Do you eat back the calories you burn

piggy6989

I am trying to lose around d 60 pounds and have never eaten my back part of what I burn. I am just wondering what everyone else does with regard to eating some of what they burn

malibu927

The way MFP is set up you're supposed to eat them back. But since it's easy to overestimate calories burned, many will only eat back 60-75% of those calories.

elisa123gal

You will get all sorts of advice on this one. I've seen "success" stories where they say don't eat them back you'll get to goal faster. I have seen some others say they eat every bit of them back and lose just fine. Most people say to eat half of them back because mfp overestimates the burns.

In reality . exercise allows you to eat more calories, period. ..this is so great because, in my case, I can eat more than my 1400 calories for the day. It really comes in handy to make up for eating out on the weekends. But overall ..for me.. I pay attention to how I feel. If i feel drained and low energy.. i eat to fuel my body, so i eat some back. If I feel fine, I won't in hopes of losing weight faster, or save the calories for when i go out to offset any overeating.

RoxieDawn

What a person does and what you should do are two different things that you will see here in these threads. Its a good question..

You should be NETTING your calorie goal everyday. However there are many that do not eat back a single exercise calorie. The question people ask is "Why eat them back since I worked so hard to burn them"?

The simple answer is, you do not eat them all back, just some of them. Enough to keep you in as much energy balance as possible and calorie burn numbers you get from devices or calculators are over inflated. MFP's method to lose weight is MFP daily calorie allotment + Exercise Calories = NET Calorie goal and you really get to eat more and lose weight.

Its not counter productive to your weight loss at all, as MFP has taken all the guess work out of how much food/drink calories you should consume a day as well as how to factor the exercise to lose weight and sustain your rate of loss.

JeromeBarry1

I've only eaten back any of it when I've burned a lot more than 30 minutes on a treadmill.

TavistockToad

Yep, exercise calories taste the best!

Machka9

If I only do a little bit of exercise ... like, say, an hour walk ... I might only eat about 50% of those calories back.

If I do a moderate amount of exercise ... like, say, a 3-hour bicycle ride ... I might eat more like 75% of those calories back.

If I do a lot of exercise ... like cycling 100 miles or more in a day ... I will probably eat pretty close to all the calories back.

AnnPT77

I ate pretty much all of them back while losing 60+ pounds (though I was careful about estimating them in the first place). My actual weight loss rate was about as fast as I'd consider healthy (and maybe, briefly, a bit faster - oops!) - it took me around 10-11 months.

If you have a modest weight loss rate (actual rate) and modest amounts of exercise, it's probably OK not to eat any of them back. If you have a really aggressive weight loss rate (2 pounds a week or - yikes! - more) and exercise really hard (several hundred or more calories most days), you could be severely underfueling yourself if you don't eat at least some of them back, unless you're significantly obese . . . and the trouble is that it can take the symptoms of underfueling a while to show up, and a while to recover from.

Or, an excessively aggressive approach can be unsustainable - i.e., increase risk we'll veer off course, which slows or shuts down weight loss.

Orphia

Your MFP calorie limit already is set to have you lose weight.

If you then burn more calories through exercise and don't eat them back you'll be under-eating.

This is what can happen if you don't eat your exercise calories back:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/33817997#Comment_33817997

Faithful_Chosen wrote: »

Losinandmovin wrote: »

Faithful_Chosen wrote: »

Two weeks is not a lot, so be patient and keep at it... But just to be sure: do you weigh everything in grams? Do you eat back all you exercise calories? Weight loss is a simple equation: calories in vs calories out: eat at a deficit and you lose. People tend to underestimate what they eat (especially when weighing in cups and pieces) and overestimate their exercise burns (do not trust MFP or your device. Heart rate monitors for steady-state are the only things even close to accurate). Weigh and log all your food in grams on a digital scale up to your goal as set by MFP and eat back 50 to 75 percent of you exercise calories (75% for HRM) and you will lose. It's science.

What is HRM? WHY would one eat back their exercise calories? Wouldn't that deficit lead to weight loss? What are you reading and basing your advise on? I really want to lose this weight, but some of the advise I'm reading on MFP confuses me. I'm a registered nurse, and fairly intelligent, but some of the acronyms I see on here are foreign. Thank you.

Thanks, everyone, for the answers already I am just going to add that MyFitnessPal calculates your projected loss (so, the amount you have set to lose a week) into the net goal you recieve. It assumes that if you want to eat more, you have to move more to stay in that deficit. Makes sense, right?

Now, especially newbies have a tendency to up the cardio and decrease the food to make a bigger deficit, assuming they will lose faster--and they might! I am not gonna sit here and say that you won't lose more. It's probably not going to show up on the scale due to water weight, but they will lose more. The question is: at what price? And what are they losing?

The MyFitnessPal method (built in deficit based on your numbers, especially plus purposeful exercise) is designed to steadily lose fat and preserving as much muscle as possible. You see, there is a (science proven) limit to how much fat a body can convert into usable energy during any period of time. If you go over that limit, it turns to muscle for fuel instead. You will always get a little bit of muscle tissue loss when eating at a deficit, but if you undereat and up the cardio (or even strength training!) like I see a lot of people on here do, you are forcing your body to canibalize its muscle tissue on top of the max level of fat it can burn. Not to mention that meeting your macro and micro nutrient goals with this method is virtually impossible, creating massive hormone imbalances (leptine, for example) and vitamins and mineral deficits.

The long term effects of crash dieting and deprivation dieting (which is basically what happens when you become one of the people who net in the low hundreds to negatives day after day for an extended period of time) can be really severe. Basically, you are systematically starving yourself, after all. The results tend to be this (one example, hypothetical you):

- your body burns fat, then muscle tissue to sustain itself. You become weaker and sore. You also start having cravings because your brain is sending out warning signs: 'I am starving! Feed me!'. So, you either binge and up your overall net a little, or you persevere and pat yourself on the back for a job well done! You wanted lots of fatty food, but you fed it a celery stick instead. Sadly, your whole timeline congratulates you on your willpower. You start to wonder, though, why your willpower is not being rewarded! The scale doesn't budge! You fail to realize it's because of water weight due to too much exercise and the body's inability to recover due to a lack of nurishment. The solution is often to eat even less and work out even more to get the scale to move.

- the body is further unable to sustain. It changed the body's chemistry to preserve all it can--after all, it needs to protect vital organs from becoming affected and keep you going so you can hunt and gather for food! At this stage, the body becomes its own worst enemy: it no longer tells you you are starving so you can make a last ditch effort to get food. You think you are fine on 1000 calories a day, burning 1200, because your body shows no signs of hunger anymore, but basically, the little neutrients you are providing your body with get sucked towards your vital organs, leaving nothing for the rest. You become more tired, and cranky, and your muscles no longer recover from all the stress you put them through working out. As a result, they break down even faster and hold on to even more water to prevent that breakdown from affecting your ability to throw a spear at a prey animal (hey, I can't help it your body still thinks we are living in caves!). The scale drops oh so slowly--if at all--but meanwhile you do see you are slimming down! Your measurements are less! MyFitnessPal celebrates! 'Hurray! The weight must come off in a 'woosh' soon now! Keep doing what you are doing!'. Note that (thankfully) many people drop out at this stage. The psychological burden becomes too great, they feel *kitten*, and life isn't fun anymore. They stop dieting, start binging, and gain even more weight. The jojo'ing has begun.

- you keep doing what you were doing. We are a few months in now. You develop headaches, fatigue, and you start finding more and more hair on your pillow in the morning. In fact, you start finding hair everywhere. You also get hungry again, not in a way that makes you binge but a sort of steady nagging: a gentle reminder that time is running out. Fail to meet it (MyFitnessPal people pat your back when you tell them you went to bed early instead of having more food) and slowly, your body gives up its protective hold on more systems. You can survive without full function to certain organs, so your body throws them to the wolves: nutrients go towards your brain, heart, and lungs. Pretty much all other organs start running at half capacity. You hold on to more toxins, which start chipping away at your system, and your ability to process food (get nutrients out of them) suffers greatly, so you are truly starving now. This is the point where the weight starts coming off, and pretty quickly, too, usually. A big whoosh! (MyFitnessPal people cheer in the distance). What you are really seeing is your body giving up on protecting muscle tissue completely: the water weight falls away, showing you that you actually did lose a lot of fat and muscle tissue. More cheering! It must be working! Keep at it! Work harder! Eat less!

- now you are in serious *kitten*! Your organs are not keeping up, your muscles are breaking down, and the body has to start looking elsewhere for fuel: your organs and the more vital muscles, including your heart. At this point, your nails will become brittle and start falling out. Your hair falls out. Your period stops. You experience bouts of nausea and muscle weakness. You might find yourself pulling into a run and suddenly blacking out. You still function, but on the inside you are shutting down.

From here on out, it all depends on if you start eating again and stop exercising or not. If you don't, you can end up killing yourself. If you do, it is a long road to recovery, sometimes lasting years and it sometimes includes permanent damage to the function of certain organs, especially the liver and kidneys. Worst of all, this entire crash diet hasn't taught you how to sustain weight loss, so as soon as you crash and burn, the weight flies back on! And trust me, it takes a fraction of the time it took to lose it to gain it back.

I am not saying this to frighten you (well, I am a little), but as a nurse, you should be aware of the ramifications of crash dieting. Those of us that do realize the effects therefor recommend you lose weight slowly, at a sustainable rate that gives you the best ratio of fat loss vs. muscle loss. Stick to your MyFitnessPal calculated net, take the time, eat back your true exercise calories (which is probably 50 to 75 percent of your machine or database given calories), and learn how to eat (and what to eat) for weight loss you can maintain for years to come. It might not go as fast, but you will be able to see it on the scale, and best of all, it will be safe. That is my very long winded answer to 'why' you should eat back exercise calories.

I lost 80 lbs in 12 months and I ate 50-75% of my Fitbit Charge HR exercise calories back when MFP was set to "lose weight".

I've now maintained my goal weight since April and I eat 100% of my Fitbit exercise calories back with MFP set to "maintain weight".