Calories eaten vs calories burned

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  • slieber
    slieber Posts: 765 Member
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    I can't go less at this point as I'm training. I've been doing about 13 hours a week over the year, and this is just a step up from that.

    I woke up this morning and checked my weight on my scale (which is about a half a pound off from the WW one I use at the center) and have lost about half a pound.

    As I'm using BOTH systems, I'm going to see how they correlate by the end of the week. I will have earned 1400 cals by the end of today (at least 300 in my class in a short while, plus the 1100 I earned from today's morning classes).

    Technically, then, I should probably eat about 2600 cals (plus or minus) to sort of "match" the 1300 I'm supposed to eat if I weren't exercising. Is that correct?

    In points, I have eaten my 22 already for today, earned 11 and have used 8 of those so far. I'll earn about 3 more points (1 point is about 100 cals for exercise). I likely will eat some more when I finish class later this evening - needing probably some more fruit. I'm just trying to balance it so that I'm not on MAINTENANCE, if you get my meaning. I want to lose, not maintain.

    Thanks for any confirmation of the "technically" statement. I'm just trying to make sure I don't overeat or undereat.

    Wait, 1300 calories is your base? How tall are you? and how much do you weigh? That seems pretty low for someone who has under 15 lbs to lose, unless you are around 5 feet tall or so.

    5' 4", 154 pounds at the moment. I recalculated my calorie thingy only a week ago, and it dropped to that from about 1350. That's the base, without exercise.
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
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    5' 4", 154 pounds at the moment. I recalculated my calorie thingy only a week ago, and it dropped to that from about 1350. That's the base, without exercise.

    By my numbers you are just barely above the normal bmi range and your maintenance calories should be somewhere around 1950 (assuming you are lightly active), that means you are at a 600 calorie deficit already. Now granted I know BMI isn't all that accurate where you are, but still, you are no where near maintenance calories, in fact, I would think, assuming your body is healthy and you have no health conditions that can affect your metabolism, that you're at a rather large deficit for someone at your stage. Have you gone to have your Body Fat % checked? At this stage I would focus on Body fat % as opposed to really monitoring weight with a fined tooth comb, Just MHO so take it for what it's worth. All I'm saying is that having a relatively large deficit when you're close to a healthy weight can have the opposite affect of the one you are looking for many times. Just something to chew on.
  • kpnuts23
    kpnuts23 Posts: 960 Member
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    The more and more i read these posts on starvation mode - eating ex cals.. and the rest i get more and more frustrated. :explode: .. whyy?!??!?!?!.............. Because, i have been told time and time again by my gym instructor that it is OK to consume 1,200... work out like a dog and not eat back the cals.. :drinker:

    so far in 3 1/2 weeks i've lost 3lbs... (havent weight myself since last week) and i seem to be loosing weight.. toning up and feeling great.. no fatigue as im getting my necassary carb, protien, fat intake give or take a few grams...:happy:

    Now SHBoss.. i know you are a fountain of knowlage cause i love reading your posts.. but does this starvation mode really apply to everyone..? because i've been fine? :indifferent:


    :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent:
  • kpnuts23
    kpnuts23 Posts: 960 Member
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    OH and BTW...
    Im 5 ft 7' - 146lb
    BMI 3weeks ago was 23.5
  • ilike2moveit
    ilike2moveit Posts: 776 Member
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    5' 4", 154 pounds at the moment. I recalculated my calorie thingy only a week ago, and it dropped to that from about 1350. That's the base, without exercise.

    By my numbers you are just barely above the normal bmi range and your maintenance calories should be somewhere around 1950 (assuming you are lightly active), that means you are at a 600 calorie deficit already. Now granted I know BMI isn't all that accurate where you are, but still, you are no where near maintenance calories, in fact, I would think, assuming your body is healthy and you have no health conditions that can affect your metabolism, that you're at a rather large deficit for someone at your stage. Have you gone to have your Body Fat % checked? At this stage I would focus on Body fat % as opposed to really monitoring weight with a fined tooth comb, Just MHO so take it for what it's worth. All I'm saying is that having a relatively large deficit when you're close to a healthy weight can have the opposite affect of the one you are looking for many times. Just something to chew on.
    Please explain this. How do you focus on body fat vs. monitoring weight-and can you focus on one and not the other? thanks
  • slieber
    slieber Posts: 765 Member
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    5' 4", 154 pounds at the moment. I recalculated my calorie thingy only a week ago, and it dropped to that from about 1350. That's the base, without exercise.

    By my numbers you are just barely above the normal bmi range and your maintenance calories should be somewhere around 1950 (assuming you are lightly active), that means you are at a 600 calorie deficit already. Now granted I know BMI isn't all that accurate where you are, but still, you are no where near maintenance calories, in fact, I would think, assuming your body is healthy and you have no health conditions that can affect your metabolism, that you're at a rather large deficit for someone at your stage. Have you gone to have your Body Fat % checked? At this stage I would focus on Body fat % as opposed to really monitoring weight with a fined tooth comb, Just MHO so take it for what it's worth. All I'm saying is that having a relatively large deficit when you're close to a healthy weight can have the opposite affect of the one you are looking for many times. Just something to chew on.

    LOL! Loved the "chew on" - but that's exactly what I was wondering. I've started eating just a bit more and find my daily weight is going down. I've had a body fat percentage done via the gym trainer's machine and it wasn't pretty, at the time - about 35% if I remember correctly. That was about a month ago. My scale does body fat percentage as well, but I'm not sure of the best time of day to do that. Do you have any suggestions about when to have my scale analyze it? I thought that various factors, like when I eat (e.g. eating just before), might affect the percentage - or am I thinking wrongly on this?
  • slieber
    slieber Posts: 765 Member
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    5' 4", 154 pounds at the moment. I recalculated my calorie thingy only a week ago, and it dropped to that from about 1350. That's the base, without exercise.

    By my numbers you are just barely above the normal bmi range and your maintenance calories should be somewhere around 1950 (assuming you are lightly active), that means you are at a 600 calorie deficit already. Now granted I know BMI isn't all that accurate where you are, but still, you are no where near maintenance calories, in fact, I would think, assuming your body is healthy and you have no health conditions that can affect your metabolism, that you're at a rather large deficit for someone at your stage. Have you gone to have your Body Fat % checked? At this stage I would focus on Body fat % as opposed to really monitoring weight with a fined tooth comb, Just MHO so take it for what it's worth. All I'm saying is that having a relatively large deficit when you're close to a healthy weight can have the opposite affect of the one you are looking for many times. Just something to chew on.

    LOL! Loved the "chew on" - but that's exactly what I was wondering. I've started eating just a bit more and find my daily weight is going down. I've had a body fat percentage done via the gym trainer's machine and it wasn't pretty, at the time - about 35% if I remember correctly. That was about a month ago. My scale does body fat percentage as well, but I'm not sure of the best time of day to do that. Do you have any suggestions about when to have my scale analyze it? I thought that various factors, like when I eat (e.g. eating just before), might affect the percentage - or am I thinking wrongly on this?

    As well, with the numbers I gave you on calories burned, basics and whatnot, am I correct then in understanding that if I decide to eat most of those exercise calories, I'll "maintain" the 1300 base ones - leaving a good enough deficit to keep losing weight? Kind of like doing positive and negative numbers, is it?

    Thanks for the help!! :-)
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
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    The more and more i read these posts on starvation mode - eating ex cals.. and the rest i get more and more frustrated. :explode: .. whyy?!??!?!?!.............. Because, i have been told time and time again by my gym instructor that it is OK to consume 1,200... work out like a dog and not eat back the cals.. :drinker:

    so far in 3 1/2 weeks i've lost 3lbs... (havent weight myself since last week) and i seem to be loosing weight.. toning up and feeling great.. no fatigue as im getting my necassary carb, protien, fat intake give or take a few grams...:happy:

    Now SHBoss.. i know you are a fountain of knowlage cause i love reading your posts.. but does this starvation mode really apply to everyone..? because i've been fine? :indifferent:


    :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent: :indifferent:

    yeah it does. But that doesn't mean it's the same AMOUNTS for everyone. Each person has a different tolerance for where there body starts to panic, some people take longer, some people immediately see bad things start to happen. What we can be sure of though, is that over the LONG term, it's bad for your health to eat far less then you burn. In no medical cases I have ever seen regarding healthy persons (that's an important fact to note, healthy, no thyroid issues, diabetes, obesity, advanced age...etc.) has the person eaten at a large deficit for a long periods and not suffered severe bone loss, muscle degredation, dehydration, and/or at a minimum, metabolic slow down to some significant percentage.
    How long this takes depends on your specific body, and without actually doing tests or trial and error, can anyone tell you for sure when this will begin to impact your life, but I can tell you that the human body does very few things that require weeks, most things require months if not years to change significantly. That means that while I'm happy that you've lost 3 lbs in the last 3plus weeks, if you're at a severe deficit (relatively speaking) and not obese or at least in the high range of BMI for overweight, then I would say that it probably won't continue for you, or if it does, it probably means your losing muscle mass and bone mass, and probably reducing organ function.
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
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    5' 4", 154 pounds at the moment. I recalculated my calorie thingy only a week ago, and it dropped to that from about 1350. That's the base, without exercise.

    By my numbers you are just barely above the normal bmi range and your maintenance calories should be somewhere around 1950 (assuming you are lightly active), that means you are at a 600 calorie deficit already. Now granted I know BMI isn't all that accurate where you are, but still, you are no where near maintenance calories, in fact, I would think, assuming your body is healthy and you have no health conditions that can affect your metabolism, that you're at a rather large deficit for someone at your stage. Have you gone to have your Body Fat % checked? At this stage I would focus on Body fat % as opposed to really monitoring weight with a fined tooth comb, Just MHO so take it for what it's worth. All I'm saying is that having a relatively large deficit when you're close to a healthy weight can have the opposite affect of the one you are looking for many times. Just something to chew on.

    LOL! Loved the "chew on" - but that's exactly what I was wondering. I've started eating just a bit more and find my daily weight is going down. I've had a body fat percentage done via the gym trainer's machine and it wasn't pretty, at the time - about 35% if I remember correctly. That was about a month ago. My scale does body fat percentage as well, but I'm not sure of the best time of day to do that. Do you have any suggestions about when to have my scale analyze it? I thought that various factors, like when I eat (e.g. eating just before), might affect the percentage - or am I thinking wrongly on this?

    As well, with the numbers I gave you on calories burned, basics and whatnot, am I correct then in understanding that if I decide to eat most of those exercise calories, I'll "maintain" the 1300 base ones - leaving a good enough deficit to keep losing weight? Kind of like doing positive and negative numbers, is it?

    Thanks for the help!! :-)

    First sorry Darth for hijacking this thread!

    I would say this, don't put too much stock in a home scale for BF%, they are notorious for being wildly inaccurate. That said, they usually use electrical impedance, which means they go by how much resistance muscle has to electricity as opposed to fat. Which is fine except that much of this requires a specific amount of water being in your body, which is almost impossible to replicate on a daily basis. So BF% can vary from day to day on a home scale even if you eat the same amount, same type, and exercise the same way every day. You'd have to be completely regular in ALL your activities to make it truely accurate, by that I mean, drink the same amount of water every day at the same time, eat the same amount of sodium and other minerals (calcium, phosphorous...etc.) every day at the same time, go to the bathroom at the same time every day, exercise the exact same way for the exact same amount every day, have the same weather conditions every day... etc. it's just far to difficult.

    AS to your calories, if you're using the goals that MFP gave you and say you chose 1lb a week, MFP is already adding in a deficit, so any exercise you do, if you eat those calories back, you'll still be eating less than what it takes to maintain your current weight, so yeah, you'll still be at that 1lb a week EVEN if you eat your exercise calories.

    You may ask, "Then why do some people NOT eat them or all of them and still lose?" Well because our body's aren't an exact science, and body fat % has a lot to do with that, not EVERYONE will conform to the the exact number, some people's bodies can tolerate a higher deficit and still not trigger a famine response (fat storage), others need less of a deficit and are very sensitive to calorie deficit. The only way to know is to try a reasonable deficit and tweak it and see where you are in a month or so. Just remember, the more available fat someone has, the higher their deficit can be without triggering the famine response!

    hope this helps!

    \:happy:
  • slieber
    slieber Posts: 765 Member
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    First sorry Darth for hijacking this thread!

    I would say this, don't put too much stock in a home scale for BF%, they are notorious for being wildly inaccurate. That said, they usually use electrical impedance, which means they go by how much resistance muscle has to electricity as opposed to fat. Which is fine except that much of this requires a specific amount of water being in your body, which is almost impossible to replicate on a daily basis. So BF% can vary from day to day on a home scale even if you eat the same amount, same type, and exercise the same way every day. You'd have to be completely regular in ALL your activities to make it truely accurate, by that I mean, drink the same amount of water every day at the same time, eat the same amount of sodium and other minerals (calcium, phosphorous...etc.) every day at the same time, go to the bathroom at the same time every day, exercise the exact same way for the exact same amount every day, have the same weather conditions every day... etc. it's just far to difficult.

    AS to your calories, if you're using the goals that MFP gave you and say you chose 1lb a week, MFP is already adding in a deficit, so any exercise you do, if you eat those calories back, you'll still be eating less than what it takes to maintain your current weight, so yeah, you'll still be at that 1lb a week EVEN if you eat your exercise calories.

    You may ask, "Then why do some people NOT eat them or all of them and still lose?" Well because our body's aren't an exact science, and body fat % has a lot to do with that, not EVERYONE will conform to the the exact number, some people's bodies can tolerate a higher deficit and still not trigger a famine response (fat storage), others need less of a deficit and are very sensitive to calorie deficit. The only way to know is to try a reasonable deficit and tweak it and see where you are in a month or so. Just remember, the more available fat someone has, the higher their deficit can be without triggering the famine response!

    hope this helps!

    \:happy:

    I did notice the wild fluctuations and wondered about that. Yes, this is a great help! I can eat a bit more with confidence. I do notice that when I stay within my points exactly, not using the exercise calories, I don't tend to lose. I just need to balance exactly HOW much of those will give me the weight loss I want.

    Thanks again! As always, you are a fountain of knowledge!! :-)
  • slieber
    slieber Posts: 765 Member
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    AARGH! I'm 195 cals over my limit today (didn't work out as much as I wasn't feeling well).

    Will it make that much of a difference considering how much of a calorie deficit I've had over the week?

    I have burned about 4800 cals in the past 4 days (Monday to today). I had a few large-ish deficits. Will overeating by that much on one day make all that much of a difference?

    I weigh in on Saturday. I have two classes tomorrow which would likely give me about 700 calories in exercise and a bit more if I do a gym warm-up before. Not likely, that, as I don't have a lot of time between one activity (non-exercise) that I do and the classes.
  • NinaDawn79
    NinaDawn79 Posts: 164
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    First sorry Darth for hijacking this thread!

    I would say this, don't put too much stock in a home scale for BF%, they are notorious for being wildly inaccurate. That said, they usually use electrical impedance, which means they go by how much resistance muscle has to electricity as opposed to fat. Which is fine except that much of this requires a specific amount of water being in your body, which is almost impossible to replicate on a daily basis. So BF% can vary from day to day on a home scale even if you eat the same amount, same type, and exercise the same way every day. You'd have to be completely regular in ALL your activities to make it truely accurate, by that I mean, drink the same amount of water every day at the same time, eat the same amount of sodium and other minerals (calcium, phosphorous...etc.) every day at the same time, go to the bathroom at the same time every day, exercise the exact same way for the exact same amount every day, have the same weather conditions every day... etc. it's just far to difficult.

    AS to your calories, if you're using the goals that MFP gave you and say you chose 1lb a week, MFP is already adding in a deficit, so any exercise you do, if you eat those calories back, you'll still be eating less than what it takes to maintain your current weight, so yeah, you'll still be at that 1lb a week EVEN if you eat your exercise calories.

    You may ask, "Then why do some people NOT eat them or all of them and still lose?" Well because our body's aren't an exact science, and body fat % has a lot to do with that, not EVERYONE will conform to the the exact number, some people's bodies can tolerate a higher deficit and still not trigger a famine response (fat storage), others need less of a deficit and are very sensitive to calorie deficit. The only way to know is to try a reasonable deficit and tweak it and see where you are in a month or so. Just remember, the more available fat someone has, the higher their deficit can be without triggering the famine response!

    hope this helps!

    \:happy:

    I did notice the wild fluctuations and wondered about that. Yes, this is a great help! I can eat a bit more with confidence. I do notice that when I stay within my points exactly, not using the exercise calories, I don't tend to lose. I just need to balance exactly HOW much of those will give me the weight loss I want.

    Thanks again! As always, you are a fountain of knowledge!! :-)

    I wanted to weigh in (hardy har) on the WW angle here and mention that my experience was similar in my WW days when I would work out heavily (more than 5 APs a day); I could never understand why I wouldn't lose the weeks I stayed within my point limits but was HUNGRY and irritable, but when I would go over by about 10-15 points for the week, would invariably lose (and was a much nicer person to be around.)

    I recently read on their fitness message board that if you are earning more than the recommended 4 APs a day, it's actually more effective to count each AP above the four as a point and a half; i.e. if you are earining 10 APs, then you should be eating 13 extra points. The way it was explained (in a really tiny nutshell) was that the AP's are designed for casual/regular exercisers, not intensive folks.

    That certainly backed up my experience and though I tend to get a little lost in the numbers posted in these threads so am not sure if it applies to your question exactly, thought I'd throw it ya FWIW.
  • amahlman
    amahlman Posts: 22 Member
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    Also give your body at least 4 weeks to show any weight loss. It seems to take a bit for your body to figure out what is going on and to kick in to high gear. Hang in there. :smile:
  • slieber
    slieber Posts: 765 Member
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    I wanted to weigh in (hardy har) on the WW angle here and mention that my experience was similar in my WW days when I would work out heavily (more than 5 APs a day); I could never understand why I wouldn't lose the weeks I stayed within my point limits but was HUNGRY and irritable, but when I would go over by about 10-15 points for the week, would invariably lose (and was a much nicer person to be around.)

    I recently read on their fitness message board that if you are earning more than the recommended 4 APs a day, it's actually more effective to count each AP above the four as a point and a half; i.e. if you are earining 10 APs, then you should be eating 13 extra points. The way it was explained (in a really tiny nutshell) was that the AP's are designed for casual/regular exercisers, not intensive folks.

    That certainly backed up my experience and though I tend to get a little lost in the numbers posted in these threads so am not sure if it applies to your question exactly, thought I'd throw it ya FWIW.

    Oh! Where did you read this? Can you give me a pointer to the thread on the WW forum? That does apply to my question, yes!
  • slieber
    slieber Posts: 765 Member
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    Also give your body at least 4 weeks to show any weight loss. It seems to take a bit for your body to figure out what is going on and to kick in to high gear. Hang in there. :smile:

    I've been doing this for over a year now. Do you mean four weeks from any change of eating?
  • NinaDawn79
    NinaDawn79 Posts: 164
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    I wanted to weigh in (hardy har) on the WW angle here and mention that my experience was similar in my WW days when I would work out heavily (more than 5 APs a day); I could never understand why I wouldn't lose the weeks I stayed within my point limits but was HUNGRY and irritable, but when I would go over by about 10-15 points for the week, would invariably lose (and was a much nicer person to be around.)

    I recently read on their fitness message board that if you are earning more than the recommended 4 APs a day, it's actually more effective to count each AP above the four as a point and a half; i.e. if you are earining 10 APs, then you should be eating 13 extra points. The way it was explained (in a really tiny nutshell) was that the AP's are designed for casual/regular exercisers, not intensive folks.

    That certainly backed up my experience and though I tend to get a little lost in the numbers posted in these threads so am not sure if it applies to your question exactly, thought I'd throw it ya FWIW.

    Oh! Where did you read this? Can you give me a pointer to the thread on the WW forum? That does apply to my question, yes!

    Oh boy, I'm afraid it would be hard, as when I say "recent" I really mean in the last year; I'm on the verge of giving up my WW online subscription b/c I seem to be doing as well on MFP for free, and I can't remember the last time I read their message boards (or counted points for that matter!)

    If you have an online subscription, perhaps make a posting about it to see if you can get the same response?? It was kind of a conversational topic at the time.

    Good luck!!!
  • darthdad1970
    darthdad1970 Posts: 12 Member
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    Good news, by the end of the week, I have now lost weight again. It turns out that with all of the support that I was getting this week was correct. I was starving my body again and shutting it down. By backing off of the exercising, my body was working correctly again.

    Special thanks to all those who posted on this board, your advice was insightful and helpful as well.
    I also want to shout out to SHBoss1673 for his input and CarmenSantiago and angieford01 for their input as well. You are all wonderful and it is nice to know that we are not alone in this battle of our bodies. I think that we all have a nice foundation to stand upon and when we need the help someone is always there to guide us.

    Thanks again!
    Darthdad1970

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