Just curious. Do you add to your calorie allowance when you exercise, or just stick to a stable number of calories.

I'm using The Daily Plate to track my calories and exercise and I'm pretty sure it really exaggerates the number of calories I'm burning from exercise. So I've lowered my NET allowance to 1200 to try and compensate. I haven't consistently lost weight, I fluctuate between 153 and 155.5, which is frustrating. Any tips?

I might break down and get a BodyBugg, or similar device. But it's a lot of money!

I am keeping it completely separate. To me it seems you would nullify the extra calories you burned in exercise by adding those calories in food.

I find the calories burned calculators are either really high or really low and very varied depending on where its calculated. For now I am using the average of 3 sites to figure out my calories burned. I am definitely considering getting a bodybugg and my DH said I could have one for my birthday in September, if we cant afford it before then.

Yeah, I don't "eat back" my calories with exercise. I'll track them on TDP just to keep track, but I won't try to eat back my net cals. Are you eating back the cals you exercise?

FWIW, I have a Polar F7 that calculates calories burned during exercise based on your sex/weight/height/consistent heart rate. I find it to be much more accurate than TDP's estimates. It's only about $100.

I have a bodybugg and just bought my daughter a Go Wear Fit (it came today, she's so excited), anywho, the goal is to eat less than you burn and end up with a calorie deficit. If you eat back what you burn that may be why you're maintaining rather than losing.

I love love love my body bugg and have lost consistently more the last 3 weeks than before. I don't know anything about the heart rate monitors.

Either way, good luck. If you do decide to get a bugg, the GWF is the same thing and costs a smidge less.

I use a Polar HR monitor as well, but I don't eat back my exercise calories. I do however eat more on days I do weight lifting (a protein shake afterwards). If you can, I'd just pick a calorie level and stick to it. Track your exercise, but don't use it to determine what you eat.

I don't eat back my exercise calories either. However, I don't generally exercise more than an hour at a time. If I were doing something extremely strenuous, like a backpacking trip or a race, I'd probably be eating a little more.

I do consciously attempt to eat more protein immediately after exercising, but it's always on plan.

Ok, so just to be clear, if I set my calorie level to 1200, that's what I eat, regardless of how much I exercise?

I thought I would have a deficit right off the bat if I set my calorie intake at 1200, even if I ate back calories.

I guess I'm confused. For example, I should lose weight by cutting cals to 1200, even if I don't exercise. So I would think that if you do exercise, you can increase your calorie level.

But......I haven't really been loosing, so

Thanks for your help!

You should lose weight if you just cut your calories below what your maintenance caloric intake is, exercising should increase the speed of weight loss, by lowering your calories even more without cutting out nutrients and foods. If you are going to be exercising a lot you may increase your calories a bit.

But what I would do for now is stick with your caloric intake, and exercise, without eating back your exercise.

I'm going to do just that starting tomorrow and see how it goes. I'm going to have to find some lower cal snacks!

1200 is probably lower than you need to aim for. Go here:

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

Plug in your numbers and see what it says. Why eat less if you can lose on more?

Jay

You can search google or here at 3FC for low calorie snacks, or 100 calorie snacks. I have been doing that and see lots of ideas.

Thanks Jay

I checked out the site and it said I should experience fat loss at 1700 calories a day extreme fat loss at 1287. So it seems I should be losing, even after eating back my calories. Either my metabolism is out of whack, or the calories I'm ACTUALLY burning from exercise is much, much different from The Daily Plate.

I'm going to try setting my calorie intake at 1400, without eating back any calories and see what happens!

The daily plate exercise calories is WAY off, like it can be off a couple hundred for a half hour.

I am not an expert by any means, and I was HIGHLY confused by this in the beginning also, but I think your efforts to lose weight would be futile by "eating back what you burn". That is one of the reasons I started becoming more active; to be at a deficit at the end of the day but without starving myself. Not at maintenance level, which is where I think we would end up if we ate them back.

I get the Jillian Michael's emails every morning and I have seen her discuss this. She also mentioned that exercise is an added deficit and that is where you want to be. Now, if you wanted to strictly maintain and not lose, you could eat them back, I guess. But that would depend on how many you are eating already.

A lot of others on the forum have said the same thing that Jillian mentioned.

I have been zig zagging mine for a daily average of 1471 and I am losing quite nicely so far. I do 1 hour of biking and 40 minutes of treadmill everyday and then strength training/toning every other day. The way I understand it, zig zagging helps the metabolism by not going into "starvation mode" so that it doesn't "eat" the muscle I am building or plateau altogether.

Hope this helps because it is working for me. And I don't do the exact numbers from these on-line calculators. I kind of came up with an in-between.