Should I eat the extra calories I receive for my exercise

rstetler10

Hi All,

I have a fitbit linked to MFP and would love advice if it is recommended to eat or not eat the additional calories that are calculated in our daily calorie based on exercise.

HeidiCooksSupper

Should you eat the extra calories? If you wish and if it is part of your calculations. Basically, diet's effect of weight is based on calories-in/calories-out where calories-in is what you eat and calories-out is how many your body uses by you doing what you do. The amount of activity you undertake affects how many calories your body burns. If you exercise, you burn more calories than you would spending the equivalent amount of time watching TV.

To lose weight, you must use more calories than you consume, more calories-out than calories-in, whether you do that by exercising more or eating fewer calories is up to you.

SueInAz

MFP is set up so that you can lose weight without exercise. Not everyone can exercise, after all. Your daily calorie goal already has the deficit needed to lose weight at the rate you specified (.5 to 2 pounds per week) built into it. When you exercise, you earn extra calories to eat because eating them maintains the deficit needed to meet your goal.

If you're not eating enough while losing weight, and are therefore losing weight more quickly than 1% of your bodyweight per week, you run the risk of losing more lean muscle mass than you normally would. Loss of muscle mass is the reason our metabolism slows down as we age, so you'd be accelerating that process which is something you want to avoid.

All of that said, you don't necessarily need to eat all of the extra calories. Just be sure that your net calories (calories eaten - calories burned in exercise) is greater than 1200 calories per day. You might also consider adding strength training to your exercise regimen to help with muscle retention.

11Templars

I myself don't eat anymore than 1/2 of my earned calories. Whether it's a "fitbit" or some random cardio machine at the gym or what have you, the reported amount of calories you burn whilst doing anything type of movement can be a bit of a crap shoot at best. There are so many variable factors that it's difficult to get an accurate read on what you are truly burning.

There's some great advice from the above posters already, but I like to take a "slow and steady" wins the race type of approach to all of this.


Good Luck!

Christine_72

I eat back no more than 50% of my exercise calories (fitbit), some people can eat more, others less. There's really no point of having your fitbit synced with mfp if you're not going to eat any calories it gives you back.

Chunkmunker

SueInAz wrote: »

MFP is set up so that you can lose weight without exercise. Not everyone can exercise, after all. Your daily calorie goal already has the deficit needed to lose weight at the rate you specified (.5 to 2 pounds per week) built into it. When you exercise, you earn extra calories to eat because eating them maintains the deficit needed to meet your goal.

If you're not eating enough while losing weight, and are therefore losing weight more quickly than 1% of your bodyweight per week, you run the risk of losing more lean muscle mass than you normally would. Loss of muscle mass is the reason our metabolism slows down as we age, so you'd be accelerating that process which is something you want to avoid.

All of that said, you don't necessarily need to eat all of the extra calories. Just be sure that your net calories (calories eaten - calories burned in exercise) is greater than 1200 calories per day. You might also consider adding strength training to your exercise regimen to help with muscle retention.

What a great, concise and inciteful answer, SueInAz. Thanks for sharing.

cwolfman13

It is the way this tool is designed...

That said, whether you should or not really depends on a few things...for one, accuracy of logging...people notoriously underestimate how much they are eating and do not log accurately...people use erroneous entries in the database...they eyeball servings, they neglect to log certain things like cooking oils, etc.

Secondly, it would depend on how comfortable you were with the accuracy of your calorie burn estimates. Through trial and error I got mine down pretty much for the things I was doing so I had zero issue basically eating back 100% of my burn...well, more like 90% I'd say...I always kept a little buffer.

Third, you should look at what kind of exercise you're doing...personally, I never concerned myself too much with light exercise activity and eating back those calories...I was more concerned with vigorous training and long endurance bouts that break down the body...calories (energy) is then necessary to help recover and rebuild that which has been broken down. There's no way I would dream of hitting the streets for 50 + miles on my bike and not properly fueling that activity...but that's quite a bit different than a 60 minute walk around the block with my dog.

snickerscharlie

I eat back 50% of the extra calories my fitbit gives me.

The rest I leave in order to compensate for any inaccuracies in either my food logging or exercise.

rstetler10

Thank you all for taking the time to respond and giving me advice. I too thought the most sensible thing to do is to eat back 50% of my calories earned from exercise movement due to the fact that the fitbit logs my normal everyday movement, as well as, my actual workouts (more vigorous walking, bike riding) etc. I will see how that works for me and adjust accordingly.

roamingtiger

Is it an hr fitbit? Fitbit calories are way off in my experience anyway.

ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken

I see this question daily and I rarely ever comment. I will say for myself any time I ever ate the exercise calories I lost NO WEIGHT AT ALL. I would either gain or maintain. So I don't log any of my activity. Only food.

kgirlhart

SueInAz wrote: »

MFP is set up so that you can lose weight without exercise. Not everyone can exercise, after all. Your daily calorie goal already has the deficit needed to lose weight at the rate you specified (.5 to 2 pounds per week) built into it. When you exercise, you earn extra calories to eat because eating them maintains the deficit needed to meet your goal.

If you're not eating enough while losing weight, and are therefore losing weight more quickly than 1% of your bodyweight per week, you run the risk of losing more lean muscle mass than you normally would. Loss of muscle mass is the reason our metabolism slows down as we age, so you'd be accelerating that process which is something you want to avoid.

All of that said, you don't necessarily need to eat all of the extra calories. Just be sure that your net calories (calories eaten - calories burned in exercise) is greater than 1200 calories per day. You might also consider adding strength training to your exercise regimen to help with muscle retention.

This. I will also add that I lost my weight eating back at least 75% - 90% of my fitbit adjustment and I am maintaining now. Start with 50% and reevaluate after a few weeks. Some people find fitbits very accurate and some don't.

KANGOOJUMPS

I don't but lots do