To eat back calories or not? Or is it something else?

Sillygirl50703

My doctor has me on a weight loss plan. I'm 4' 11" so let me get that out of the way when I say my doctor wants me on 1200 calories a day. I started off weighing 191 January 1st, 2016.
I have been having decent success. Last month I had lost 11 pounds alone and a little over 3 inches with spotty exercise here and there. Mostly it was my diet that has been contributing to my weight loss success.
This month, I decided to ramp up the exercise. Lots of walking, bodyweight exercises, calisthenics mostly. But the scale has barely moved this month. Maybe 3-4 pounds. But I have lost 9 inches off my body.
I do log everything on my fitness pal. I measure every condiment. Every TSP of margarine I might put on my toast. I have a food scale. So I do believe my portions and calorie are very close to accurate.
I log all of my exercise, and if anything I think the calories they give you are a little generous for working out so I don't always give myself full credit for those.
But I do have to ask this: my fitness pal adds back those calories from exercise as though you are allowed to eat more since you burned more. I guess I have allowed myself to eat some of those calories back but now I wonder if that was a mistake and the reason why I'm not seeing much weight loss this month?
I'm not doing much in the way of strength training so I don't really think I can blame anything on "bulking up."
Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks.

janejellyroll

3-4 pounds in a month is actually a good rate of loss, especially when you are also losing inches.

Some people find that when they log exercise, the number of calories MFP grants is an over-estimate. This may also be the case for you. What percentage of the calories are you eating back?

barbara3213

Congratulations on your success so far. You're doing great. I have been eating exercise calories back too and I think it's sabotaging my progress. I'm going to cut back on how much eating "leeway" exercise gives me and see what that does.

cavia

3-4lbs in a month is approximately 1lb/week. That is a normal rate of weight loss.

ryry_

OP 3-4 lbs is a good rate of weight loss, not to mention when you begin exercising your body can increase fluid retention due to the increased activity.

colingibb

I will not eat them all back, however I will allow myself to consume a little more if I'm still hungry. For instance, I burned 675 cals this morning before breakfast, and by the time I finished lunch, I was still quite hungry, so I had another good size snack. This will probably put me over my 1250 for the day, but I'l still be well below 1250 NET including exercise.

You are seeing a good loss, and although not "bulking up" you will gain some muscle when you are working out ( you are sore after a tough cardio workout right?), so you will lose some inches without losing lbs necessarily.

Just remember, the more muscle you have, the higher your BMR, so you will burn more calories just existing :-)

Hang in there, and keep moving in the right direction!!

sijomial

I ate all my exercise calories and hit my weight loss goal.
You are estimating yours differently to me but still getting good results (a good rate of weight loss).
So carry on - if it ain't broke don't fix it.

TeaBea

colingibb wrote: »

I will not eat them all back, however I will allow myself to consume a little more if I'm still hungry. For instance, I burned 675 cals this morning before breakfast, and by the time I finished lunch, I was still quite hungry, so I had another good size snack. This will probably put me over my 1250 for the day, but I'l still be well below 1250 NET including exercise.

You are seeing a good loss, and although not "bulking up" you will gain some muscle when you are working out ( you are sore after a tough cardio workout right?), so you will lose some inches without losing lbs necessarily.

Just remember, the more muscle you have, the higher your BMR, so you will burn more calories just existing :-)

Hang in there, and keep moving in the right direction!!

I have to disagree. For one OP is a woman and we really don't have the hormones for "bulking up" and two OP is eating at a deficit. It's hard enough just to maintain lean muscle while losing weight, adding lean muscle mass is very unlikely for most.

BTW - 1200 is a minimum for WOMEN (OP is 4'11")....so this is appropriate for her, but 1250 for a man is very low.

Sillygirl50703

Well, I weigh in with my doctor on Tuesday and he will want to see at least 5-6 pounds dropped on the scale I guess is why I'm nervous. I haven't met that goal this month and I might be in for a lecture and I just dont know what I'm doing wrong. Some days I have eaten back all of my exercise calories if I was hungry. Other days I don't eat any of them back. Perhaps it is fluid retention. I did a zillion squats this week and yes my butt and legs are sore lol.

stealthq

If you're sore, you are definitely retaining some water for muscle repair.

If your doctor does not realize that weight loss is not linear (i.e. you can't guarantee to hit a certain loss every week or every month even with the correct calorie deficit), then I would not take his lectures to heart. You've lost 14-15 lbs in 2 months. That's an average of 7-ish lbs per mo or nearly 2 lbs per wk. That's great and actually just at the typical 'healthy rate of weight loss': no more than 1% of body weight per wk.

If I were you, I'd keep doing what your doing and look at next month's progress. By then, you shouldn't be retaining so much water and you can see if your loss has slowed enough that you really do need to eat less of those exercise calories back or not.

SezxyStef

If you exercise eat some of them back...to fuel your next workout.

Esp if you are hungry.

I eat mine back and it has never hindered my weight loss.

cathipa

Sillygirl50703 wrote: »

My doctor has me on a weight loss plan. I'm 4' 11" so let me get that out of the way when I say my doctor wants me on 1200 calories a day. I started off weighing 191 January 1st, 2016.
I have been having decent success. Last month I had lost 11 pounds alone and a little over 3 inches with spotty exercise here and there. Mostly it was my diet that has been contributing to my weight loss success.
This month, I decided to ramp up the exercise. Lots of walking, bodyweight exercises, calisthenics mostly. But the scale has barely moved this month. Maybe 3-4 pounds. But I have lost 9 inches off my body.
I do log everything on my fitness pal. I measure every condiment. Every TSP of margarine I might put on my toast. I have a food scale. So I do believe my portions and calorie are very close to accurate.
I log all of my exercise, and if anything I think the calories they give you are a little generous for working out so I don't always give myself full credit for those.
But I do have to ask this: my fitness pal adds back those calories from exercise as though you are allowed to eat more since you burned more. I guess I have allowed myself to eat some of those calories back but now I wonder if that was a mistake and the reason why I'm not seeing much weight loss this month?
I'm not doing much in the way of strength training so I don't really think I can blame anything on "bulking up."
Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks.

You just started this journey so it takes time. Weight loss isn't linear. There will be weeks you lose more/gain some. Make sure you are logging correctly. Don't use spoons/cups/eyeballing/guessing. Use a food scale.

And as far as "bulking up", don't worry about it. Women do not produce enough testosterone to cause this naturally. I highly recommend resistance training if you really want to see the inches come off. Cardio is great for the heart, but building lean muscle is so much better for body composition.

richardgavel

Sillygirl50703 wrote: »

My doctor has me on a weight loss plan. I'm 4' 11" so let me get that out of the way when I say my doctor wants me on 1200 calories a day. I started off weighing 191 January 1st, 2016.
I have been having decent success. Last month I had lost 11 pounds alone and a little over 3 inches with spotty exercise here and there. Mostly it was my diet that has been contributing to my weight loss success.
This month, I decided to ramp up the exercise. Lots of walking, bodyweight exercises, calisthenics mostly. But the scale has barely moved this month. Maybe 3-4 pounds. But I have lost 9 inches off my body.
I do log everything on my fitness pal. I measure every condiment. Every TSP of margarine I might put on my toast. I have a food scale. So I do believe my portions and calorie are very close to accurate.
I log all of my exercise, and if anything I think the calories they give you are a little generous for working out so I don't always give myself full credit for those.
But I do have to ask this: my fitness pal adds back those calories from exercise as though you are allowed to eat more since you burned more. I guess I have allowed myself to eat some of those calories back but now I wonder if that was a mistake and the reason why I'm not seeing much weight loss this month?
I'm not doing much in the way of strength training so I don't really think I can blame anything on "bulking up."
Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks.

Keep in mind that all of this is based upon the goal that you entered into MFP, whether it's .5 lbs/week or 2 or something in between. So if you do not eat back your exercise, you will exceed the weight loss goal you set. That assumes the exercise burns are accurate, which they aren't. Hence people recommending cutting the MFP burns in half.

One caveat is the 1200 cals/day. Is that closer to maintenance calories or 1 lb or 2 lbs? What does MFP say the calorie count you need is for maintenance?

Sillygirl50703

Let's see, it's got me at losing 2 lbs/week and being lightly active for a 1200 calorie goal.

Sillygirl50703

It puts me at 1650 calories for maintenance

AnnPT77

+1 to those who say you may be holding on to a little water weight because of a greatly increased exercise regimem. If you've lost inches, you've lost fat (temporarily hidden behind the water weight gain), and it will show up on the scale soon. (It's too soon for you to have lost inches by gaining muscle.)

I estimated my exercise carefully while losing weight (using my heart rate monitor, checking multiple web sites including some specialized for particular exercise types that let me include more details in the estimates, like precise actual speed/distance for bike rides or walks). Then I ate all those calories back, almost all of the time. I lost at a good rate, SW 183 in April 2015, reached 125 at end of December 2015.

RGv2

It's probably water weight, there's no way you're putting on appreciable muscle mass aiming for a 2lb per week loss and little resistance work (no matter what some people say).

Let's look at it like this, you enter in all of your stats and MFP spits out a goal for you assuming you do no exercise. Let's use a hypothetical person who has a maintenance of 2000 cals and wants to lose 1lb per week.

2000 maint - 500 cal deficit = 1500 cals to lose that 1lb per week.

Let's say that person adds in a run that burns 300 cals. Now their maintenance isn't 2000 anymore, it's 2300.

2000 main + 300 exercise = 2300 new maint.

2300 new maint - 500 cal deficit = 1800 cals to lose the same 1lb per week.

Now remember, calories are an estimate (especially exercise cals if you're using MFP) so that's why most people advise to start out at eating back 50% and adjust from there.

It puts me at 1650 calories for maintenance

That's part of your problem right there. If 1650 is your maintenance, you're not going to lose 2lbs per week. MFP bottoms out at 1200. 1650 - 1200 equals a 450 calorie per day deficit, or just under a pound per week (which is what you're losing).

If 1650 is your maintenance, you'd need a 1000 calorie per day deficit or only eating 650 calories per day. That just isn't realistic.

Ohjeezitskim

When I go on my intense walk (1 hour burning 650-750) of mostly all up hills, I have so many extra that I cannot eat them all back and wonder if it effects me at all. I use a Polar FT4 so I imagine the calories I'm losing are accurate to a certain error margin. I'll usually eat a whole grain bread with 1 tbsp of PB and a banana (the bread is 160 calories, PB is 95 calories, banana is about 80-100 depending on grams.) and that's all I'll have extra. I'm on day 39, 12.4lbs lost so I'm still hanging in there. Though this Friday, I start my new job that will have me pretty active so, hoping to figure out a new system too.
Your weight-loss sounds fine. A lot of people say after the first 10 or so pounds are off, the next ten is harder, and so on

benevempress

RGv2 wrote: »

It puts me at 1650 calories for maintenance

That's part of your problem right there. If 1650 is your maintenance, you're not going to lose 2lbs per week. MFP bottoms out at 1200. 1650 - 1200 equals a 450 calorie per day deficit, or just under a pound per week (which is what you're losing).

If 1650 is your maintenance, you'd need a 1000 calorie per day deficit or only eating 650 calories per day. That just isn't realistic.

If your doctor has a problem with your rate of loss, you need to point out this math to him. You said the doctor wants you to eat 1200 calories per day and the only way you can do that and still get that 1,000 calorie per day deficit is to actually burn 2200 or more each day (not just estimated calories, but real ones, and how could you know exactly?). And in this scenario you cannot eat back any exercise calories.

I'd have a terribly hard time doing 600+ calories worth of exercise daily while eating that little. I hope that isn't what your doctor is asking you to do.

This is a long journey, and hopefully a lifestyle change. Talk to your doctor at your appointment next week, describe all of the healthy changes you are making, and clarify what he expects you to do if the goal is to achieve the 5-6 pounds per month loss you describe. Hopefully you two can come to an understanding about a workable plan for you instead of him lecturing you as you fear.

Sillygirl50703

Thank you, I will. It was pretty easy until I started getting a little more aggressive with the darn exercise and mucked it up! I lost 6 lbs and 4 lbs in Jan and Feb with no exercise. Lost 11 last month with just starting to add some into it and now here we areare with back to 4 lbs and decent exercise.
I'll ask him what he wants from me. He did say weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise, so he will probably tell me to focus more on making sure I'm eating the right things, not just counting numbers. And I will admit I do probably eat way too many grain type things even if I am keeping my calories in check. He said before exercise is good just because it's "good for you." I doubt he will shed much light on that side of things but it would be nice if he could help balance the whole calorie deficit thing for me, doggone it.

brb_2013

The issue with eating back exercise calories is that they're often over estimated. So if my fitbit gives me 700 calories at the end of the day, I typically do not eat any of them back because they're not from an actual exercise but rather from being set to sedentary and maybe I hit 10k steps through the course of my day.

You could eat some, but it's best to eat like 50% at first just in case the number is inflated.

Azdak

The other potential problem with "eating back" calories is that extra time working out is often offset by decreasing your other casual activity. Sometimes it's due to fatigue from the workout, other times the time it takes working out. But I have found that for many people, TDEE doesn't change that much when they increase exercise because they are decreasing their other activity.

benevempress

How did your weigh-in and meeting with your doctor go?