Confused about target calories vs. excercise.

Hello all!

I am new to watching my calories. I have been doing it for about a week now and must admit I am having fun with it. It is truly an eye opening experience to realize that when I went out to eat I consumed 1200 calories in one meal... yikes!!

ok.

I am supposed to be consuming 1590 calories to reach my target weight by April 2010.

I selected sedentary for my activity level because I am a student and spend a lot of time in class etc.

I do go to the gym and run on an elliptical machine and I walk to classes. That said I am burning about 600 calories per day doing those things according to the activity log.

If I am burning those 600 calories with the exercise should I be eating more than 1500 calories since I have my activity level set at sedentary?

Thanks in advance!

Short answer is 'yes'...  If you're not sedentary, don't use that definition because it'll give you a target intake way below what you need to be healthy.  If you're active for about an hour a day ... walking and exercise combined.... then you're 'moderately active'.  If it's typically more than an hour a day you could even be 'very active'.  Reset the calculator accordingly and they you'll be working with a much more realistic calorie intake.  If you're going to be doing this until April next year it doesn't help to crash diet...

I agree...I would change your setting on your account to light activity and then you can enter your exercising into the activity log to get a more accurate reading of how much you are burning each day.  I'm thinking you probably need to be eating a few hundred calories/day more though...

For me personally I found it easiest to set my activity level at sedentary and then log all activity so that worst case scenario I am underestimating my burn and I won't have any bad surprises when it comes to weigh in each week.

My daily auto burn is around 1600 cals so and my daily allowable eat is 1600 cals (I am maintaining not trying to lose) if I do a 1 hour run of 500 additional calories burnt I then increase my allowable eating by at least 300-500 cals as your daily allowance will not increase to take into account the extra calories you are burning.

When I was losing weight then I usually ate 75% or thereabouts of any additional exercise calories I burnt each day so that I still kept my deficit and increased it slightly but ate more to compensate for my bodies extra need for nutrients.

Hiya! I totally agree with emily and gi-jane. I think you are anything but sedentary...I would change your activity level to "light" and then add your gym type activity on top of that. That's what I do and it is pretty accurate in my case. Good luck!