Should I burn MORE than I eat?

WOW! You are not eating enough. You should be NETTING AT LEAST 1200 calories. Most people will say you should be netting your BMR which is probably more than 1200.

You are not giving your body any fuel with what you are doing. Please eat! You must eat to lose weight and be healthy. You are going to get a ton of feedback. Get ready.

Also, check out this group:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/3817-eat-more-to-weigh-less

Also do a search in the message boards for eating your BMR. You'll find tons of info.

Your BMR is basically the calories your body needs when you're in a coma. So, you only ate 16 calories. That's not enough for a newborn baby.

It's not as hard as you think. Eat full fat foods, nuts, peanut butter, oils, avocados. You need to eat, girlfriend.

I know that your suppose to eat back your exercise calories if you want to maintain your weight. But I WANT to lose.

This is incorrect, unless you have told MFP to 'maintain my current weight.' Eating your exercise calories will maintain the deficit set by MFP. Since you're less than 15 lbs over your goal, you probably shouldn't be trying to lose more than 1 lb/week.

MFP suggests "net" calories. Assuming you've set your activity level to sedentary you need the 1,200 cal just to keep your brain working, heart beating, digestion, tissue repair etc etc. If your BMR is around 1,500 that's what you need (to maintain) if you were in a coma.

Eat back your exercise calories. If you burned 1,200 exercising and ate 2,400 that's still only a net of 1,200.

Mary's BMR is 1400 calories and she burns 900 calories with regular exercise, walking around and doing household chores.

To maintain her weight, she should be eating 2300 calories (1400 + 900= 2300).




This site tells me not to eat the exercise calories back...



http://exercise.about.com/cs/weightloss/a/howtoloseweight.htm

Because they're basing it on TDEE less a deficit. If you set your activity level in MFP to accurately describe your TDEE you wouldn't be eating back exercise calories either.

If MFP tells you to have 1200 calories, that means net calories. It is giving you the calorie deficit you need to lose weight. And it knows what it's doing! I lost 50lbs eating the net calories MFP told me to, even when I exercised a lot.

I recognize, however, that you are burning A LOT of calories. It would probably be uncomfortable for you to eat them all back, especially on a day you've burned more than 1000.

Here's the thing, though, if you eat under 1200 calories, YOUR BODY WILL NOT THANK YOU. The best thing you can do right now is be nice to your body. Take care of it and it will take care of you. You can't starve it into obeying you.

So, if you burned 550 calories today, that's good. That's enough. You don't need to burn more. In fact, you can consume up to 1750 calories today. So have yourself a protein shake.

So, I am supposed to eat 1,200 calories, and yesterday I burned about 1,200 calories.(burnt the calories from pre cardio and strength in the morning and a 20 mile road bike ride.)


And today I went for a 5 mile run and burnt 550 calories... should I burn more? I know that your suppose to eat back your exercise calories if you want to maintain your weight. But I WANT to lose.

Yesterday it said I had 16 net calories.

HELP!

Never should your net cals be negative. If you burn 1200 from exercise the minimum you should eat is 2400 (1200 min plus the 1200 you burned so you net 1200) If your maintenance is 2200, your goal would be 1200 to lose 2 lbs/week, if you burn 1200 in the gym your maintenance increased to 3400, so to have the same 1000 cal deficit, you need to eat 2400.

Yes! Agree. I have lost over 3lbs some weeks when I eat my calories back. When I don't come close, I lose less than half that.

There are a couple of different ways to set a deficit. One of them (using the same example you pasted) is to figure out how much you're burning *total* (Mary is burning 2300) and take the deficit off that. If Mary wants to lose 1 lb/week, she should eat 1800/day.

Another way is to figure out how much you'd need to live a sedentary lifestyle (Mary would need about 1700 -- the other 600 is from deliberate exercise), take your cut off THAT, and then add the exercise calories back in. So if Mary looks at her ~1700 to live a sedentary lifestyle, she needs 1200 NET calories in order to lose 1lb/week. She then exercises for 600 more calories and eats those back to get 1800 total/1200 NET calories.

Note that she came up with the exact same *total* number either way. What Mary should NOT do is to combine the two approaches, and eat 1200 without eating exercise calories back. That will leave her with an 1100 daily deficit, and if her BMR is 1400 she's already pretty small. That's too much.

WOW! You are not eating enough. You should be NETTING AT LEAST 1200 calories. Most people will say you should be netting your BMR which is probably more than 1200.

You are not giving your body any fuel with what you are doing. Please eat! You must eat to lose weight and be healthy. You are going to get a ton of feedback. Get ready.

I ate 1,200 calories.... If I ate my exercise calories back... I would be eating 2,400 calories... which would be hard to eat!!

Yes, you are supposed to eat back all those calories. MFP builds in a steady deficit, and you are engaging in total self-sabotage. Don't say you weren't warned.
MFP expects you to eat all those calories represented by the green number, and when you exercise, that number goes up.
Eat back your exercise calories.
And if you are on some crash diet thing other than MFP recommendations, oh well.
Do whatever.
And good luck either way.