ADVICE NEEDED! How much is too much? I'm lost.

I am female 22 years old and 121 pounds. I am just wondering how much exercise I need to maintain my weight eating some where around 2,000 calories in a day. My limit for maintaining my current weight is about 1553 calories without exercise. But lately I have been eating like a hog with my family in town and BBQ's and crap. I have been exercising for 2 hours a day on the days where I eat a whole lot and I was doing just fine. I did this for a week with no problem and I managed to maintain my weight.

 Then yesterday, on my second hour of exercise, I started to get really bad pains I guess like cramp like pain and my muscles where burning like they just couldn't take it anymore. Normally I would think that if it is hard then I must be doing a good job exercising. But this was pain I'd never felt before so I stopped and I have only did about 70 minutes yesterday.

I do aerobic like exercising. Running, jumping jacks, hula hooping, push ups, dancing etc. I was hula hooping when I stopped. I really don't know how much I ate yesterday. I know it was a lot but I can't say how much.

 Now part of me is upset because I feel like if I don't keep exercising then it will bother me that I did not burn off more calories. The other part of me is wondering if I am being too obsessive over the whole thing. I started calorie count at about 150 pounds I am 121 now. I am terrified of gaining. I understand gaining few pounds here and there is normal but I just really want to make sure I stay in the general area of 120-125.I feel like I'm having a harder time trying to figure out how to maintain my weight then I did losing weight. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I definitely think you are being obsessive about it. You still did over an hour of aerobic exercise. That's plenty!  If you eat 2000, and need over 1550 to maintain, then you "need" to burn 500 to come out even.

Original Post by mabenner1:

I definitely think you are being obsessive about it. You still did over an hour of aerobic exercise. That's plenty!  If you eat 2000, and need over 1550 to maintain, then you "need" to burn 500 to come out even.

 yes but I am not sure how much I burn in one hour. I have heard more than one person say on this site that one hour of exercise hardly helps at all. :(

invest in a heartrate monitor that calculates calories burned. It will give you a fairly accurate account of how many calories you burn while exercising.

Original Post by minda_spk:

invest in a heartrate monitor that calculates calories burned. It will give you a fairly accurate account of how many calories you burn while exercising.

 Cool. Thanks. I'll have to look into those.

I think you need to relax a little bit and see how much you actually maintain on.  Maintenance takes a bit of playing around with calories/exercise until you find out where YOUR balance is.  You don't say if you have gained weight. 

If I were you, I would keep the exercise to about an hour, at most, and then watch the scale.  If you see the weight creeping up, either cut back on your calories or up your exercise a little.  Also, from the sounds of it (family visiting, etc) your life right now isn't really following your normal routine.  If that is the case, then I wouldn't worry about it, and take it as a "holiday gain" - just keep up with your normal exercise, and then you can watch your intake for a bit once your relatives leave and life returns to normal.  

The important thing though is that you don't want to be obsessing.  And you certainly don't want to risk injuring yourself with 2 hours of exercise a day!! 

Original Post by cc31:

I think you need to relax a little bit and see how much you actually maintain on.  Maintenance takes a bit of playing around with calories/exercise until you find out where YOUR balance is.  You don't say if you have gained weight. 

If I were you, I would keep the exercise to about an hour, at most, and then watch the scale.  If you see the weight creeping up, either cut back on your calories or up your exercise a little.  Also, from the sounds of it (family visiting, etc) your life right now isn't really following your normal routine.  If that is the case, then I wouldn't worry about it, and take it as a "holiday gain" - just keep up with your normal exercise, and then you can watch your intake for a bit once your relatives leave and life returns to normal.  

The important thing though is that you don't want to be obsessing.  And you certainly don't want to risk injuring yourself with 2 hours of exercise a day!! 

 Thanks I think you are right. My family has left and I'm already settled back into my old routine. I was just freaking out over nothing.