Can I Average My Daily Exercise Calories?

I think it works better is you try to maintain the 1800 cal everyday and look at exercise calories as your savior in case you go over. I wouldn't do 1800 one day and 2200 the next. It make your metabolism go out of whack. I think the only day you should eat more would be on your long rides. It you are riding more that 60 mins you have to start replenishing the nutrients and sodium you are losings. Staying at 1800 makes your diet more consistent. Good luck and I hope this helps.

I say go for it!

On the other hand, some people actually "zig-zag" their calorie intake, there are a couple of threads here on MFP, the most recent is: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/62752-zig-zagging-cycling-whatever-you-wanna-call-it

The theory is that this process (zig-zagging) keeps your body's metabolism from getting used to the same old routine, so you will lose weight better (faster? more consistently? break through plateaus).

One of the posters on that thread above, eats the same amount of cals each day but varies his carb-fat-protein intake. I don't see why you can't average your cals too, and if it doesn't work out, try some other system out.

Yes, I have heard this too about zig zagging especially if you have to jump start a slow metabolism or hit a plateau. Good thought!

Also eating x amount of calories for calorie reduction is really just a guess. Yes we can use tools that can tell us that this is what the avg person with your stats has as a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). In reality this can be measured only by measuring the amount of Co2 you expel during a given peiod of time (this is a supervised test)…. But I digress. The point is reducing 3500 calories is going to loss 1 pound regardless if you keep your calories down daily or over a weeks time it doesn’t matter as long as you are reducing.

So do the math, keep strict tracking of food and exercise and you will still loose.

Hello,

I have read the newbie posts about eating your exercise calories but I still have a question. Can I just eat the average daily exercise calories instead of eating more/less cals each day? For example, I have 1800 daily calories plus any exercise calories. I usally work out every other day and take a long bike ride on the weekend.

So a week of my exercise calories might look like this


600
0
600
0
600
0
1400

---

average 450/day

So my question is can I just eat 1800 cals +450 exercise calories every day? That would be 2250 total and much easier than trying to eat big one day than skimp the next and eat huge amount on sunday.
you know what i mean?

Thanks!

Yes, you can. It's not any different than the sites that calculate your BMR and your average exercise and then give you a calorie range to eat withing every day. It's really about net/net. At the end of the week if you are still netting a calorie deficit then you'll lose weight. Even if you have a day where you exercise at an extremely vigorous pace and don't eat a lot of calories, you won't go into any kind of starvation mode or slow your metabolism. It takes more than a couple of days to do that. In fact, it's possible that you'll bump your metabolism up as this is a form of calorie cycling.

I do something similar. I set my calories to maintenance and use exercise to lose weight. It's work for me. I honestly think you just need to experment and see what works for you.