Exercise calories

alizesmom

Everyone uses these differently. What is your reasoning for why you do or don't eat them? Do you intend to eat them in maintenance?

LaurenAOK

MFP is designed to eat them. I always find the debate over whether or not to eat them funny but also slightly frustrating - the entire point of the way this site is set up is to eat your exercise calories back. Only way it's different is if someone did a manual setup and used the TDEE method, not the MFP default method.

I do get that exercise cals can be overestimated, so for that reason I always ate back about 75% of mine (until I got a fitbit, now I don't have to worry about logging exercise). 75% always worked for me.

It shouldn't be any different in maintenance vs. weight loss mode.

veganbaum

I currently eat based off of my fitbit, but ultimately it's the same thing - eating to appropriately fuel my level of activity.

I don't want to lose more muscle that I have to.

I don't want to have less energy for working out, and really just for life, than I need to.

And, when I used MFP without my fitbit I ate them, because that's how MFP is designed. The deficit I asked for was provided to me without having to exercise. So I tried to maintain that deficit.

If you don't eat them in maintenance, then you won't be in maintenance, you would still be losing weight. If you reach maintenance and add exercise cals after not eating them and find you gain weight, then I would say you are inaccurate with your food logging or you are overestimating your activity level or you simply need to play with the numbers to find your personal maintenance cals (since TDEE is just an estimation anyway).

Dreysander

I don't use them because I do TDEE. I'm not yet in maintenance but I will be soon, when I do maintenance I intend to increase cal by 100 a week until weight stabilizes rather than looking at what MFP / Fitbit says I am burning for exercise.

pineygirl

I usually don't eat them all back. I use a Fitbit Charge HR and I think it over estimates. Today I'm supposed to burn 2507 calories as of my activity as of 6:30pm.

Um...no.

I'm 5'1 and 119lbs. And I have PCOS and hypothyroidism.

I usually leave a buffer of 150 to 350 calories. Some days I'm just hungry and eat almost everything back...but not usually.

I'm losing a little more than 1 pound a week so I think my buffer is accurate.

janjunie

I'm in maintenance and I eat back all my exercise calories. My reason for doing this is because if I don't eat them back I lose weight. Saying that I am pretty conservative when it comes to the calories I burn, for example today I did a 20 min hill program on the treadmill with speed walking at it's fastest. My burn for that I estimated at 45 calories, most people tend to way over estimate the calories they burn, it's not that easy.

airforceman1979

It is up to you I personally don't because I think my fitbit charge is crazy it wants me to eat 2000 calories over today had a busy day lol and I don't think I could eat over 4k calories without falling back into bad habits

OldAssDude

I use a Polar V800 which is probably the most accurate device I have used so far for measuring calories burned if the chest strap heart rate monitor is used. most days I don't eat near all of them back because I burn so many on my power walks that I cant eat that much. But some days if I do an easy walk I eat just about all of them back.

The trick for me is to burn way more than you can eat, so you can eat a well balanced and very satisfying diet without having to worry about going over. I don't even log my food anymore, but I do eat smartly.

I don't over do it with treats because a treat should be... well... a treat.

veganbaum

Dreysander wrote: »

I don't use them because I do TDEE. I'm not yet in maintenance but I will be soon, when I do maintenance I intend to increase cal by 100 a week until weight stabilizes rather than looking at what MFP / Fitbit says I am burning for exercise.

I think this is misleading because TDEE includes exercise calories up front. So, they're being accounted for (and eaten), just not in the same way.

nutmegoreo

I don't eat them unless I am really hungry. MFP tried setting me at 1200/day. I didn't like this so I changed it to 1600. I let FitBit increase my cals from exercise, although with the 400 cal difference, I don't usually get exercise cals and when I do, I consider them as a make up for the days I spend living as a lump.

dhimaan

I tried not eating them back a ways back but my consequent workouts suffered plus I lost more weight then I had intended to. Now I know i made a huge mistake in terms of weight management. Well you live and learn.