Left over calories

I don't ever eat more than 100-200 exercise calories. It's not unusual for me to leave 300-400 on the table and I'm losing weight - about 1.5 - 2.0 pounds a week.

OK, here's the deal.

It has nothing to do with how many calories you do or don't eat back.

The concept is this: you need a certain amount of calories for maintenance.

You decide (based on your research, asking questions, talking to other folks, knowing your specific case, setting the goal through the goals wizard...etc.) that you can safely eat a certain number of calories below your maintenance in order to facilitate weight loss.

It doesn't matter how you achieve this deficit, whether you eat maintenance calories and then work out for a certain amount to achieve a deficit, or you set a deficit as a goal then exercise and eat the exercise to stay within the goal, it doesn't really matter. The body doesn't care how you achieve the deficit.

So instead of asking how many calories you can eat back. Ask if you are still within that reasonable deficit after you work out, if the answer is no, then eat enough back to stay there, if the answer is yes, then you don't need to eat more.

Banks how do I figure out if it is a resonable defecit after a workout? I think I had around 400 calories left after a workout. I'm sorry for all the questions I just don't want to undo what I have already done.

you find your maintenance,

find out what your BMI and body fat % is,

talk to someone who knows what a safe deficit is at your range and age, or do some research and decide what a safe range is.

Then you endevor to stay within that range.

I.E. someone with a BMI of say around 28 and a BFP of around say 30%, a safe range is usually between 0 and 600 calorie deficit. This is a very round number and doesn't necessarilly hold for everyone, but it's generally close to correct. I don't know what your BMI and BFP is so I can't tell you what yours is, and even if I did, because every human has slightly different body chemistry, I could only give you educated guesses, it would be up to you to take that info and apply personalized observational tweaks to it.

Thank you Banks:flowerforyou:

very welcome, I'd be glad to help (as I'm sure a lot of people on here would) you find the right deficit for you, as long as you understand that we are just giving our opinion based on our own research and knowledge and that it's up to you to make the final judgments.

Best luck you you.

-Banks