Do you guys eat!?

fatoomalrowaiei

Well hey everyone
I dont mean if you eat -of course we all do
What i meant was when you guys exercise
And burn 300calories
Do you guys eat it back?!
I have to eat 1600calories
Burn 300
Should i eat 1900
For me it seems wrong , what about you ?!

wellsdavid20

Yes I eat back the calories I burn when exercising. 1600 is exactly the same amount of calories I eat a day when I don't exercise for the day. I try to burn 400 calories a day so I can eat 2000 calories.

pascalpp

Theoretically, it's safe to eat them back. However, I eat only from 0% to 50% of the calories I burn when exercising.

Why? Well, mostly because I don't fully trust the estimated amount of calories I burn. Eating back too many would be counter-productive and discouraging. Eating back less than the estimated amount feels way safer. It does not make me feel hungry or lacking anything. Plus it boosts the weight loss a lot.

Machka9

In a situation like that, where I think I'm burning 300 calories, I'd probably only eat half of them back.

JustMissTracy

Yup, I eat half my calories back, to account for margin of error in logging (this using a digital scale and an activity tracker). Has worked well for me, as I don't feel hungry all the time.

hali1

Same here, I started reporting only half of my exercise time on here because I kept reading that the estimated calorie burns were inaccurate. It's been working well for me; it's enough extra calories that I'm not starving even on days I work out more, and I definitely see more response weight-wise since making that change.

cee134

Most people on MFP only eat back 50% - 75% of their exercise calories.
This is mainly for 2 reasons.

1. It's hard to estimate a burn.
2. The amount of calories you burn in a normal day without exercise isn't taken into account when posting exercise calories. Therefore you are somewhat double counting. MFP needs to subtract what you would normaily burn for the time you exercise from what you burn during exercise before you would get a more accurate number. Which is why eating only 75% - 50% seems to work better.

avchavis

I try not to eat the calories I burn.

rsclause

I guess I eat back most but I really am drinking them back to be totally honest.

juliebowman4

I eat back 50% or less.
I'm such a skeptic.....I don't trust that I've actually burned what MFP and Fitbit says.

JeromeBarry1

I eat after exercising so I guess you could say I always eat back my exercise calories. I still get to the end of the day with a net calorie deficit to my NEAT. I try to eat 1600-1700 calories daily. Some rare occasions I've done so much exercise that my net calorie intake gets to 3 digits. On those occasions, I'll deliberately eat more, and have a few snacks available for that purpose. For instance, a peach is less than 100 calories. A slice of DKB with 13 g of peanut butter is less than 200. An 86% cocoa square of chocolate is 60 calories. With a few simple options I can get up to 300 or 400 calories in a hurry.

Tracking my net calories and measuring the error between my expected weight and my actual weight has given me more confidence in trusting the exercise calories I log, but I'm really careful about logging them, too.

cwolfman13

fatoomalrowaiei wrote: »

Well hey everyone
I dont mean if you eat -of course we all do
What i meant was when you guys exercise
And burn 300calories
Do you guys eat it back?!
I have to eat 1600calories
Burn 300
Should i eat 1900
For me it seems wrong , what about you ?!

It depends on where you're accounting for exercise. With MFP, no exercise is included in your activity level...it would seem obvious to me that if you performed an activity which wasn't accounted for that you would therefore need to account for it.

It's basically 3rd grade math. If I maintain my weight without any exercise on 2500 calories per day then I can lose about 1 Lb per week eating 2,000 calories per day. If I burn 350 calories per day in exercise, my maintenance level of calories would increase....because I'm doing more *kitten* than what is included in my activity level...so my maintenance would go from 2500 to 2,850 and thus could lose that same pound per week eating 2,350 calories.

3rd grade math.

sijomial

To me that's a strange mind-set to regard eating the calories that are a legitimate need for your body as "wrong".

Is it only wrong when losing weight?
Or when maintaining?
Or when doing the TDEE method regarding only a proportion of your daily calorie allowance as "wrong"?

Sorry but I just don't get it.

I understand people have concerns about accuracy (which often they don't confer on the other side of the equation even though it's more significant) but wrong?

Also people who think under-estimating is the "safe" option?
Surely risking a slower rate of loss would be the safe option unless there's a medical imperative for rapid weight loss - which is rare.

arditarose

I use TDEE method and don't do cardio, so no I don't eat back exercise calories. My weight lifting falls within my lightly active lifestyle, as well as 10-15k steps daily. Even if I do a lot of walking one weekend I won't eat back exercise calories because some days I'm just really lazy and it evens out.

When I was strictly using the numbers MFP gave me and using the NEAT method, I ate back exercise calories.

cee134

cwolfman13 wrote: »

fatoomalrowaiei wrote: »

Well hey everyone
I dont mean if you eat -of course we all do
What i meant was when you guys exercise
And burn 300calories
Do you guys eat it back?!
I have to eat 1600calories
Burn 300
Should i eat 1900
For me it seems wrong , what about you ?!

It depends on where you're accounting for exercise. With MFP, no exercise is included in your activity level...it would seem obvious to me that if you performed an activity which wasn't accounted for that you would therefore need to account for it.

It's basically 3rd grade math. If I maintain my weight without any exercise on 2500 calories per day then I can lose about 1 Lb per week eating 2,000 calories per day. If I burn 350 calories per day in exercise, my maintenance level of calories would increase....because I'm doing more *kitten* than what is included in my activity level...so my maintenance would go from 2500 to 2,850 and thus could lose that same pound per week eating 2,350 calories.

3rd grade math.

Not true exactly. During the same time as you would exercise, if you did nothing, you burn calories. So, if you exercise you burn X amount of calories, but MFP doesn't subtract the Y calories from if you do nothing during that same period of time, it keeps those calories in the total amount of calories to eat a day. In other words, it double counts those calories. What it should do is X - Y to get a more realistic count after exercise. The difference in not significant but it does add up.

And all this doesn't matter because that's assuming the exercise calorie burn is accurate in the first place, which it probably isn't. The exercise calories on MFP does not take into account your body type, heart rate, or anything else. It just a general estimate, and it's usually over.

CaffeinatedConfectionist

arditarose wrote: »

I use TDEE method and don't do cardio, so no I don't eat back exercise calories. My weight lifting falls within my lightly active lifestyle, as well as 10-15k steps daily. Even if I do a lot of walking one weekend I won't eat back exercise calories because some days I'm just really lazy and it evens out.

When I was strictly using the numbers MFP gave me and using the NEAT method, I ate back exercise calories.

This!

cwolfman13

cee134 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

fatoomalrowaiei wrote: »

Well hey everyone
I dont mean if you eat -of course we all do
What i meant was when you guys exercise
And burn 300calories
Do you guys eat it back?!
I have to eat 1600calories
Burn 300
Should i eat 1900
For me it seems wrong , what about you ?!

It depends on where you're accounting for exercise. With MFP, no exercise is included in your activity level...it would seem obvious to me that if you performed an activity which wasn't accounted for that you would therefore need to account for it.

It's basically 3rd grade math. If I maintain my weight without any exercise on 2500 calories per day then I can lose about 1 Lb per week eating 2,000 calories per day. If I burn 350 calories per day in exercise, my maintenance level of calories would increase....because I'm doing more *kitten* than what is included in my activity level...so my maintenance would go from 2500 to 2,850 and thus could lose that same pound per week eating 2,350 calories.

3rd grade math.

Not true exactly. During the same time as you would exercise, if you did nothing, you burn calories. So, if you exercise you burn X amount of calories, but MFP doesn't subtract the Y calories from if you do nothing during that same period of time, it keeps those calories in the total amount of calories to eat a day. In other words, it double counts those calories. What it should do is X - Y to get a more realistic count after exercise. The difference in not significant but it does add up.

And all this doesn't matter because that's assuming the exercise calorie burn is accurate in the first place, which it probably isn't. The exercise calories on MFP does not take into account your body type, heart rate, or anything else. It just a general estimate, and it's usually over.

I never used MFP's data base for calorie burns and always accounted for my basal calories and only included the estimate of my actual burn...I would think any half way intelligent person would...

IDK...I lost weight pretty easily about four years ago doing this and using this tool as designed...of course, I also used common sense and was pretty good at accurately tracking CI as well as CO...it's really not that hard if you just take a bit of time and use a little sense.

xvolution

For me it usually depends on how much of a calorie deficit beyond my current deficit the exercise provides. If I end up with an extra deficit of over 1000 calories, then I'll eat more until I'm below that deficit.

extra_medium

Using MFP's method, you are supposed to eat them back. Just remember exercise calories are an estimate, especially if you're entering the generic MFP ones. You'll get more accuracy with a heart rate monitor and app that reports to MFP, but even then it's an estimate.

Christine_72

I "try" not to eat back more than 50% of my exercise calories. If i was confident that my fitbit didn't overestimate then i would eat every last one back!

One caveat though, if you are going to eat your exercise calories back just make sure your food logging is as close to perfect as you can get it.