Hi, I ran my stats through the online calculator and I was told that I need to eat between 1800 to 2000 cal a day in order to drop about 1.5 lbs a week. I was wondering , when I do cardio and burn around 300 calories, do i need to take in an additional 300 cal on that day? For example, if I am trying to eat 1900 cal a day on a cut to lose weight, and do a cardio seeesion for 300 cal, should I eat 2200 calories to accont for my cardio session? Hope this makes sense, thanks !

Chris,

If you want to lose fat, you need to run a calorie deficit. If you burn 300 calories doing cardio and then replace it, you will be taking one step forward and one step back and will maintain your current weight and lose no fat. Cardio helps you burn extra calories off your daily intake so you have the deficit needed to lose fat.

John

Yeah it can be counter-productive if your goal is to lose weight.

However, if you are already in a caloric deficit BEFORE you do cardio, then you may want to replace them, to minimise the risk of eating in a really big deficit and losing muscle mass.

So if you eat 1900 calories a day to lose (on average) 0.2lbs per day, then burn another 300 calories each day, that adds up to 2100 extra calories per week. So if you were already in a deficit which had you losing weight, you may want to replace some of those 300 calories per day, or you could start dropping too much weight, and good weight at that.

Does this make sense? Also, what kind of cardio are you doing? HIIT is the best way to burn fat and maintain muscle.

Thanks Joe, that makes sense!