Exercise calories?

joannabanana1978

Do you eat back the calories burned during your workout? Why / why not?
I debate it with myself & im looking to see what other people do . Thank!

TeaBea

MFP as designed gave you a calorie deficit BEFORE exercise. Even people who can't/won't exercise still lose weight.

When MFP gives you additional "earned" calories, that ideally gets you back to the deficit you signed up for. It's a general recommendation to eat back 50-75% of those calories because calorie burn estimates tend to be generous.

WHY would you want to eat back exercise calories? Large deficits make it harder for your body to support existing lean muscle. If you want a number on the scale, lose fast. If you want fat loss, lose at a moderate pace.

BrianSharpe

Yes (or at least a portion of them) - working out requires fuel.

There are a couple of different approaches you can use. One is t set your activity level at sedentary, accurately log your food & record your workouts (be aware that MFP grossly exaggerates the caloric expenditure for many activities) - in this case it's appropriate to eat back your exercise calories as a modest deficit has already been calculated.

Another approach is to estimate your overall activity level and estimate your TDEE - in this instance one would not eat back exercise calories as they're already included in TDEE

Check out this website to estimate TDEE (interestingly when I set my activity level to sedentary it gave me virtually the same number as MFP does)

https://supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/

joannabanana1978

Thanks!