Do you eat the calories you burn?

[Matt Z 4,139]

Check your BMR http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ and add any exercise burn to that and you'll get the real amount of calories you burn in a day. Right now I've been averaging a daily burn of 3541 and only taking in an average 1166 daily. You can see for yourself on my fitbit profile. http://www.fitbit.com/user/22LNWP

Starvation mode only lasts the first 2 weeks with a DRASTIC decrease, like that of 500 calories or lower. After 2 weeks of a reduced intake regime your body reconfigures it's low intake triggers. As long as you are taking in the Vitamins and Proteins needed to support your system, your body will simply revert to using it's stored energy to make up for the calories you are not giving it, IE fat.

[Jachut 487]

For the first 8 months I did not eat them. Then my weight loss plateaued. After talking with people I started upping my calories until I was eating mostly all of them. I gained like a lb at first then stayed plateaued for 6 weeks then it started coming off again. I workout 6 days a week and burn 500-800 calories or more (per my bmf) per session and per my bmf burn over 3000 calories per day 1200 calories was just not sustaining me anymore.

Well, this is a very good point that indicates that you do have to eat enough to sustain yourself to lose weight, but I still dont believe its anything to do with "starvation mode". Here's why: there is ony so much you can restrict your calories and be able to hack it. Even WITH a lapband quelling actual hunger, i find I can only cut back so far before cravings (particularly for sugar) set in. And when I've thought I'd be clever and done a gargantuan day of body pump, a spin class AND a run, I tend to spend three days binging afterwards. I tend to lose when I decide I"m going to eat bigger meals - not because I'm putting in more calories but because it cuts back remarkably on the grazing. I'm very bad at skipping meals and eating sugar and caffeine all day long, way way more calories doing that than eating sensibly. So it feels like I"m eating more but in reality, its the same calories but a much better balance of Protein, carbs and fat that actually gives my body something to run on.

Note: I'm not a doctor or a nutritional professional, I'm just doing what I always do on this forum, talking as if I know what I"m talking about, lol. But have you ever noticed how complicated nutrition and weight loss is these days? Pre workout supplement this, post workout shake that, so many grams, eat at precisely this time, have precisely this combination. When I was a teenager and my mum wanted to lose a bit (or I did), we just went to Weight Watchers, which was, and always will be - wait for it - Portion Control. No science, no blarney, no expensive supplements. You ate less and moved more! I dont think our bodies have undergone much evolutionary change in the last 30 years.

[Humming Bird 275]

I guess I don't understand why someone who is trying to lose weight would try to eat back the calories they just burned.