1200 cals a day?

I wouldn't if I were you but there are a lot of people on here that do eat back their exercise calories. I opt to exercise off my eating calories

I think these forums will always be strongly divided on this issue.

This was an issue that I didn't completely understand at the beginning either. I was eating 1200 calories a day and then burning anywhere from 300 to 800 calories per day exercising with spinning, kickboxing, circuit training etc. I didn't eat back my calories. I didn't know I was supposed to. But MFP puts you on 1200 calories a day without any exercise. So if you are active and expected to make gains in muscle and fat loss, I was putting myself at a net low of 400 calories. No wonder why I felt like crap. I cried for weeks and was fatigued and exhausted and my nails were weak and I was so depressed. I was starving myself. Now I never let myself fall below a net of 1200 - I need that to survive! My trainer helped me out with this confusing issue and my doctor told me the same so I am always making sure I don't drop below that magic number.

"So often people personal message me asking me if I think their calories are correct. It seems that people think there is some magical formula that only a very few can figure out. I see so many people on here just popping in numbers and following them heedless of what the numbers mean. I feel it's ULTRA important to know why MFP (and me, and a few others) gives you certain numbers. To that end I will try to empower YOU to be able to understand the basics about calories, calorie deficits, and why we recommend eating exercise calories. With this knowledge you should be able to easily figure out what your calories should be at for reasonable, healthy weight loss. So without further ado, lets get started.

1st things first, a few givens must be stated:

-Everyone's body is slightly different. ALWAYS keep in mind your numbers may not be exactly what MFP thinks simply because everyone's bodies all burn energy at a different rate. Tweaking may be needed.

- MFP's goals wizard is a "dumb" tool. That means it doesn't care whether a specific goal is healthy and/or right for you, it just subtracts the goal deficit from projected maintenance calories. This means that even if you shouldn't be trying for a 2 lb a week loss, MFP won't care, it will still try to help you get there.

-1200 calories is a generic number. It's not right for everyone. It's a baseline minimum given out as a floor by MFP based on prior research by the medical community. NOT everyone will need a minimum of 1200, very small people can go under, and bigger people need more.


OK with those facts firmly set in your mind (please go back and re-read the givens until you have them firmly planted in your skull!), we can continue. Figuring out your perfect deficit isn't magic, it's a few simple formula's base on some basic, worldwide standards, and generally with slight modefication, will work for just about anyone who (besides weight) is generally healthy.

Here's what you need:
Height, weight, age, activity level, sex

NOTE: activity level isn't as mysterious as it sounds. If you have a desk job, and do very little walking throughout the day and don't really perform any sports or physical activities, then you are sedentary, if you do some walking every day (or at least 4 days a week) or other light activity for at least 30 minutes cumulative at least 4 times a week, you are lightly active. If you do 60 minutes of light activity 5 days a week or do some kind of sport that requires walking or light jogging (say swimming or mailman or warehouse employee) then you are active, If you do a physically demanding activity (one that makes you sweat) for 4 days a week or more and for more than 1 hour a day, you are very active (like a coach that runs drills or you play volleyball). When in doubt, go down 1 level, you'd rather burn more than you think than less.

With all these numbers you can generate your BMI. Now I realize BMI is flawed, but for what we're doing it's good enough. After years on here, and doing lots and lots of research, I've been able to associate general BMI ranges with approximate goal levels. This works for about 80 to 85% of people out there (there's always a few that are outside the curve).

So now we can figure out where your goal should be.
Go to the tools section and figure out your BMI:

Generally someone with a BMI over 32 can do a 1000 calorie a day (2 lbs a week) deficit
With a BMI of 30 to 32 a deficit of 750 calories is generally correct (about 1.5 lbs a week)
With a BMI of 28 to 30 a deficit of 500 calories is about right (about 1 lb a week)
With a BMI of 26 to 28 a deficit of about 300 calories is perfect (about 1/2 lb a week)
and below 26... well this is where we get fuzzy. See now you're no longer talking about being overweight, so while it's still ok to have a small deficit, you really should shift your focus more towards muscle building, and reducing fat. This means it is EXTRA important to eat your exercise calories as your body needs to KNOW it's ok to burn fat stores, and the only way it will know is if you keep giving it the calories it needs to not enter the famine response (starvation mode).

With this quick guide you can figure out your goal rather easily. I know many people will say "I can't eat my exercise calories, I gain weight when I do". Well I have news for you, that's not correct. I submit this, if you eat your exercise calories and gain weight 1 of 3 things happened:
1 you were previously in starvation mode, and you upped your calories, and had an immediate weight gain, that's normal, to be expected, and necessary to get your body on track. Give it a month, that will stop, and you, once again, will begin to lose, but this time, in a healthy manner.
2 you incorrectly calculated something, either your exercise calories, your calorie intake, or you put in to large of a goal. Go back and check all your numbers.
3 you haven't given it enough time to work. This site promotes HEALTHY weight loss people. Healthy weight loss doesn't happen in days or weeks, it takes months and years. Each change you make in how you eat needs a month or more to work, be patient, give it time. It will happen.

And to everyone who has a trainer that doesn't agree with eating your exercise calories. I also submit this: In 90% of the cases (and I have talked to a LOT of trainers about this exact topic) they actually DO agree with this method, you just explained it wrong.
Just saying to a trainer "should I eat my exercise calories?" isn't enough, you have to explain to them that MFP already generates a deficit prior to any exercise, therefore the deficit will remain whether you exercise or not. Once you give them that idea, and you are relatively sure they understand the concept then I'll bet they change their tune.

I hope this helps, it's pretty straight forward if you've been here a while, and to you new guys, I recommend going to the message boards link, clicking on the "general diet and weight loss" area, and clicking on those first few posts that have the little mouse trap next to them, they are sticky and will always be there, and are a wealth of knowledge about this site, exercise calories, starvation mode...etc."

No. This would be the same as eating 307 calories. Would you ever think eating 307 calories is okay?

That makes NO sense. exercising does not erase what you ate. During weightloss the main function of eating is to provide you with nutrients like protien, vitamins and so on... The closer you are to your goal, the more exercise cals you *may* need to eat to prevent starvation mode, but for people with a lot to lose, it takes a lot more than that to put you into starvation mode... thats why you burn fat.

Actually yes, exercising DOES erase what you ate, your body burns those calories while you are exercising, and your body burns off the food you eat first to refill it's stores, before dipping into fat or muscle to make up the deficit. So physiologically, eating 1200 calories and burning 900 through exercise and eating 300 calories without exercising are the exact same thing.

1200 - 900 = 300

300 - 0 = 300

How can that not make sense?

I'm sorry, maybe you are not aware. Food actually contains MORE than JUST calories. It contains nutrients like fiber, vitamins, minerals, protiens and so on. So while exercise used the calories you eat it does NOT ERASE the actual food you have eaten. You are still getting the benefits of all the other nutrients in the food.

Your BMR is the actual number of calories required to keep your body alive. For example mine is currently 2100. By your theory everyone should net those calories, but it doesn't work that way. MFP has set me at 1510 calories per day. Its all about a deficit. Eating during weightloss serves to keep you metabolism up, teach you new habits, get all the OTHER nutrients from food and so on. OFCOURSE the closer you get to your goal the more you will need to compensate for exercise calories, but like I said before, for people, like myself, who have a lot of extra energy stores (fat, which is actually stored calories), it is not always nessecary so eat all those calories back and my body knows it ain't going to starve for a LONG time. If my medical professional is not concerned and is actually praising me, then I'm good with that.

I'm not going to get into the long reply I typed, I'm just going to say that those net calories don't just miraculously appear, they are applied across the board to your nutrients.

I don't think I was clear, but what you said in your post is basically what I was trying to say. "Learning to listen" to your body is the key. Most people do listen to their body, but they listen to the wrong things, like you stated, rather than learning to listen to "I'm hungry" or "I'm full" they listen to "This is GOOOOOOD, more please!" or "this is boring, we need something to do, let's eat something so we can keep busy digesting something." So it's not so much a matter of not listening to your body at all, it's a matter of listening to the wrong signals. The body is also extremely adaptable, and adjusts it's messages based on what you do, so my original point is when you completely change your eating habits, you need to step back, and form a plan, and teach your body what you want, and then learn to listen to the right messages.

I'll put this example to try and illustrate what I meant more. Take an anorexic, they eat very little (about 600-800 calories a day on average) and after a while, their body adjusts to that, and stops sending constant hunger signals, because it's adapted to not getting enough food, and since hunger pangs can be distracting, and the body is worried about lack of food, it quiets the hunger pangs, so that person won't miss food due to the distraction (remember, the body doesn't understand intentional caloric restriction, it just knows food is plentiful or scarce.) Telling that person to just listen to their body would lead them to continue chronically under-eating (as they don't feel hungry,) because they would have to retrain their body in normal eating habits to reset the hormonal balances to tell them when to eat and when to stop.

This is why I say that telling someone to listen to their body, without knowing anything about that specific person, is risky advice.

That's fair. Given the clarification I do agree with you.

I go for 2-3 hour walks w/ my baby wrapped on me (adds weight/burns more calories) and I push my 3 year old in a stroller.

I'm also the apartment manager so i burn a lot of calories vacuuming the halls and the stairs and cleaning the entrance and the laundry room. (there are three floors).

I also do a lot of house work around my apartment.

Isn't that just daily activity?
I work in a cafe and work 8 hour shifts on my feet, carrying plates and scrubbing floors etc but I just count that as daily activity and make it 'slightly active' instead of 'sedantionary' not as exercise...

Is it okay to net low as long as I'm eating 1200 calories a day?

For example:
today I've eaten 1213 calories and I've burned 906 from working out.

When i complete the day it doesn't warn me or anything

1200 calories is recommended by a lot of doctors and many diet sites. I've never seen a medical justification for that but I suspect that it's a good working number that, if followed, will help a large number of people lose weight. A big reason why people stop dieting is because of hunger and I suspect that, at 1200 calories, most people don't feel that hungry.

If you take that out of the equation, 1200 calories is just a guideline for most people. And who is "most people". It's not the 5' tall office worker who would gain weight at 1200 calories and, when I was 295 pounds at 6' 1", I can't imagine that there could be a difference in my weight loss between 1200 calories or 1150 or 1100 or…well you get the idea.

So what's a gal/guy to do?

Set a calorie level and try it. Yup, it's that simple. If you go really low (500 calories a day, for example), you'll get dizzy, feel weak, and be very hungry. That's your body's way of saying "Don't do that". Keep it up and you'll lose a lot of weight very quickly, feel awful, and, if you try hard, you'll manage to kill yourself.

What about something between 1200 calories and doing yourself in? Well, that's what I did.

And it worked really, really well.

When I was losing weight, I used a diet of 800 to 1000 net calories per day. It was modeled after the calorie 800 to 1000 calories per day approach used by Lindora, here in Southern California. Lindora has been in business for over 40 years and they have helped hundreds of thousands of people lose weight. (My girlfriend runs one of their clinics so she gave me lots of info on they do things.)

That calorie level is hard to reconcile with the "eat 1200 calories or you'll…" admonitions so I decided to try it to see how it worked.

http://cbeinfo.net/weight.htm

I think it worked pretty well!

I might have been able to lose weight more quickly at 1200 calories, I don't know, but I'm quite pleased with my results.

95 pounds in 7 months
My weight loss was so regular I could accurately predict my weight
Stress EKG is normal

Checkups (two) found no abnormalities
Bloodwork is "superb"
Resting pulse in the mid-40s

No more BP meds (BP is in the teens and the 60's)
Ran a half marathon in month 8
Training for a marathon on December 3 - almost exactly one year after joining MFP

Is it "better" to stick with 1200 calories - unless you're in the limited group of people who will gain weight at that calorie level, you will probably lose weight gradually and have few hunger pangs. That's a good thing, right?

On the other hand, there's no specific need to eat that level of calories.

Set your own calorie level, track your weight (weigh daily), and exercise regularly and see what happens!

most people say yes. i am a halfway person. you ate 1200 calories. thats good. you burned off alot. should you eat it all back and its like you didnt exercise at all? i lean more towards listen to your body and dont be afraid to slightly splurge on some healthy snack if you are still hungry. in the future, if you know you are going to do such a major workout, eat more before. eat proteins and so fort.