Eating back exercise calories- will the exercise burn still count?

jax_006

Say you do a cardio workout and burn 500 calories in an hour (according to your heart rate monitor you wear around your chest). If you eat back said 500 calories burned, do you still get that deficit in your daily/weekly calories out? Or do you waste it by eating those calories back as long as you are not eating over the 500 cals burned?

I use a polar heart rate monitor to determine my burn, not MFP recommendation (probably not 100% accurate but it's better than using a generic calculator on the internet). Sorry if this sounds like a dumb/silly question, just a bit confused on the whole concept of eating some or all the cals back from workouts.

I am 5'3 135 lbs and still looking to lose some weight through exercise since its much more difficult for me to cut back on my daily food calories as I get closer to my goal weight.

Will eating back my exercise calories hinder my weight loss efforts when I am still 15-10 lbs away from my goal? Looking to lose 1/lb a week still. I will probably cut to .5/week when I get below the 10 or 7 lb mark.

Any insight is much appreciated.

Thank you all

Aaron_K123

Well -500 from the exercise +500 from the calories eaten would be zero so assuming measurments are accurate there would be no deficit. I wouldn't call it "wasted" though, exercise is to improve your fitness and strength.

"eating back" your exercise calories will decrease your deficit because it is additional intake. But if you exercise on top of an existing calorie deficit you risk making that deficit too large for health and too large to support the exercise for improved fitness so you SHOULD eat those calories back.

MommyMeggo

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MommyMeggo

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cwolfman13

If you're using MFP as designed, your exercise isn't accounted for in your activity level...so you get your target based on you doing no exercise. I would make sense that you should account for that activity somewhere when you do it...with MFP you account for it after the fact.

It's pretty ez math...if MFP gives me a calorie target of 1900 calories per day to lose 1 Lb per week (with no exercise) then it is estimating my non exercise maintenance calories to be 2400....if I exercise and burn 500 calories I could then eat 2,400 calories and still lose that same 1 Lb per week because my maintenance number would have also moved from 2,400 calories to 2,900 calories and 2,900 - 2,400 = 500 calorie deficit still.

You have to get out of the mindset that exercise is for burning calories...expending more energy is a bi-product of your exercise and fitness but not the purpose...when you start to understand fitness for the sake of fitness then you understand that your fitness needs to be fueled...underfeeding your fitness will limit your fitness gains and inhibit recovery.

MommyMeggo

What in the world? Sorry for the multiple posts. Weird.

mysteps2beauty

maybe a little off topic...It seems to me that adding a resistance program will benefit you more than cardio, you get to eat more cause the muscles are using more calories, and you look more fit and toned.....

Aaron_K123

Exercise is for fitness and requires fuel, calorie deficits are for weightloss and require eating less than you expend. Exercise isn't for weightloss and if you make it for weightloss then you are marrying two things that are trying to go in opposite directions (increased fuel for increased activity and decreased fuel for inspiring your body to tap into its reserves). You can exercise while you are losing weight, but you should plan your deficit for the weight loss and then do your exercise on top of that while eating back the exercise calories so as to not affect your deficit.

Fiftyls2looz

what????

exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever

queenliz99

Fiftyls2looz wrote: »

what????

exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever

I've tried it, doesn't work. Started calorie counting, got into a deficit and finally lost weight.

TeaBea

Fiftyls2looz wrote: »

what????

exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever

Exercise is for health & fitness.

Have you ever heard the statistic 90% diet - 10% exercise? Exercise can contribute (somewhat) to weight loss. But calories burns aren't what most people expect.

Let's say I eat a Snickers bar - 250 calories. This takes me no time whatsoever to eat. However, I have to do at least 30 minutes of cardio to burn that off.

cwolfman13

Fiftyls2looz wrote: »

what????

exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever

I've been maintaining for over 3.5 years...I train like crazy...I'm not losing weight, nor am I trying to...exercise is for fitness and has a nice added bi-product of increasing your energy expenditure...but no...exercise isn't for weight loss...if it was then nobody who was just fit and lean and healthy wouldn't exercise...because they wouldn't be trying to lose weight.

bfanny

this thing doesn't work!

bfanny

Anyways OP just to be safe try to eat half of your burned cals and see how it works...

jax_006

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Exercise is for fitness and requires fuel, calorie deficits are for weightloss and require eating less than you expend. Exercise isn't for weightloss and if you make it for weightloss then you are marrying two things that are trying to go in opposite directions (increased fuel for increased activity and decreased fuel for inspiring your body to tap into its reserves). You can exercise while you are losing weight, but you should plan your deficit for the weight loss and then do your exercise on top of that while eating back the exercise calories so as to not affect your deficit.

Thank you for the insight. This helps me understand the concepts better

Aaron_K123

jax_006 wrote: »

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Exercise is for fitness and requires fuel, calorie deficits are for weightloss and require eating less than you expend. Exercise isn't for weightloss and if you make it for weightloss then you are marrying two things that are trying to go in opposite directions (increased fuel for increased activity and decreased fuel for inspiring your body to tap into its reserves). You can exercise while you are losing weight, but you should plan your deficit for the weight loss and then do your exercise on top of that while eating back the exercise calories so as to not affect your deficit.

Thank you for the insight. This helps me understand the concepts better

The trick is that quite often estimates for how much you burn while exercising are inflated. IE that eliptical might claim you burned 600 calories when in fact you burned more like 300. As a result a lot of people try to hedge their bets and just eat like 50-60% of the calories they think they burned from exercise back. That might make sense. Really only time will tell...if you eat all your exercise calories back and cease to lose any weight after that then you might want to eat fewer of them back.

What you want to avoid though is just not eating any of them back. The reason is that it will disuade you from exercising more or harder to actually progress your fitness. The harder you exercise the more food you'll need and if you don't eat that back the more and more tired you will feel and the harder it will be to exercise and therefore you won't push as hard and you won't improve your fitness. Fuel the exercise, monitor your deficit.

Aaron_K123

Fiftyls2looz wrote: »

what????

exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever

Well...happy to introduce you to that then. I guess prior to that you thought that the only reason anyone would possibly want to go for a run or lift weights was to lose weight?

sijomial

bfanny wrote: »

Anyways OP just to be safe try to eat half of your burned cals and see how it works...

@bfanny

Why half precisely?
Why is it "safe" to cut an estimate in half?

kshama2001

With only 10-15 pounds to lose, you should drop to a weight loss goal of 0.5 pounds per week now.

sijomial

jax_006 wrote: »

Will eating back my exercise calories hinder my weight loss efforts when I am still 15-10 lbs away from my goal? Looking to lose 1/lb a week still. I will probably cut to .5/week when I get below the 10 or 7 lb mark.

Does eating back my exercise calories hinder me from maintaining my weight for three years?

The trend of your recent weight loss tells you if you have your calorie balance about right or not.

Aaron_K123

sijomial wrote: »

bfanny wrote: »

Anyways OP just to be safe try to eat half of your burned cals and see how it works...

@bfanny

Why half precisely?
Why is it "safe" to cut an estimate in half?

I mean I imagine you know the answer to this right. The reasoning is that a lot of the exercise burn estimates are inflated and so rather than trust them and eat back exactly what they say you eat back half to avoid erasing part of your deficit. You err on the side of having a slightly larger deficit than you intended rather than a smaller deficit than you intended. Given that a lot of calorie burn estimates do seem to be a bit inflated I can see the logic there. That said the best thing to do would be to learn from consistant exercise and logging what exactly you are burning in your exercise personally and eat that amount back. That just takes a lot of time and in the meantime might want to eat back most but not all your estimated burn. Makes sense to me to be honest but willing to hear out why thats a bad approach.

That said, personally, in most situations I eat them all back. I tend not to though if they are excessively high. Like a day where my TDEE is 6000 I don't eat 5500 calories to maintain my 500 calorie deficit, I eat more like 4000 calories because for one, hard to believe that TDEE estimate, and two hard to eat 5500 calories. But a day where my TDEE is 3000 because I burned like an estimated 500 calories frome exercise then yeah I eat that all back.