What's the difference...?

I generally eat around 1200 calories, this gives me roughly a 400 calorie deficit so I like to create a larger one through exercise. The thing is, I've been thinking lately, if I eat 1200 calories, then go on my exercise bike for 40 minutes and burn another 400 calories, my body only has 800 calories to sustain itself on, i.e less than 1200. Does this break the not eating below 1200 rule? What's the difference between eating less than 1200 and eating 1200 but exercising. Is it just that you can't get enough nutrients from less than 1200? I don't want to stay at losing 0.8lb per week because this seems too slow but I'm worried that exercising might put me into the dreaded starvation mode. Confused. Help?

Im no expert, but I'm pretty sure that you need at least 1200 calories for your body to be able to do all the things it normally does to sustain itself.  If you burn 400 calories of that doing specific exercise, then you're right, you only have 800 calories to grow your hair and breathe and blink and digest your food and sweat.  Whatever it is those 1200 calories are for.  If you up your calorie intake along with your exercise you'll boost your metabolism, maintain a deficit, and still be able to blink and grow your hair.  Which, seriously, is super important.

So basically I'm doomed to only losing 0.8lbs per week?

Bump.

Anyone?

You must be able to burn off more than you eat otherwise nobody would ever lose anything.  I mean what's the point in the extra exercise if you have to eat what you've burnt off?  (other than the getting fit bit.)

I'd stay at eating your 1200 and doing extra exercise.  That's my plan as I've been trying this lark for a month now and not lost a thing so upping my exercise seems to be the only way to change things.

Good luck.

I suppose the only way we can find out is by keeping on doing what we're doing. Good luck!

Exercise just gives you a way to burn more calories than you would if you were sedentary, but those calories burned are no different than the calories burned in any other activity during the day. You don't subtract exercise calories from what you've eaten for the day.

You don't have to eat it ALL back, but 1200 is the minimum you should eat on any day, and that's if you're not exercising at all. If you're exercising, you should really up your calories.

If you burn 400, you don't need to eat 400 extra. Try eating half of what you burn to stay healthy. (Burn an extra 400, eat an extra 200).

The REAL key is how many calories are you burning throughout the entire day? On a normal day, without exercise, I burn approximately 1800 calories. My daily intake is 1300 on days I don't exercise. This gives me the 500 calorie deficit to continue to lose weight with the minimum 1200 covered. On days I exercise, I burn an additional 350 to 700 calories. If I only burn 350- 500 calories, no biggie, no need to change my diet. BUT, if I burn 700, I have just gone over my 'safe' deficit of 1000 calories by 200, so, I add some calories to my diet for that day. Even then, it's not a big deal if it is an occasional occurance, but if it happens more often than not, I need to make sure I am feeding my body properly.

In my experience, the number of calories really doesn't matter so much as the number of calories deficit I am getting. If you are only eating 1200 calories and you daily burn is more than 2200 calories (TOTAL) then you may be sabotaging your progress in the long run.

I use the Burn Meter on my home page to help me gauge this and usually, I have no issues with this, as long as I log my workouts in the burn meter, it gives me a good idea of where I sit.

Maybe that will help you out a little bit. I hope so.

~Namaste

Katt

My friends mother is a well practiced nutritionist... For a while I was eating about 1300 calories a day (high in nutritional value, got all my vitamins in)  plus exercise for about an hour a day. I thought I was doing great, but boy,  I got the lecture of my life when i told her that.

According to her, 1200 is the absolute, absolute, minimum to support normal everyday functions, and anything below 1400 can have negative effects on your body without you even realizing. You lose muscle before losing fat (which is definitely the opposite of what I'm trying to do), and your metabolism slows, so you begin to lose less weight than if you were consuming more. Her suggestion was to up my calories to 1500 1600 with an emphasis on adding protein.

Obviously thats one opinion but I would think she knows what shes talking about. It got me a little worried.  Any one else heard this? Or any other opinions?

Don't go below 1200 calories. I am a personal trainer with my degree in Kinesiology and I work with so many people who have the same issue. Your body will start to pull from your muscle for energy if there is no carbs/fat/protein left in your storage to pull energy from. You don' t want your energy to come from muscle, you want to pull calories from the fat. 1200 calories is low enough to lose weight for just about anyone. The trick is measuring and making sure you really are only eating 1200. It's hard to do. I try to eat 1700  and I often go over that becuase I am hungry. (I also work out daily and teach classes so I need a bit more food)

Hope that helps.

Maybe you are only losing .8 pounds a week because you are eating so little!

I just started using this site. Does the burn meter show my calories burned plus the activities? I'm not exactly sure what this meter is telling me. How do you use it?

You can keep your body from going into starvation mode by alternating 1200 calorie days with a higher calorie day like 1600.

Eat your BMR + 1/2 the calories burned during exercise.

So, if you think your BMR is 1200, and you burned 400 calories at the gym, you should eat 1400 calories on that day.  Since you already had a 400 calorie deficit with just being alive, with the 200 calories you burned off without eating back, your deficit is now 600, which should result in more than a pound a week.

I am NOT in starvation mode, I've not even reached a plateau, I'm 5'1" , 18 and 116lbs, I've yet to find even a teenage BMR calculator that recommends my daily maintenance calories at more than 1600 and as I said I'm not satisfied because I have a very low deficit. So the answer is I'm not endangering my body by doing extra exercise to earn a bigger deficit?

Thanks for this thread. I searched the topic because I'm wondering this very thing. I'm not losing as quickly as I am "supposed" to considering my 1450 calorie allowance (to lose) and my Couch to 5k workouts. I couldn't understand why.

Guess what!? I get to eat a little more! Yeah!

Hopefully, this will boost the burn!!!

Thanks again to everyone for their info!