Calories in - calories out and energy balance

Question
Hi, im trying to get abs and my question is this, this is just and example. someone with a tdee of 2000  and a bmr of 1500  and is eating 1500 calories to lose weight, but then they increase their workout so they are burning an extra 200 more calores, do they increase their calories to 2200 to make for a 500 calorie defict, basically my problem is this- my bmr is 1500, I eat about 1550 a day, now im getting alot more active so im burning more calories, im hungry all the time! no matter what i eat i burn through it within an hour or less! so do i just up my calories to 1650 or 1750 to make up for the extra calories im burning, my fear is that im burning 200 more calories on top of my 1500 calorie diet, thats a net intake of 1250 calories a day, which is under my bmr which would be bad, so i am i correct to think that i should eat 200 more calories to bring my net calories up to 1500?

Answer
Dear Josh,

Unfortunately, it's not that linear as you think. First of all, there are many types of calories (see in the "Reading" below). Secondly, without sophisticated equipment, it's impossible to calculate the true RMR and to know how much you really spend during exercise. The general information is exactly "general" and varies broadly from person to person. Also, research show that people cannot really calculate how much they eat and how hard they exercise always underreporting the first and overreporting the second.

This being said, let's think about your body trying to do the right thing, which can be quite different from your idea of what's good for you. It will fiercely resist. You feed it less, it pays you with a greater sense of hunger, which triggers a chain of reactions leading to changing your metabolic rates and even type leading to decreasing performance and sabotaging your calorie spending.

Finally, your goal to get abs is not only about losing fat but also about gaining muscle and here the problem becomes even trickier. Many fitness gurus wrote a lot about how to go about it, it's tons of ebooks and articles and I am afraid you should either educate yourself or work it out all by yourself.

READING

The Many Types of Calories
http://atkinszone-did-you-know.blogspot.com/2010/06/many-types-of-calories.html

Energy Homeostasis (just look at the picture to see how complicated it is)
http://brainfuels.com/2010/06/brain-studies-in-vivo-versus-in-vitro-gaba-actio/

Gaining Muscle Mass
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Special-Diets-768/2011/3/eternal-question-gaining-mus...

Tanya Zilberter

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