So I keep hearing "eat back 1/2 your exercise calories"..... elaborate?
CoffeeNCardio
Posts: 1,847 Member
So, this doesn't necessarily apply to me (it could, I dunno) but I keep hearing people say "eat back half your exercise calories" as opposed to all of them or none of them I'm assuming. How does this work? Is it linear? Should someone who burns 1000 cal exercising only eat back 500, the same as a person who burns only 200 cal should eat back 100? And what is the goal of this advice, is this something you should do if you are at maintenance, or something to help when you hit a plateau during loss, or both? Does it matter what your goal is? (mine is 1200, activity level:sedentary, though I do exercise near daily) Or is this advice different for people with higher/lower calorie goals? I'm just getting wack-info from google, nothing that's really making sense...
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The main reason is that a lot of calorie estimates are high. Some of that is that these are estimations, but I think most is that machines (in order to give you a bigger number) are telling you the gross calories burned, not the net calories burned.
That is, if you exercise on a treadmill for an hour and get 450 calories, these are 450 gross calories - it counts all of your body's normal metabolism for that hour, in addition to the extra calories burned because you did the walking. To get your net calories, you'd need to subtract the number of calories you would have burned had you simply been laying on the couch for an hour.
The reason is that MFP already factored those calories in as part of its calculations, so if you simply logged gross calories burned, all of those calories are effectively double-counted.
The "Eat 50%" is just a quicker way versus trying to convert gross to net calories all the time, and since calorie measurement is inaccurate anyway, it's probably not worth your time to try to be more accurate.0 -
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I don't agree with the advice in general.
I started out eating them all back and had no issues. There are issues with any form of calorie estimation - even the always touted HRMs. If someone is worried about accuracy, I suggest people pick a number and try it for a few weeks, then adjust from there. I do suggest starting on the high side, either all or 75% of them and adjust downwards, not going from eating all to eating none back.
If you are in maintainance then you should already have a pretty good idea of how much to take in. Just keep it the same. If you lost weight eating 50% back, you maintain weight eating 50% back.
That said, what your goal is has a lot to do with it, how aggressive your deficit is, what your a logging as exercise AND how accurate your calorie intake is. People often blame exercise estimations when the other side of the equation is just as important.
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When MFP gives you a calorie goal it does not factor in exercise. So if you exercise every day you should log that exercise into MFP and then eat half of those extra calories. The reason we say half is because often we over estimate how many calories we actually burned from that exercise. You want to eat them back to fuel your workouts and to keep your net above 1200.
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ThisIt's a rough estimate. It is basically in response to so many of the exercise calorie estimators tend to give you such bloated numbers. If I put into MFP that I ran for 45 minutes on my elliptical, it says I burned over 450 calories. Yeah, I don't think so. So if I was going by MFP's estimator and ate back all my calories, I'd be eating my deficit away. So a rough estimate is to eat back half and then reassess after 4 to 6 weeks. If you are losing more than MFP says you should, eat back more...if you are losing less than MFP says you should, eat back less.
I eat back close to all my exercise calories because I have a FitBit and find the calorie adjustment to be pretty gosh darn effective. I have been in maintenance for a few months now and the TDEE that it gives me is pretty spot on.
For me , it was trial and error. I figured out what I could eat back and still lose xx amount of pounds that week so it took time. I found which worked for me and it wasn't the inflated numbers that the cardio machines claimed.
For example, the treadmill and elliptical would say I burnt around 509-609 cals per hour.
At first I ate those all back and didn't lose ( because the numbers where inflated )
Finally after much trial and error, I found out that eating back only around 25% worked for me.
So play around with it and see what works for you. Or look into a fitbit or other hrm device to help you get a better idea .
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I eat back close to all my exercise calories because I have a FitBit and find the calorie adjustment to be pretty gosh darn effective. I have been in maintenance for a few months now and the TDEE that it gives me is pretty spot on.
Oh, and I should mention - fitbits and other devices designed to monitor your calorie burn 24/7 are different than using an HRM only during exercise or looking at an exercise machine's calorie burn.
With a fitness tracker like a fitbit, MFP can accurately estimate your real TDEE, and even though this is gross calorie burn, MFP knows that and accepts that. When you're not doing a fitness tracker but instead just adding calories burned of exercise, MFP really expects these to be as net calories in order for accurate calculations, and the machines are giving you gross.0 -
Okay, thank you ALL this was very helpful and informative. One more question for clarification. So if I'm logging 1200 eaten calories a day, and I work out for say 30 min walking 3mph, which is telling me like 140 calories burned, I should eat those back if I AM losing "on schedule" and cut them back (eat back 70 or none) if I'm not? I log my food with a digital scale and everything and I have my level set at sedentary even though more realistically I'm at the low end of the "Lightly Active" range, I did sedentary so it wouldn't over estimate0
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rankinsect wrote: »I eat back close to all my exercise calories because I have a FitBit and find the calorie adjustment to be pretty gosh darn effective. I have been in maintenance for a few months now and the TDEE that it gives me is pretty spot on.
Oh, and I should mention - fitbits and other devices designed to monitor your calorie burn 24/7 are different than using an HRM only during exercise or looking at an exercise machine's calorie burn.
With a fitness tracker like a fitbit, MFP can accurately estimate your real TDEE, and even though this is gross calorie burn, MFP knows that and accepts that. When you're not doing a fitness tracker but instead just adding calories burned of exercise, MFP really expects these to be as net calories in order for accurate calculations, and the machines are giving you gross.
I don't have a fitbit or HRM, I'm saving change. We're broke during the holidays.0 -
rankinsect wrote: »I eat back close to all my exercise calories because I have a FitBit and find the calorie adjustment to be pretty gosh darn effective. I have been in maintenance for a few months now and the TDEE that it gives me is pretty spot on.
Oh, and I should mention - fitbits and other devices designed to monitor your calorie burn 24/7 are different than using an HRM only during exercise or looking at an exercise machine's calorie burn.
With a fitness tracker like a fitbit, MFP can accurately estimate your real TDEE, and even though this is gross calorie burn, MFP knows that and accepts that. When you're not doing a fitness tracker but instead just adding calories burned of exercise, MFP really expects these to be as net calories in order for accurate calculations, and the machines are giving you gross.
I've had a lot of friends be very successful with FitBit but all activity monitors have their strengths and weaknesses as well.
There is no one perfect way of estimating calorie output (outside of a lab).0 -
I DO however, add my own exercises to the database, rather than using the ones that are already in there, and I put them in other calculators and then round down (sometimes quite a bit) to make sure cause I had heard that treadmills are liars.0
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clgaram720 wrote: »Okay, thank you ALL this was very helpful and informative. One more question for clarification. So if I'm logging 1200 eaten calories a day, and I work out for say 30 min walking 3mph, which is telling me like 140 calories burned, I should eat those back if I AM losing "on schedule" and cut them back (eat back 70 or none) if I'm not? I log my food with a digital scale and everything and I have my level set at sedentary even though more realistically I'm at the low end of the "Lightly Active" range, I did sedentary so it wouldn't over estimate
Things like walking are relatively predictable for calorie burns if you are accounting for pace and your weight.
Things like "elliptical" or even entries with qualifiers like "vigorous" are less reliable. This is a great explanation
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/estimating-calories-activity-databases-198041
I would suggest staying consistent. That will allow you to evaluate if your estimates are close and to know in the future. Monitor over weeks, like more than 4, not just over one or two. Then adjust upwards or downwards a bit.0 -
3dogsrunning wrote: »clgaram720 wrote: »Okay, thank you ALL this was very helpful and informative. One more question for clarification. So if I'm logging 1200 eaten calories a day, and I work out for say 30 min walking 3mph, which is telling me like 140 calories burned, I should eat those back if I AM losing "on schedule" and cut them back (eat back 70 or none) if I'm not? I log my food with a digital scale and everything and I have my level set at sedentary even though more realistically I'm at the low end of the "Lightly Active" range, I did sedentary so it wouldn't over estimate
Things like walking are relatively predictable for calorie burns if you are accounting for pace and your weight.
Things like "elliptical" or even entries with qualifiers like "vigorous" are less reliable. This is a great explanation
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/estimating-calories-activity-databases-198041
I would suggest staying consistent. That will allow you to evaluate if your estimates are close and to know in the future. Monitor over weeks, like more than 4, not just over one or two. Then adjust upwards or downwards a bit.
Cool, thank you I'll give that a read:)0 -
I have a question to people that use FitBit:
Do you eat all the extra calories it gives you, only half or none at all?0 -
I have a question to people that use FitBit:
Do you eat all the extra calories it gives you, only half or none at all?
I dunno about the fitbit, but when I had my phone step-counter app applied to MFP, it MESSED up my calorie counts so bad I gained 3 lbs (sustained, over a period, no fluctuation). I had to turn it off to get back on track.0 -
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clgaram720 wrote: »I DO however, add my own exercises to the database, rather than using the ones that are already in there, and I put them in other calculators and then round down (sometimes quite a bit) to make sure cause I had heard that treadmills are liars.
In my experience, treadmills and most other gym machines lie big time! In fact, if only there were a jail for the lying machines!
My heart rate monitor generally renders 100-250 calories less than any gym machine (depending on which I'm using), so if I trusted the machines and ate all those back I'd gain weight (I've been in maintenance for almost 2 years).0 -
I do as well. That's why I love the weekly nutrition part of the MFP app on my phone and tablet, because I can get a quick tally of what I have left for the week.0 -
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I have my MFP calories set to lose 1 lb a week. In 40 weeks, I've lost 1.4 lbs a week which equates to another 200 calories a day of exercise/activity over sedentary. Fitbit shows me burning approx 2170 total calories a day which is approx 200 over my 500 calorie deficit. I think that implies I don't eat my exercise calories but I usually do eat at least 50%. The other 200 must come from not logging weight training and other non- intentional excercise. So I say eat at least 50% which also helps fuel more workouts.0
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Thanks to all those who answered. I ignored my FitBit calories until this week, but I decided to follow what it says.
I have, unsurprisingly, put back on 1 kg. But I'll give it another 2/3 weeks.0 -
I do as well. That's why I love the weekly nutrition part of the MFP app on my phone and tablet, because I can get a quick tally of what I have left for the week.
Can I ask you where to find the weekly calories? Is it only with premium app?0 -
I do as well. That's why I love the weekly nutrition part of the MFP app on my phone and tablet, because I can get a quick tally of what I have left for the week.
Can I ask you where to find the weekly calories? Is it only with premium app?
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/reports
You can see your calories consumed over the last 7, 30, or 90 days on there.0 -
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I do as well. That's why I love the weekly nutrition part of the MFP app on my phone and tablet, because I can get a quick tally of what I have left for the week.
Can I ask you where to find the weekly calories? Is it only with premium app?
Not the premium app at all. Prizepeople gave you the response for how to see your calories online.
You can see them also on your phone or tablet by going to more at the bottom right, choosing nutrition, then calories. Under calories, choose week view and you get a really cool graph that will show you the last 7 days.
ETA: @shell1005, we posted almost the exact same thing at almost the exact time. 0 -
Thank you all.
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