Calories burned with exercise

fxyladi2003

I am burning 500-700 calories per work out 3-4 times weekly doing cardio. Fitness Pal recalculatea those calories back into your daily allowance. Is it truly necessary to consume those?? That's a lot of calories to add into your day. After reading online I see its a huge debate. I need to lose about 30 more lbs to reach my goal so loss is what looking for, not maintenance. Thanks!

futuremanda

A lot of MFP users recommend eating back a percentage, since MFP also notoriously overestimates burn (and so do machines, etc). Often people pick to eat back 50%.

Since you only work out 3-4 times a week, you might want to spread it across your week. So let's call it for an example that you want to eat back 350 x 4. That's 1400, but spread over 7 days is an extra 200 per day.

futuremanda

Oh, and regarding this: "so loss is what looking for, not maintenance."

The calories MFP tells you to eat will give you the weight loss you asked of it. If you said 2 lbs per week, and it tells you to eat 1300, you'd lose 2 lbs per week doing that. (On average, as weight loss isn't linear, and things can affect your scale measurements.)

When you exercise on top of that, you're creating a deficit that is GREATER than 2 lbs per week. If you eat back those calories, you'd still lose the 2 lbs per week, you'd still have that same deficit. (As long as you don't overeat because of an overestimation of how much you burned.)

Eating them or not is usually more about fueling your body properly, it isn't that you wouldn't lose weight.

esjones12

I would be eating at least some of those back. But if you have a decent amount to lose, listen your body. The closer to your goal weight you are and once your burning 600+ 4-6x a week it becomes more important to eat back calories in my opinion/experience.

I have found when I am exercising a lot and not eating enough calories back I get tired, run down, headaches, irritable, and "starving". If you start experiencing negative symptoms of a large deficit, just eat more! Your body needs fuel to operate. Food really is not the enemy.

Another key is eating healthy nutritious food your body can use to repair and re-energize itself with.

fxyladi2003

Thanks to the both of you.