Eating calories earned for exercise?

jlfag05

Hi all! I was successful on the weight watchers points plus program but have been really unhappy with the new plan and decided to give this a try. I have my Fitbit linked to this, but am curious how many of you eat those calories it earns you versus leave them alone? Some stats about me: 5'6, 190 lbs. I am hoping to get down to 130 lbs. I have PCOS so realize it may take me awhile and I'm ok with that. When I lose I want to keep it off and just be healthier overall for my son.

TeaBea

The way MFP is designed, you get a calorie deficit BEFORE exercise. So ideally eating back exercise calories gets you to your original deficit. However, calorie burns are estimates. Some estimates are better than others.

Fortunately FitBit (step based activity especially) gives you a pretty good estimate. Make sure you enable negative calories. That way if you don't meet your stated activity level in MFP, you could get calories taken away (keeps you honest). Syncing to MFP allows for comparison.

Here's a link to the FitBit groups - tons of information
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users

Mezzie1024

I eat all my exercise calories. MFP is set up so that you have a net calorie goal, not a gross one.

Some people on here will advise you to only eat haf or three quarters of your exercise calories. They do that because the MFP databse, machines, or fitness devices they use have overestimated their burn. I have found that not to be true in my case; if I stick to my MFP net goal and eat all my exercise calories, I lose at exactly the predicted rate (though it comes in spurts: a quarter pound here, nothing for two weeks, a sudden pound and a half there). Remember, your body needs fuel to function optimally. A reasonable deficit is fine, but if you start burning a lot and adding a huge deficit, you're setting yourself up for muscle loss, injury, fatigue, and other negative effects that won't generally show up right away, but once they do, they're hard to recover from.

My advice: do exactly what MFP says for a month, including eating your exercise calories. In that time, focus on tracking your food accurately, particularly by weighing all solids and semi-solids and measuring all liquids. Then, if after a month, you aren't seeing any reasonable movement in the right direction, consider that the MFP/tracjker calorie burns are inflated and try only eating back 75%.

Doing this will also help you determine what goal is right for you with PCOS, which does, unfortunately, complicate the equation a bit.

Good luck.

jlfag05

Thank you both! Super helpful, I appreciate it!