Will somebody explain how calorie intake works?!


Question: I know that 3,500 calories equals a pound, and you must burn more calories than you consume. So, I work out five to six days per week for 1 hour and 30 minutes. I do 1 hour of cardio (usually the treadmill) and 30 minutes of circuit training. I usually burn 400 to 500 calories on the treadmill alone, so what does that mean in terms of calories?

Let's say I ate 1,800 calories today but burn off 500-600 calories at the gym each day. Does that mean I will lose weight, gain weight or remain the same weight? Even though I have a good workout six days out of the week, I am afraid to eat too much because I feel I may gain the weight back.

I am 30, female, 5 ft. 2 in. and weigh about 193-194 pounds (down from 199 pounds). This is my third week working out and I can tell a difference in how I look and feel. I also changed my eating habits and started drinking nothing but water during the week.


Answers: I know that 3,500 calories equals a pound, and you must burn more calories than you consume. So, I work out five to six days per week for 1 hour and 30 minutes. I do 1 hour of cardio (usually the treadmill) and 30 minutes of circuit training. I usually burn 400 to 500 calories on the treadmill alone, so what does that mean in terms of calories?

Let's say I ate 1,800 calories today but burn off 500-600 calories at the gym each day. Does that mean I will lose weight, gain weight or remain the same weight? Even though I have a good workout six days out of the week, I am afraid to eat too much because I feel I may gain the weight back.

I am 30, female, 5 ft. 2 in. and weigh about 193-194 pounds (down from 199 pounds). This is my third week working out and I can tell a difference in how I look and feel. I also changed my eating habits and started drinking nothing but water during the week.

Everyones body is different, to findout the number of calories YOUR body needs daily, you have to enter a little more information than your height and weight. Here is an online calculator you can just type your information in and it will tell you how many calories you need to be eating per day
http://www.myeatingdisorder.com/myeating...
For weight loss you'll want to subtract 300-500 calories from the number it gives you. NEVER go under 1200 calories though. With working out, I wouldn't suggest cutting the calories, I would consume the number the BMR gives you.
Best of luck to you, stick with it and don't get discouraged!!!
Toni Lynne =)

Calories aren't physical items, so it's wrong to say "I ate 1,800 calories today". All a calorie is is a measure of how much energy your body can get from a piece of food. Your body needs, at a minimum, 2500 calories a day if you're female. This is the amount of energy that you need to breath, keep your heart beating, blink, move etc etc etc. so you need to eat foods that you will get this amount of energy from. Your body is like a bank though. Any energy which it doesn't use is stored for another time (as fat, usually). So if you do not take in the amount of calories you need for energy your body will make darn sure it gets the rest from somewhere. And this is when you start burning fat.

So, you eat 1800 calories a day, which is about 700 less than you need without exercising. BUT - you use up another 600 calories in the gym. So each day your body needs 2500 + 600 = 3100 calories of energy, and you're only giving it 1800, so it is getting the other 1300 from fat stores. This is excellent. As you are aware 1 lb of fat has the equivalent of 3500 calories of energy in it. So if you stick to your current regime you should be losing 1 lb every 3-4 days.

Hopefully you can see that eating too much isn't cause you to gain weight, especially if you are training every day. All you are doing is adding to your "bank" of energy.

Congratulations on your success
The advice you received from Mike T is good but he overestimated the number of calories your body uses each day to maintain life. The actual number for a woman your age is more like 1800.
So, in your example you would burn 500-600 more calories than you took in (and needed to maintain your weight) and would lose about 1 pound a week





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