Calorie Counting Question

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killer_queen

New member
Alright, so I have been meticulously counting my calories lately, and it has been going very very well. I carry around a little journal with me and write down everything I eat and drink, as well as all of the exercise I do for the day. I have done this for 3 weeks and the results have been pretty awesome.

There is one thing I am confused about, though. If I am counting calories and want to stick to a certain number a day, should I subtract the calories I burned during exercise from my total calories eaten?

For example, let's say that yesterday I had 1400 calories, but worked out and burned 400. Would I then count my calorie intake as 1000?

I'm just trying to figure out the "mathematics" of all of this...any help would be great. What do you do?
 
you want to figure out how many calories your body requires a day

so if your body were to require 2000 calories a day, and you burned roughly 500 calories working out you're using 2500 calories worth of energy.

To lose weight you need to use up more than you put in (building muscle etc complicates this) also the quality of the calories you're eating is super important

not sure if that helps =S
 
killer_queen said:
I'm just trying to figure out the "mathematics" of all of this...any help would be great. What do you do?
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What you need to do is spend some time reading the stickied threads on this forum.

There is no one size fits all set of numbers for people - if you read the threads in nutrition and on topic -you'll learn that you come up with an approximate number of calories you'll need during the day... and you burn calories by sitting on your butt typing at the computer, actually searching for information burns calories, sleeping burns calories... So you burn more calories than just intentional exercise...

Figure out what your BMR is - (search -t here's a thead or two on this subject) then figure out how many extra calories you get for exercise... (HINT: there's a stickied thread in the nutrition forum that spells all this out) As long as what you're taking in is less than what your needed calories are for the day - you'll get the desired results -but - as you'll read - depending on what shape your metabolism is when you get to this point (brough on by years of little or no exercise, crash dieting, etc.) the number you come up with might not be precise - you need to adjust...

Using an on line program would probably benefit you more -there are 100s of free sites on the web -these programs also track essential nutrients like fiber and sodium and vitamins...
 
I did the BMR thing and it says that to maintain I should be eating 2700 calories a day. This seems like WAY too much for me. Even when I wasn't dieting I couldn't eat that much. I really don't like those calculators. I'm just still trying to figure out what the right intake is for me. I'm hoping to get to see a nutritionist before school lets out.
 
killer_queen said:
I did the BMR thing and it says that to maintain I should be eating 2700 calories a day.
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What's your current weight?

This seems like WAY too much for me. Even when I wasn't dieting I couldn't eat that much.
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3

You were counting your calories when you weren't dieting?
 
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