Calorie Question

I'm trying to stay at 1600 calories per day.  I burn 2150/day(5'1" 135 pounds).  Yesterday I ate 1800 calories but I burned 400 calories at the gym.  So... should I adjust my calories for today & just eat 1400 to make up for the extra 200 or is it ok since I burned 400?  Also--I can't get to the gym today so I'm trying to figure out where I should be calorie wise for today! 

Your deficit should be between 500 - 700 cal a day. It's ok if some days your under if the next day you are over or vice versa. Remember that 1 lbs of fat =3500 cal. 3500/7 days that is 1 lbs of fat loss per week.

your doing great..just keep it under what you burn and you'll be fine

hi, i have a similar question... i have been eating around 1500 calories a day, and burning around 500. i'm tall and big (5'10" 177 lbs) and so it calculates that i burn over 2000 calories a day without the exercise factored in. So it seems as though i'd be losing plenty of weight, right? i have barely lost a pound, and then today i had a really bad day and actually replaced dinner with cookies... and more cookies... so i probably ate 1900 calories. i burned around 300 still. But i weighed myself, and it said i weighed 179, up 2 lbs! i just don't understand, i'm ending even a bad day like today with a deficit, and yet i'm not losing weight, i'm gaining it! what am i doing wrong?!

Claudgee. Your profile says you have been a member just one week... if you have been counting caloires just this long,  and not seeing much loss, that means nothing. Some people lose a lt the firt week, some people's body seems to take a little longer to kick start. You have to have faith in the math... if you eat fewer calories than you burn.... you will lose weight.

A quickie way to get this, is that to know that most humans need 11 to 16 calories a pound (or more if very athletic)... 12 to 13 is pretty average. 10 or under would be unusual. A quadrupligic burns 10 calories per pound, some older people get that low.   So at 10 and under you should lose weight. Right now you are dieting at 8.5 calories per pound.  So the math says you shoud lose weight. Now as you diet, and lose pounds, you will need fewer caloires because you weigh less.  So to get the same rate of loss you will have to lower calories slightly.  (But women don't go under 1200, guys not under 1500). So  either reduce caloires, or don't be alarmed if the rate of loss slows. Somwherer down around 130 pounds, that might be maintenance level, so keep that in mind.

For ou to have gained  2 pounds, you would have had to have eaten 7000 calories over your current calorie needs for your body weight.  So the math says that the number you are seeing on the scale is reflecting something else... some natural fluctuation. It will correct... usually within a couple days.

Weight loss is like your own personal science experiment. As a scientist does,  you want to be precise and keep good records. So count calories carefully (In time you get good at this, can become a good estimater, in the beginning be precise).  So if you eat a pile of cookies, record those calories too... so you have an accurate idea of you daily average. Record your weigh-ins... I like to track it on a chart.  You're looking for the long range trend, don't be concerned about ups and downs from day to day. Try for one new low each week.  It helps to have a scale that measure increments under a pound... when I was losing, it was sometimes a loss of 1/4 pound a week... but at least I lost something that week.