Do you eat back your calories after strength training?

Nightmare_Queen88

Do you eat back your calories after strength training?

I'm just now getting into strength training. I'll be starting this Wednesday and I need to know if I should eat back the calories I lose. I'm wanting to preserve muscle while losing fat. I don't want to gain too much muscle (which I know I won't) in the process. I currently eat 1500 calories a day. I do cardio as well, 3x a week, which I'll be limiting to twice a week once I start lifting.

capaul42

I always have, if I was hungry that is. My workouts tend to be late night so if I'm really hungry, I'll have a small snack.

But calorie burns from strength training are not large at all. I burn maybe 100-150 a session.

KrazyKrissyy

I rarely do. The main reason is that exercise wipes out my appetite for a long period of time, for some reason lol. I'll sometimes force a protein shake down after the workout but will make sure its accounted for my regular daily calories and just use it as a snack or meal replacement.

arditarose

When I was doing cardio while lifting what I would do was eat ALL the cardio calories burned, knowing it was probably a high estimate. And that's it. Now that I don't do cardio I do not eat strength training calories back. That activity fits right into my "lightly active" lifestyle with an average of 10-12k steps per day and heavy lifting 4x per week.

Nightmare_Queen88

So it won't cause me to lose more than a pound a week by not eating back those calories?

carleeeyyy_6

I'm not sure if you should or should not. Depends on how large your deficit is. I don't eat those calories back, I don't even track the calories I burn in MFP

nossmf

I eat back the calories burned lifting in the form of a protein shake to up my protein intake on days I lift. For me the calories burned by 45 minutes of lifting just about exactly equals the calories gained from one ready-made shake. Days I don't lift I eat less protein, keep everything else more or less the same.