are you/ are you not suppose to eat exercise calories?

shanayjune

I see a trend of people not eating exercise calories back. Are you suppose to eat them or not? A little confused

Liftng4Lis

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1

kellicci

Yep, we get this a lot!

Basically there is no 100% right answer. Do what works for you. If your calorie intake is already really low (say MFP set you at 1200 a day) then you might want to eat some of them back. However, use caution because the calories burned in the activity calculator and the output you see on your workout machine ( i.e the display on your treadmill) are usually over inflated. Add to this the fact that many of us are under estimating our calorie intake because we don't weigh or measure everything and you ave a recipe for zero weight loss if you eat them all back.

I say start with eating about half of them back. Try it for a week and if it works...YAY, keep it up. If it doesn't work, it's time to try something else.

Personally, I only eat them back if I'm hungry or if I'm in maintenance mode because I only use measuring cups to measure my food and it's not as accurate as using a scale.

3dogsrunning

Short answer if you are following MFP's calorie suggestions, you should account for your activity in some way.

MFP is designed that you are supposed to . Some people worry about overestimation and choose to eat only a portion of them. Some people eat them all and are successful.

Other people use other methods of figuring calories goals that usually include accounting for activity level which can muddy the waters on this question.

Also keep in mind, the other side has to be balanced. Food has to be tracked accurately for it to work as well.

thrashscara

I eat maybe half back, I use a hr monitor for accurate calories, my cals are set by mfp at 1200, I'm 5ft0 and quite often get told off by my phone for not eating enough, but have!!