Eating back exercise calories?

BigMama24mfp

I think 10 miles a day would be considered very active. I only have to walk 5 in order for me to burn what MFP determines an very active amount of calories.
Also, I know this from experience, if you are cutting calories and walking you will lose weight but a lot of that will be from muscle. I lost 35 lbs that way and my body didn't look different, just smaller. Preserving your muscle mass is extremely important when it comes to your metabolism, too. Lifting weights is key.
I say, yes, eat back your exercise calories. I burn 2500 calories without exercise. On days that I do exercise, I burn 3000. So if I exercise, I will eat 500 more calories. Overall, I shoot for a 1 lb/week loss which means regardless on whether or not I exercise I maintain that deficit. I hope that makes sense.

Linzon

I generally eat back most of them and am losing at the expected rate. Sometimes more than expected since it doesn't take incline into effect and I'm basically walking up a giant hill every day.

I pretty much exercise as much as I do so I can eat more, health is a nice bonus

rankinsect

pbandz wrote: »

My goal is 1450 a day which has had me losing 2+ pounds a week. If I ate any back it will slow it down but for someone already at 112 it probably wouldn't hurt to eat a few back if I'm hungry.

At 112 pounds, you probably shouldn't be losing 2 lb per week anyway. Basically, all weight loss is a mix of fat and lean mass. You really want to push that hard towards losing more fat and less lean mass.

There's basically four factors that can promote a better ratio of fat to lean mass loss:

1. Having lots of fat to lose. The morbidly obese will naturally lose a better ratio of fat to lean mass.
2. Losing slowly.
3. Eating high protein meals promotes muscle maintenance.
4. Doing resistance (strength) training.

#2 is key - each pound of body fat you have remaining can only shrink by 31 calories (about 3.4 grams) per day, and that's a theoretical maximum that nobody will actually hit. To lose 2 lb of pure fat per week even at that theoretical unattainable level, you need at least 40 lb of existing body fat. At 112 lb, that seems very unlikely unless you are extremely short.

The rough rule of thumb to estimate where you should be is not more than 1% body weight per week - so no more than 1.1 lb/week if you're 112 lb. On the lean side, you probably want to lose less than 1% per week; if you were severely obese you could go more.

pbandz

rankinsect wrote: »

pbandz wrote: »

My goal is 1450 a day which has had me losing 2+ pounds a week. If I ate any back it will slow it down but for someone already at 112 it probably wouldn't hurt to eat a few back if I'm hungry.

At 112 pounds, you probably shouldn't be losing 2 lb per week anyway. Basically, all weight loss is a mix of fat and lean mass. You really want to push that hard towards losing more fat and less lean mass.

There's basically four factors that can promote a better ratio of fat to lean mass loss:

1. Having lots of fat to lose. The morbidly obese will naturally lose a better ratio of fat to lean mass.
2. Losing slowly.
3. Eating high protein meals promotes muscle maintenance.
4. Doing resistance (strength) training.

#2 is key - each pound of body fat you have remaining can only shrink by 31 calories (about 3.4 grams) per day, and that's a theoretical maximum that nobody will actually hit. To lose 2 lb of pure fat per week even at that theoretical unattainable level, you need at least 40 lb of existing body fat. At 112 lb, that seems very unlikely unless you are extremely short.

The rough rule of thumb to estimate where you should be is not more than 1% body weight per week - so no more than 1.1 lb/week if you're 112 lb. On the lean side, you probably want to lose less than 1% per week; if you were severely obese you could go more.

Thank you. Yea I will try to slow it down a bit then. Also I am quite short I'm 5'1" but not super short.

Thank you so much!!