calories a day and exercise

[Dutchie61]

I'm a lurker, but I have this question so thought I stop lurking and post.

OK, I'll admit this is the first time I'm really bothering with the weight thing and calories and food and such. So this is probably a stupid question:

The software says I should have 1255-1770 calories a day to loose weight. I entered into the program that I exercise at least 5 days a week.

Today I had 1755 calories (give or take a few since maybe sometimes I'm underestimating what I eat) and burned 887 cals during my 10 miler. Would that mean I didn't have enough to eat? Should I have had an extra 500 cals?

So far I've just been trying to stay in the 1800 cals a day range and have lost over 2 lbs in two weeks.

Anyone know?

 

[hotdogsaregross]

It depends, are you hungry? Some things I have read about this is that you should try to eat back some of your exercise calories, most days otherwise you may go into starvation mode and your metabolism may slow down.
Eating back 500 of your 880 cal would be ok IMO, especially if you find your hungry. Be cautious though. Did you use a HRM to calculate your calorie burn?

 

[Dutchie61]

Thanks.

Yes I used an HRM. I could also calculate. Running one kilometer about 65 cals. So the 10-miler I ran yesterday would have burned 960 cals. I'm guessing the HRM takes into account height, weight and gender and comes up with a slightly lower number.

 

[cheval]

Since you already told the software that you exercise 5 days a week, it's taking into account some exercise calories.

What I like to do is figure out my maintenance needs for my weight/height/gender if I wasn't exercising. For me that's a sedentary setting since I work at a desk. Then I add the calories I burn in exercise and subtract 500. That's the amount I eat that day.

So like this:

Sedentary calories burned for me: 1575
Exercise Calories burned: 400
Total Calories: 1975
Minus 500 calories: 1475.

So I try to keep my intake around 1500 calories. Sometimes I'll dip lower or go higher to keep my body guessing, but that formula has worked for me to lose 1/2 - 1 lb a week when in weight loss mode.

April