Exercise Calories

tara_means_star

I need help deciding how many calories to eat back. In the past, I ate back way too many and didn't lose (obviously). I've lost 37 pounds without exercising and now I've decided to start exercising more regularly, starting slowly with just things I enjoy--so walking and zumba. Today, for instance, I walked 2.5 miles at a pace of 2.5 miles per hour. I'm a 26 year old female, I'm 5'7 and I weigh 179 lbs. MFP gave me 243 calories for these 2.5 miles. How many calories would you suggest as a safe amount to eat back?

Also, unrelated. It's not likely that I will retain water weight just doing walking and zumba even if it's new for me, right?

PaytraB

You may retain some water weight for the exercise. Your muscles hang onto water while healing but it'll go away soon enough. Don't worry about this too much.

For the exercise calories, you can manually adjust MFP's calories burned to suit what you like. Try halfing the number (122 for today), monitor your weight loss for a month and see if things are still on track. Everyone is different and workout intensities are different so trial & error is the way to determine how much to eat back. 50% is a good start.

You're doing great. Keep up the good work.

tara_means_star

I was up 1.8 pounds this morning, which I know is water weight. I know my period is coming soon-ish but still a week or more away so it made me wonder if i was possibly retaining water from exercising this week. I wasn't sure because the exercise I'm doing isn't super strenuous--I walk while carrying on a conversation with my husband. I'm out of breath with Zumba but it takes a few seconds after each song to choose the other one (wii game) so I wasn't sure that I would retain water from this kind of exercise.

PaytraB

That's a normal weight gain. It could be partially exercise, partially ToM, partially a lot of things. As long as you are within your calorie goals for the day (or averaged over the week), you're doing great. The weight is coming off; sometimes the scale doesn't show that. Watch for the long-term trend.

tara_means_star

I'm still ensuring my deficit, my weightloss has been annoyingly wonky lately. The first two months I was here, I lost ~10 pounds per month. Then I got sick and dropped like 5 pounds overnight. In the month since then, I've lost two pounds, 1.8 of which I saw on the scale this morning. lol I'm trying to see the scale move again and hoping that exercise, on top of my food deficit will encourage the scale toward it's downward trend again.

PaytraB

When you lose weight through sickness, you usually gain it back when you're healthy. The body adjusts like that. If you only gained back 1.8 of those 5 pounds, the trend is still going down. It sounds like you're doing really well.

CassidyScaglione

I eat back 75%.

Machka9

I eat half of my exercise calories back most of the time. However, I will eat more if I exercise a lot, like if I go for a really long ride.

tara_means_star

PaytraB wrote: »

When you lose weight through sickness, you usually gain it back when you're healthy. The body adjusts like that. If you only gained back 1.8 of those 5 pounds, the trend is still going down. It sounds like you're doing really well.

Thanks for the nice reminder. My weight fluctuated wildly in the beginning of being sick, finally settling at a total loss of nearly 5 pounds...then the scale has remained mostly the same for a month. Not seeing the number move in a month now has just gotten me down a bit. I'm continuing forward with no intention of giving up, I'm just ready for the scale to move again.

I did notice today after my three mile walk that I was clearly retaining water--my ring was hard to get off and my socks had indented my legs. That helped me realize that some of the stagnation and slight increase of the scale likely is water retention whether its from exercise, TOM, increased salt, not enough water, or all of the above.

I'm counting 100 calories per mile as what I eat back. Does that seem reasonable?

PaytraB

100 calories per mile is a general average for running, I think.
Here is a calculation for walking that may be more accurate:

Net Walking calories Spent = (Body weight in pounds) x (0.30) x (Distance in miles)