NET CALORIES

you want to get your net as close to your goal calories as possible.
when you net less than 1200 your body will get used to having so little food and your metabolism can slow down and eventually (not right away) you can go into starvation mode.
your goal is what you need to eat to lose x lbs per week without exercise. when you add exercise in, you need to eat more to keep your body fueled and running properly

Ok... I have read posts about how the net calories are CALCULATED... but why do I need to know them? I guess I am confused on their importance in the weight loss journey. Should my net calories be high or low?

For example:

Goal: 1420
Food: 1287
Exercise: -485
Net: 802

Will someone explain this to me? Why is the net important?

well, it looks like you hadn't reached your caloric goal even without the exercise deduction.
your daily caloric intake is based on your basal metabolic rate, which is the number of kcals you need to just survive. as an example, you may need 1350 calories per day to maintain your body's functions. anything less and you lose weight anything more and you gain.
if you jog for 30 minutes and expend 200 calories doing it, now your basic minimum caloric requirement is 1550. anything less and you lose weight, anything more and you gain.

there is a balance between eating too little in the quest for weight loss or eating too much in the quest for weight gain and you have to take into consideration the amount of activity you are going to do...jogging lightly has very different energy and nutritional requirements than heavy bodybuilding.

This is my problem, too. I'm so used to eating 1200 calories that when I have a big burn I struggle with taking in so many more calories. I eat a lot of nut butter as is, so I don't really want to add MORE nuts in. And I feel like I'm already eating when I'm not hungry just to reach 1200.

Just bumping this so it's in my topics--I'm always confused by this too... ahem, numbers are not my forté....

When you net less than 1200 your body will get used to having so little food and your metabolism can slow down and eventually (not right away) you can go into starvation mode.

Rockerbabyy is basically right but I'm going to try to clarify a bit more (sorry rockerbabyy, I just had a huge debate about this yesterday so I'm in write-a-whole-lot mode)

I tend to go with this article for calculations since it's easier, but there are other methods as well: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-to-estimate-maintenance-caloric-intake.html

So if you're a woman, take your weight*10 and that's an approximation of your maintenance calories

Another common way to calculate your needs is the Harris Benedict Equation: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/

Plug your height, weight, and age into the BMR calculator and multiply it by your activity factor.


The idea with both of those calculations is that if you eat that many calories, you will stay the same weight. If you exercise and burn X calories or eat X calories less, that will generate a deficit for the day and result in weight loss (1 pound is roughly 3500 calories). Exercising is good for your overall health, but is not necessary for weight loss (lots of people say weight loss is 85% diet 15% exercise or something like that, that's because it's much easier to overeat any amount of exercise you do). Most people to lose weight combine eating less and exercising more to create their deficit.

The reason we look at net calories is because your body still needs a set amount of calories to function. That doesn't mean that if you don't eat for a day you'll die, but if you don't eat enough over an extended period of time, you will eventually begin to suffer the adverse effects of malnutrition (at the extreme case this can result in death). Burning calories on exercise takes that energy away from your body when it might otherwise use it to keep your bodily functions running.

There is no magic number, a lot of people use 1200 which is a decent starting point, but the truth is it's a gradual thing. Some people need a lot more, some people need less, and as you restrict your caloric intake more and more, you'll start to experience problems. Things like fatigue, muscle pain, digestive problems, and worse. The question of how few calories you can eat and how big a deficit your body can handle safely is not something I have enough evidence to speak to specifically, but suffice it to say that too large a deficit will cause problems.

Everyone need a certain amount of calories to survive, which is why people generally look at net calories rather than just calorie intake by itself.

That being said, people in general are notoriously bad at logging accurate caloric intake (in most cases they log too few calories, but in some they log too many) and estimates of caloric expenditure are just that, estimates. So while you may have arrived at 900 net calories, that might not be what it actually was. The more accurate you can be with your measurements, the better control you can take over your diet and exercise.