Should you eat back calories burned?

samanthalynne21

So I've been getting mixed answers from health professionals some say yes you should eat the calories you burn and some say no...
I get 1600 and I burn 400-500 so should I be consuming 2000-2100?

Liftng4Lis

Most eat back half to allow for miscalculations.

BWBTrish

i have a polar watch H7 and eat 1/4 back of my exercise calories
Not because i want to eat more, but because when i train my body needs more /fuel nutrition ( i eat around the 1200 calories a day)
Hitting the right amount nutrition on a low calorie diet is important to me.
So when i train ( 6 times a week an hour cardio and 3 times a week 30 minutes light lifting) my body needs more than the 1200 calories can provide in nutrition. So i eat 1/4 back to make it easier to hit my macros.

This is how i do it and prefer. I am not always eating them back btw. When i am stuffed i wont. lol

Amanda4change

If I'm hungry on a big burn day I will eat back up to 25% of my exercise calories (except on thanksgiving and Christmas then I deliberately worked out hard and ate almost all of them). The philosophy that I stick to is I cut calories for weight loss and exercise for health. My suggestion is find a happy spot that works for you, either eating none back, some back or all back. I started with eating none back and it was showing on the scale with a loss of 4-6 pounds a week, which I felt was to high. Eating back up to 25%(and adding a rest day) has dropped that to 2-3 pounds of loss per week for me. As I get closer to my goal, I will adjust as needed to keep my loss per week to 1-2 pounds. What works for some doesn't work for all. It also depends on how accurate your consumption and burn numbers are (I weigh and measure every single thing that goes in my mouth, and I use a HRM when I workout, which makes my numbers as accurate as I can get).

TimothyFish

Even though MFP doesn't really make it look that way, it isn't really about eating back exercise calories. If you are hoping to lose 2 lbs a week (less say), you should determine how many calories you burn during that week and eat less than that by 7000 calories. If you are hoping to maintain, you should determine how many calories you burn during the week and eat exactly that many calories. Let's say you exercise enough to burn 5000 calories per week and you are burning 17000 per week doing other stuff. For a 2lbs loss, MFP will give you a 10000 calorie goal for the week. Imagine, only eating 10000 when you are actually burning 22000. Instead of the 2 lbs you were hoping to lose, you would end up losing 3.4 lbs.

higgins8283801

If you follow tdee, you don't eat them back.

If you're following mfp you eat them back because mfp does not take exercise into consideration when setting your calorie goal. Mfp is already at a deficit.