Replacing Calories Burned?

Hiddlesgirl15

Hey all I'm new to the community but not new to fitness. I actually love working out and have been doing so since high school. But I'm a newbie to calorie counting which I never had to do before now thanks to a slowing metabolism. MyFitnessPal has me on a 1200 calorie diet which makes sense, I have a sit down job, but when I workout it wants me to replace my calories burned. Isn't the calorie deficit what you're shooting for to lose weight? If I have a fantastic high energy workout and burn 600 calories, turning around and putting those back into my body seems to defeat the purpose of said fantastic high energy workout.

Help would be appreciated!

BasicGreatGuy

A lot of the calories burned numbers from MFP are inflated. A lot of people either don't eat back the calories burned, or eat back 25 - 50 %.

jemhh

Your MFP goal of 1200 already has the calorie deficit needed in order to lose weight built into it. The idea is to exercise for the sake of fitness rather than for the sake of losing weight. For that reason, it is good to eat the calories earned through exercise. Just be diligent about logging your exercise calories correctly (i.e., evaluate them for reasonableness.)

juggernaut1974

The 1200 calories it gives you already takes your deficit into consideration and assumes you don't exercise. So additional exercise wouldn't 'create' the deficit - it makes it even bigger.

You need to be sure to fuel your body sufficiently to perform your exercise/workouts, so it's recommended you eat back those calories. The tricky part is determining exactly how many calories your exercise burns. It's pretty widely accepted that cardio machines and MFP both grossly exaggerate exercise calories burned, so many people suggest eating back 50% of whatever MFP tells you that you burned for a given exercise program.

I would be suspicious of your claim of a 600 calorie workout, unless you're spending a lot of time a the gym. Most of my 45-60 minute workouts burn somewhere around 200-300 calories or so.

999tigger

The 1200 calories places you in deficit on the basis of food consumption alone, so to maintain that you can eat 100% of your actual calories burned back to keep the same deficit.

However for some people MFP can be overgenerous in estimating alories burned which leads to the problem of eating calories you havent earned, so the starting point is for people to eat only a % back maybe 50% and then adjust based on results.

Its personal preference how many calories you eat back. If the amount is low i.e for me below 300 then you dont have to eat back, once it starts getting above 500 then you should be wary of running large deficits otherwise you wonr get adequate nutrition. It just takes common sense.

WBB55

In my non-professional experience, for anyone with less than 100 lbs to lose, a net deficit greater than 1000 calories per day is counterproductive, as in your performance will decrease and unknowingly you'll burn less than before for the same activities, since you won't have enough energy to perform at a high level. 750-1000 seems to be the max deficit where performance won't suffer noticiably. Now, determining your TRUE daily deficit can be tricky...

@Hiddlesgirl15 What rate of loss did you pick when you set up your goals on the MFP ap? My guess is for best results you should probably "eat back" about 50% of the calories you "earn" through exercise.

amaried621

On days where you workout you may want to replenish your body by eating back calories. Of course you don't have to eat them all back, but personally I find that I need to eat more on days that I workout. For those commenting on MFP exercise calories being off - they definitely are! It would give me an extra 80 calories from working out so I got a HRM which is way more accurate since it takes things like you age, gender ,weight, etc... into account.

ceoverturf wrote: »

I would be suspicious of your claim of a 600 calorie workout, unless you're spending a lot of time a the gym. Most of my 45-60 minute workouts burn somewhere around 200-300 calories or so.

Not true - with a high intensity I burn 600+ on workouts of an hour. It all depends on what you are doing and the intensity of the workout.

juggernaut1974

amaried621 wrote: »

On days where you workout you may want to replenish your body by eating back calories. Of course you don't have to eat them all back, but personally I find that I need to eat more on days that I workout. For those commenting on MFP exercise calories being off - they definitely are! It would give me an extra 80 calories from working out so I got a HRM which is way more accurate since it takes things like you age, gender ,weight, etc... into account.

ceoverturf wrote: »

I would be suspicious of your claim of a 600 calorie workout, unless you're spending a lot of time a the gym. Most of my 45-60 minute workouts burn somewhere around 200-300 calories or so.

Not true - with a high intensity I burn 600+ on workouts of an hour. It all depends on what you are doing and the intensity of the workout.

I believe it's possible.

I don't believe that most people that think they are burning that much truly are though. Of course, it depends on your statistics too.

Curiosity - how did you determine that calorie burn? Mine was calculated by analyzing actual weight gain/loss results when combining my exercise with my daily caloric intakes.

Hiddlesgirl15

Wow you guys are awesome! Thanks for the quick feedback. I keep track of calorie burn with my heart rate monitor, and generally do high impact workouts. Today I did an hour workout plus 2 miles of speed walking with my energetic dogs, so I wouldn't doubt I burned 600 calories I live in an area that's pretty much uphill both ways.

I think eating about 50% back makes sense. I'll try that. I guess if I end up feeling starved I'll up it a bit more.