Treats with calorie deficit?

frag420

Hi,

A quick one for you folks. According to myfitnesspal I need to consume no more than 1800 cals a day to lose about a pound a week. On top of this I am doing about an hr cardio in the gym min four days a week and weights.

Now I love my treats!! Everyone does. If say after breaky, lunch, dinner and exercise I have a deficit of 350+ cals is it ok to have a treat with a cuppa?? Obviously this could be up to 200+ cals but as I am coming in under the daily recommendation I should still lose the weight slowly eh??

Am I right? Also I should add that if I have a deficit of less than 150-200 cals I leave out the treat.

Oh and I'm male, 6'4, about 16 st and 32 yrs.

Cheers

Miss Fluff

When did you start tracking and using MFP? Personally, I think if it's recently and you're trying to re-educate yourself into eating well and include as much food of nutritional value then for the first while I think it's good to cut out all junk so it doesn't become habitual to have that daily bar of chocolate or packet of crisps or what have you. Basically use it as an opportunity to retrain yourself into eating cleanly. When you eat cleanly you won't really have that craving and will get your sugar buzz from naturally occuring sugars. If you add rubbish into your healthy food mix then one treat can easily lead to two etc while you're learning new ways I reckon so for the first little while best avoided. That's my two cents anyway!

frag420

Cheers Miss Fluff.

That's very sound advice and I appreciate what your saying. Your right as in I don't want it as a bad habit but I am thinking that do long as there is enough of a deficit I am doing no wrong. I have tried cutting out the sweet treats and it is hard, very hard. This is why I put the extra effort in at the gym knocking of extra calories through cardio ad I feel good on two fronts, the feel good from the except use and the feel good from my treat !!

Oh and I have been using MFP about 3-4 weeks now. Been hitting gym 4+ Eve's a week. Oddly enough I went across to the shop a while ago for a trear( still in deficit after consuming it) and person behind counter complimented me on looking a bit slimmer. This was on top of my housemate saying same earlier!!

Thanks again,

frAg

frag420

Sorry double post!

Miss Fluff

If it's working for you and you're losing weight then fair play to you. I'm having to be strict because if I get a taste for treats I want more!

frag420

Well I find MFP very good but sometimes hard to get exact count for some homemade foods like stew or curry. I usually allow a margin of 100 to be safe. It's the same with calories burnt. I usually do half hr on bike then weights then half hr on treadmill(part of couch to 10k). I find there can be a variance of up to 10% between what the machines in gym say I burned and what MFP says I burned so I allow for that.

If st the end of the day I have a substantial deficit I may treat myself. I know I would prob lose weight quicker if I left them out but it's still going on the right direction!

frAg

Pembily

Once you are under you will lose but you do need to re-educate yourself on food! I have a treat now and again (healthy most of the time), but I stopped all treats for 4 weeks solid week (including weekends) as I had to get out of the habit.

Also I stopped logging my exercise on MFP as I found it off putting thinking I had more calories to consume. I just write it down now for personal records.

Best of luck with it!

Mellor

frag420 wrote: »

Well I find MFP very good but sometimes hard to get exact count for some homemade foods like stew or curry.

Buy a scales.
The only way to get accurate calories. Underestimating your portion sizes could have a very large cumulative effect

Stench Blossoms

frag420 wrote: »

I find there can be a variance of up to 10% between what the machines in gym say I burned and what MFP says I burned so I allow for that.

Both of these would be over estimates. There are numerous discussions on MFP about this.

Get yourself a HRM if you want to be accurate for calories burned.

And as Mellor said, ger a scales.

People tend to under estimate their food calories and over estimate exercise calories.