said, it’s important not to overcalculate your calories burned, which is very easy to do. This is why many will just eat back half, rather than all of them. If you’re burning 500 calories in exercises, then yes, you really should eat more, otherwise you’re only netting 700 calories a day which isn’t appropriate for anyone.5
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That sounds like a good rule of thumb. I'm about 300 pounds and 5'8. I do low intensity exercise because of my size and my bad back. So I'll do a slow easy bike ride for 25 mins and it says I burn over 400 calories on my Fitbit! It just doesn't seem right, so I've kept my calories at 1300 on the days I do 30 mins of exercise. So what you said makes sense Lhenderson. Thank you!4
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Given your current weight 1200 sounds like too low of a calorie target. What calorie target did MyFitnessPal give you?4
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You can probably eat more than that but it seems the exercise burn is way inflated.2
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Emmamcgarity it give me a calorie goal of 1740 a day to lose 2 pounds a week. But I tried that for a couple months and I didn't lose anything. I have thyroid disease and other autoimmune so I sleep alot and am very inactive most of the time. Once I started shooting for 1200 I have lost 10 pounds over the last 4 weeks. You think I should increase it? I do usually go over 1200, most days I'm between 1250 and 1390. I eat alot of veggies to fill up my meals so I feel like I'm constantly eating. I eat 6 times a day.2
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Yes, for your weight you should really eat more than 1200 calories. And if you do workouts next to that then you're effectively eating even less. Heck, 1200 calories is too little for pretty much everyone at normal weight. For your workouts: lets say you eat 1200 calories and burn 300 calories. This is for your body like you're only eating 1200-300 = 900 calories. Sure, you get vitamins and minerals, but your totally underfeeding yourself. Your body can only burn a certain amount of bodyfat per day. The rest comes from muscles. Believe me, you don't want to burn through your muscles.5
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MarcyTheGreat88 wrote: »That sounds like a good rule of thumb. I'm about 300 pounds and 5'8. I do low intensity exercise because of my size and my bad back. So I'll do a slow easy bike ride for 25 mins and it says I burn over 400 calories on my Fitbit! It just doesn't seem right, so I've kept my calories at 1300 on the days I do 30 mins of exercise. So what you said makes sense Lhenderson. Thank you!
Agree - it sounds far, far too high.
Two issues can commonly contribute to that:
Methods that base the estimate on weight for cycling are badly flawed for heavy people as it's a non-weight bearing exercise.
Methods that base estimates on heartbeat can be enormously inflated for people that aren't very fit or simply have a high exercise heartrate.
Roughest of rough guesses just estimating what power you might be producing more like 216 - 288 per hour.
If your bike tells you average watts you can get a very accurate estimate.
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I think it might be helpful for you to speak to your doctor about how your thyroid issue may affect your metabolism. I personally don't have any health issues that would make it harder for me to lose weight and many people don't --- it's likely that those people will tell you that there are very few situations in which a woman eating 1200 calories per day is enough.
If you used MFP to calculate your daily calorie goal (and it sounds like you did and choose to lose 2lbs per week) --- then the daily goal it gave you is *already a deficit to your maintenance calories. This is why MFP adds back your cardio workout calories --- because if you didn't eat them back you'd be creating a HUGE deficit.
Generally -- I'd suggest eating back 50-100% of those work-out calories - depending on how hungry you are.
I'm trying to find a way to make it easier to understand.
Example: If you ate 1200 calories today (that's already a quite high deficit, since you stated that MFP gave you 1740 to lose 2lbs/day ---so theoretically your maintenance calories are >1740)...then you burned say, 300 calories doing a workout.....your net calorie intake for the day would be 1200-300=900 calories...which is very very very low. Once you get too low in calories like that then the risk is not getting enough macro/micro nutrients or other essential vitamins/minerals to be healthy.1 -
I'm just now starting my health journey, (for the million time) I started at 263 and I'm now 245. I have pcos so I understand where you are coming from. But a rule of thumb for anyone when losing weight regardless of underlying conditions is; If you can't eat that way the rest of your life then is not the right diet for you. Try eating more and definitely find a good Dr that can help you. I know it's hard because Drs seem to be clueless about nutrition, but you can do it. You've got this!4
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MarcyTheGreat88 wrote: »Emmamcgarity it give me a calorie goal of 1740 a day to lose 2 pounds a week. But I tried that for a couple months and I didn't lose anything. I have thyroid disease and other autoimmune so I sleep alot and am very inactive most of the time. Once I started shooting for 1200 I have lost 10 pounds over the last 4 weeks. You think I should increase it? I do usually go over 1200, most days I'm between 1250 and 1390. I eat alot of veggies to fill up my meals so I feel like I'm constantly eating. I eat 6 times a day.
I do think 1200 is too low for someone at your current weight. Since you have a medical condition, talking to your doctor is definitely a good idea.
Did you gain at 1740? How many weeks did you stay at that calorie goal?
My concern is that at 1200 you would be losing weight quite rapidly and possibly have negative health consequences (hair loss, malnutrition, etc). So I’d recommend bumping the calorie goal back up until you’ve had a chance to discuss with your doctor.
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If you have the fitbit app you can go to the meal plan section (I think that's what it's called) and you can sync MFP to it so that it gives you a realistic number of how much more you can eat with regards to your exercise that day. You can also set how much you want your deficit to be.i find it quite helpful and now I used that as my main tool, while I just MFP to calculate food intake0
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Thank you so much for all the feedback! I did gain weight eating 1740 calories a day for 8 weeks. I am going to take the good advice you've all given me and consult my doctor about it. In the meantime I will bump up my calories so that I'm not just eating 1200 a day. Thank you all again for your thoughts, especially about the exercise deficit. The last thing I want to do ís over calculate the calories I burn exercising. I'm sure with the help of my doctor I can find a good calorie goal for myself. I have lupus, hashimotos disease, PCOS, anemia, and I've beat cancer twice. So I know my body isn't average haha.6
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Hi Marcy, I don't want to invalidate your experience, but something doesn't make sense here. You say you gained on 1740 calories, yet you lost 10lbs when eating 1200 calories.
So lets look at some numbers to make you understand why I find something is off.
in order to lose 1lbs you need to eat 3500 calories less.
Thus to lose 10lbs you need to eat 35000 calories less.
You say you gained on 1740 calories
You also say you lost those 10lbs eating 1200 calories in one month.
The different between gaining and losing is only 540 calories per day
or 540* 30 = 16200 calories in one month.
But above shows you'd need to eat 35000 less per month to lose 10lbs, not 16200
Which means you'd need to eat 35000/30 = 1166calories less per day
-> 1166 calories underneath your maintenance calories. But 1740 weren't even your maintenance calories as you wrote you gained on it. Thus your maintenance calories are below 1740 per day. Lets say 1650?
1650-1166 = 484. Did you only eat 484 calories per day?3 -
MarcyTheGreat88 wrote: »Thank you so much for all the feedback! I did gain weight eating 1740 calories a day for 8 weeks. I am going to take the good advice you've all given me and consult my doctor about it. In the meantime I will bump up my calories so that I'm not just eating 1200 a day. Thank you all again for your thoughts, especially about the exercise deficit. The last thing I want to do ís over calculate the calories I burn exercising. I'm sure with the help of my doctor I can find a good calorie goal for myself. I have lupus, hashimotos disease, PCOS, anemia, and I've beat cancer twice. So I know my body isn't average haha.
This is all important info - and I'm glad you'll talk to your doctor. I have a friend who beat cancer as well and we were randomly talking the other day about those salad kits you can buy. There's a dill pickle one that we both love and I was like, "Oh yeah, I just grab some smoked salmon and that salad kit and bam - dinner"....She said that she and her husband (who is a quite tall/big guy) split the salad and she made a comment about how many calories the entire bag had (with all the fixings and dressing). We both looked at the other like each other had 4 eyes --- because for me, the amount of calories in one whole bag + the smoked salmon I add is dinner. And for her that sounded crazy. I'm definitely more active than she is but I know she uses a Peloton bike and treadmill and does home workouts so it's not like she's not active.
You have additional stuff that *also will affect your metabolism and ability to use the simple 'calories in/calories out' strategy. Just as long as you're making sure you're healthy -- that's the goal! It's important to remember that even though there's good advice here -- everyone's caloric needs can be wildly different. But I'm sure you're gonna find what works and keeps you satisfied!1 -
MarcyTheGreat88 wrote: »So my goal is around 1200 calories a day, and I've been losing weight no problem! My question is, when I exercise, MFP tells me to basically eat the calories I burn. Is this something I have to do to stay healthy? Or can I keep it at 1200 if I am feeling alright? Do I have to eat extra calories when I burn calories exercising?
Thanks everyone 😊
Your calorie target with MFP is based on ZERO exercise in your activity level, just your day to day humdrum. Using MFP as designed, exercise is completely unaccounted for activity. The more you move, the more calories (energy) your body requires to maintain good health. Not properly accounting for exercise activity can and often does result in an overly large calorie (energy) deficiency that is not healthy. Remember that calories are providing you with the mere ability to exist as well as go about your day to day activities and engage in physical exercise and physical recreation.
Depending on rate of loss selected and activity level, many people have large deficits already built in...substantial exercise that is unaccounted for just makes this bigger. Large calorie deficits along with substantial exercise put a huge stress load on the body and that load can jack with hormones, particularly cortisol which can ultimately inhibit fat loss. Large deficits also typically result in your body compensating for the lack of energy coming in by slowing down or ceasing altogether "non-essential" functions...which is where you start to see people having hair growth issues...thinning and falling out...brittle nails...loss of menstrual cycle for women, etc. All of these things require energy (calories) and in an effort to conserve energy, the body just slows these processes down. Fatigue and lethargy and a drop in involuntary movements like fidgeting are also common. All of the above essentially slow your metabolism.
The difficult thing with MFP is accurately determining both calories in and calories out. There are inherent human deficiencies and error in logging calories in...this occurs even with nutritionists and dieticians. It's near impossible to be spot on. Estimating calories out can be even more difficult. Then you have the nature of the exercise...for example, I'm not going to be overly concerned about not specifically fueling my 2 mile recreational walk with my dog as it isn't going to require any particular recovery or a whole lot of energy and we're biologically built for the task...a 30 mile bike ride or 4-6 hours out on my mountain bike are a completely different story.1 -
I’m glad that you plan to talk to your doctor. The reason you gained on 1740 could be as simple as inaccurate logging, or it could be related to some of the medical issues you have going on. Be sure to ask your doctor what a safe rate of loss is for you. In general you don’t want to lose more than 2 lbs per week on average to keep a safe rate. But as you get closer to your goal weight, you’ll want to lose at a slower rate.
Note: if you are logging based on eyeballing your measurements or using cups/spoons, it is likely due to inaccurate logging.
I personally use cups/spoons for many items but often will spot check myself with a kitchen scale to improve my accuracy. It’s up to you if you want to use a kitchen scale on your journey. I do find it useful. In fact, my adult daughter came over to visit the other night, and we decided to have a snack together. She watched me weight out a serving of pretzel crisps and cheese to account for our snack. She shared with me that she had never used a kitchen scale before. And until watching me put together a snack, she didn’t realize how easy it was. (I know that this may not apply to you, but others reading/lurking may find it useful)7 -
You won't believe this but I went to the hospital after my last reply because my stomach hurt so badly. It normally hurts off and on but not this bad! I was worried it was my appendix or gallbladder or something. And they found a large mass in my abdomen!! They said it is appx 10.5 inches across!!! The doctor is confident it is a type of cyst and I will be going into surgery in a few hours. I'm just waiting for the surgeon to get here. ( I live in Hawaii so the surgeon is coming from across island) I just wanted to let everyone know why I hadn't replied and that I may not reply again for a little while. It has been such a crazy day!!
PS: maybe that's why I gained weight on 1700 calories?? My mind is blown right now!! 🤯15 -
Oh no, take care hun! All the best for you.2
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Oh my goodness, glad you went and they are able to help now, take care!1
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Oh my! I’m praying that all goes well for you!1
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I had the same thing happen about 8 years ago. I kept gaining weight, and I was sticking strictly to a 1200 calorie diet. Turns out I almost died of kidney failure due to an infection, caused by pressure put on my kidneys by a 16lb ovarian cyst. Had it out, and been fine ever since. Glad you found it before it got to the point I had it.
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MarcyTheGreat88 wrote: »You won't believe this but I went to the hospital after my last reply because my stomach hurt so badly. It normally hurts off and on but not this bad! I was worried it was my appendix or gallbladder or something. And they found a large mass in my abdomen!! They said it is appx 10.5 inches across!!! The doctor is confident it is a type of cyst and I will be going into surgery in a few hours. I'm just waiting for the surgeon to get here. ( I live in Hawaii so the surgeon is coming from across island) I just wanted to let everyone know why I hadn't replied and that I may not reply again for a little while. It has been such a crazy day!!
PS: maybe that's why I gained weight on 1700 calories?? My mind is blown right now!! 🤯
Wow that’s crazy! Best of luck to you and I wish for you a speedy full recovery.1 -
I am finally home and recovering! Thank you everyone for the positive vibes. I got the results today and it turned out to be a benign tumor. They removed it and it weighed a whopping 13 pounds!! So scary, but my family and I made it through. I have lots of help so I can rest. Very thankful to be here and that they found it when they did. Once I heal some and the swelling goes down I'm sure I'll feel great! ☺️9
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Whoa! I'm glad all went well for you. The data geek in me things: right, that's not something I read here before as a reason of odd weight numbers. Sorry for thinking this way. I'm glad you got through. Please give your body time to heal and give it lots of rest and enough food for now. You need it3
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Glad you are home recovering. I’d encourage you to eat at maintenance calories while you heal. Give your body the time it needs before adding the stress of a calorie deficit.3
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I will definitely be eating well and resting. Thank you! I am soooo sore, I'll be taking it easy for sure!7
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musicfan68 wrote: »I had the same thing happen about 8 years ago. I kept gaining weight, and I was sticking strictly to a 1200 calorie diet. Turns out I almost died of kidney failure due to an infection, caused by pressure put on my kidneys by a 16lb ovarian cyst. Had it out, and been fine ever since. Glad you found it before it got to the point I had it.
Wow!!! Thankfully you made it through! This whole experience was super scary, especially for my husband and 9 year old son. We just didn't know what to expect and everything happened so fast!3 -
Wow! I'm so glad you're okay!
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