Eating back those burned calories?

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healthyfitme12
healthyfitme12 Posts: 50 Member
in Food and Nutrition
My question is, am I supposed to eat back the calories burned from working out? For example, if my goal calorie intake is 2000 calories and I eat that amount today BUT also burn an extra 500 calories from weights or cardio, should I be eating back those 500 calories?

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  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    MFP is set up so that you eat your exercise calories back. The thing you want to be careful with is ensuring that your calorie burn numbers are accurate -- MFP tends to overestimate calories burned. Many people eat back just a portion of their calories for this reason.
  • beemerphile1
    beemerphile1 Posts: 1,710 Member
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    I try to never eat them all back because the estimates are very unreliable. I usually do eat some of them back.
  • futuremanda
    futuremanda Posts: 816 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    MFP is set up so that you eat your exercise calories back. The thing you want to be careful with is ensuring that your calorie burn numbers are accurate -- MFP tends to overestimate calories burned. Many people eat back just a portion of their calories for this reason.

    This.

    It's just the way MFP is designed. Since it isn't psychic and didn't know ahead of time that you were going to go and burn 500 calories, it created your whole deficit for you with food alone. Once it knows you burned a bunch, it adjusts to what it would have told you to eat had it known. If it bugs you, you can pre-log your workouts each morning, as long as you know you'll do them.

    Or you can try reading up on the TDEE method and setting a manual calorie target in MFP and not eating back exercise.

    Basically, start by eating back a percentage. Maybe 50%. In a couple months, you can take a look at your actual average loss per week (because you'll see weird numbers, like 4 lbs one week, 0 the next, up 1, down 5, etc so you need an average over time) and realize you can either eat more and still lose at a nice rate, or that you've been eating too many and dial it back a bit.

    You can either eat those cals every day or "save" them up. Do you like to go out on weekends or have a lot of dates/events/parties etc? You don't have to eat 'em all today if you're not hungry.

    (However, I do recommend eating to fuel your workouts. Meaning, if you're feeling like your calorie goal is keeping you from giving your all in your workouts, eat more. Your target is a guess, your logged food is a guess, your burns are a guess. Don't make yourself sick or short change your fitness efforts all based on guesses and a desire to lose ASAP.)
  • healthyfitme12
    healthyfitme12 Posts: 50 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    MFP is set up so that you eat your exercise calories back. The thing you want to be careful with is ensuring that your calorie burn numbers are accurate -- MFP tends to overestimate calories burned. Many people eat back just a portion of their calories for this reason.

    I use the Polar Fitness heart rate watch to ensure my burned calories are accurate, thanks for your comment!
  • AlisonH729
    AlisonH729 Posts: 558 Member
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    I use TDEE - x %, assuming little/no exercise. That way it's not automatically allotting me calories for exercise I'm expected to do.

    If I'm hungry I will eat a portion of them back. (If we order pizza I will unabashedly eat them all back. Sorry, not sorry.) Sometimes I don't need or want them.

    More often than not though, the decision to eat or not to eat is determined by whether or not I've hit my protein goals for the day. If I haven't I will probably use some of those earned calories for a smoothie. (Whey, 2% milk and mayyybe like a 1/3 of a banana and some PB.)
  • Hornsby
    Hornsby Posts: 10,322 Member
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    healthyfitme12 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    MFP is set up so that you eat your exercise calories back. The thing you want to be careful with is ensuring that your calorie burn numbers are accurate -- MFP tends to overestimate calories burned. Many people eat back just a portion of their calories for this reason.

    I use the Polar Fitness heart rate watch to ensure my burned calories are accurate, thanks for your comment!

    HRMs are designed to track steady state cardio and nothing more. Using them to track things such as weightlifting will be inaccurate 99% of the time.

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