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

Aaron_K123

elisa123gal wrote: »

I'll pile on another opinion …. If you eat all of them back.. you are still at a deficit if you stick to what MFP suggested as your calorie goal However, you'd lose even faster if you didn't eat them back. But, you could use some of them to incase your daily calories by a few hundred so you enjoy your life more.
With me, I use 100 to 200 calories from exercise to eat before and after my gym visit to fuel my workouts. But I wold never.. unless at maintenance… eat them all back ..why?

Here is how I view it. I use MFP to set my goal. My goal is a deficit that I wish to obtain. I then eat to try to get as close to that goal as I can...because it is my GOAL. If I exercise its for a seperate goal, to improve my fitness. When I am more active I need to eat more to make up for those expended calories so that I can continue to hit my calorie deficit GOAL.

If your goal is to eat less than your GOAL...then your GOAL isn't actually your goal and you should just lower your GOAL so its what you actually want to be doing. Otherwise what are you doing really?

I see people happy that they managed to eat less than their GOAL almost every day and I just scratch my head about that. I mean...doesn't that mean its not your goal then? If its your goal shouldn't you be annoyed that you aren't hitting it regularly? Do you even have a goal or is your goal just to eat as little as you possible can...because that doesn't strike me as healthy.

My GOAL is to net 1680 calories a day. Often that means I am eating about 2400 calories a day. If I end up eating 2000 and I net 1200 as a result I view that as a problem and so the next day I overeat (say 2800 calories) to compensate for that. I don't view missing my GOAL as being success somehow. If I did I wouldn't have that as my GOAL in the first place.

If you are going to set a GOAL then try to hit it. If all you are trying to do is eat as little as you can or establish as large of a deficit as you can why even bother having a specific GOAL in the first place?

NorthCascades

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Well they can say it, it just amounts to their opinion. If someone claims it to be objective truth then yeah they are wrong...but I think people are leaping to the conclusion that if someone states their opinion they are somehow claiming it as an objective fact. I don't think I really did that personally, I just said how I viewed it. Thats okay, just because something is subjective doesn't mean it isn't worth saying or sharing as a point of view.

Once again NorthCascades I think this is the sort of thing that if we were sitting over a beer on we would probably agree on every point. Just a slightly different approach or viewpoint is all and some of that is lost in translation from it being a post in text on a webpage rather than a conversation.

I like you, and I'm here chatting in the same spirit as I would be over a beer. I tend to assume other people are, too. We're talking about stuff that interests us.

BrunetteRunner87

I don't have a regular exercise volume, some days I do a lot and some days I do a bit and some days hardly any at all. But I prefer the TDEE method because when I was spending my time calculating how much I could eat based on how much I moved in a day, exercise did become about losing weight, and food became a reward for exercise. I don't like being in that mindset because I want to exercise because I enjoy it and not because I feel like I have to to eat what I like. So it's just whatever works for you mentally.

kshama2001

NorthCascades wrote: »

wally2wiki wrote: »

I don't think you should eat back calories. If you do then what's the purpose of your workout? Also, you can easily overestimate the amount of calories you need to eat back.

(1) It got you out of the house.

(2) The sun was shining.

(3) It improved your cardiovascular fitness.

(4) It was a race.

(5) You just bought a new thing (jacket, bike wheels, running shoes) and needed to see how it performs.

(6) To be social. Perhaps you went hiking with friends or on a group bike ride.

(7) It was on your schedule.

(8) It allowed you to eat more than you otherwise would have been able to, and still lose weight at the rate you signed up for.

(9) You had to get somewhere and didn't want to deal with traffic and parking.

(10) Etc.

Also, you can easily underestimate the number of calories you burned and should eat back.

11. To decompress from a 150 minute conference call and take advantage of 2. the sun was shining

NorthCascades

You're right! And I totally missed the mental health benefits.

Exercise is the best cure for depression, too. Eating the calories you burned doesn't change that.

Sometimes I do hill repeats on my bike to get over a very stressful day at work or an especially bad commute. After doing some high intensity cardio, I'm floating on a cloud of endorphines and nothing can bother me.

lemurcat12

janejellyroll wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

I'll pile on another opinion …. If you eat all of them back.. you are still at a deficit if you stick to what MFP suggested as your calorie goal However, you'd lose even faster if you didn't eat them back. But, you could use some of them to incase your daily calories by a few hundred so you enjoy your life more.
With me, I use 100 to 200 calories from exercise to eat before and after my gym visit to fuel my workouts. But I wold never.. unless at maintenance… eat them all back ..why?

For many of us, we choose the deficit we wish to be at and we don't (for reasons of hunger, energy, fitness goals, or muscle retention) want to make the deficit bigger. That's why I eat all mine back when I'm in a deficit. Losing "faster" isn't necessarily my goal.

This.

But there are other options. For example, what I did for a while was set up MFP to be maintenance and then not eat exercise calories back (I had a pretty consistent training plan at the time, and would have said I was exercising to meet my training goals and for fitness). What I would not do is set up MFP for an aggressive deficit that assumed I was completely sedentary and then exercise hard without adding back in those calories. That's a good way to rob yourself of the benefits of training and undermine your training goals.

lemurcat12

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

I'll pile on another opinion …. If you eat all of them back.. you are still at a deficit if you stick to what MFP suggested as your calorie goal However, you'd lose even faster if you didn't eat them back. But, you could use some of them to incase your daily calories by a few hundred so you enjoy your life more.
With me, I use 100 to 200 calories from exercise to eat before and after my gym visit to fuel my workouts. But I wold never.. unless at maintenance… eat them all back ..why?

Here is how I view it. I use MFP to set my goal. My goal is a deficit that I wish to obtain. I then eat to try to get as close to that goal as I can...because it is my GOAL. If I exercise its for a seperate goal, to improve my fitness. When I am more active I need to eat more to make up for those expended calories so that I can continue to hit my calorie deficit GOAL.

If your goal is to eat less than your GOAL...then your GOAL isn't actually your goal and you should just lower your GOAL so its what you actually want to be doing. Otherwise what are you doing really?

I see people happy that they managed to eat less than their GOAL almost every day and I just scratch my head about that. I mean...doesn't that mean its not your goal then? If its your goal shouldn't you be annoyed that you aren't hitting it regularly? Do you even have a goal or is your goal just to eat as little as you possible can...because that doesn't strike me as healthy.

My GOAL is to net 1680 calories a day. Often that means I am eating about 2400 calories a day. If I end up eating 2000 and I net 1200 as a result I view that as a problem and so the next day I overeat (say 2800 calories) to compensate for that. I don't view missing my GOAL as being success somehow. If I did I wouldn't have that as my GOAL in the first place.

If you are going to set a GOAL then try to hit it. If all you are trying to do is eat as little as you can or establish as large of a deficit as you can why even bother having a specific GOAL in the first place?

Good explanation.

SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish

Its all preference really, some like to work with MFP default method and enter your exercise and eat what it tells you each day, some like to average calories burned per week and put this into an "activity level" and have food be a "stable" level daily over a week. Some get better results from one than the other or just prefer one, its not necessary to go either way, just make certain you pick one way at a time and only one way and continue with that one!

"Exercise is not for losing weight" is only a way of thinking about it to "keep someone on the right track". If you think of exercise as a way to get healthy it helps some continue exercising and quit focusing on intensity or playing a "if I eat this I have to run a mile" game which tends to not work out well (not many actually do run the mile afterwards). Exercise is just one piece of the calculation, and you can increase exercise without changing food to lose weight, its just harder to do the more intensely or demanding the workout, so I wouldn't recommend it.

I have used both ways to lose weight, and easiest to maintain is with light exercise just walking and light weights and not changing my diet and not eating back calories. But it doesnt work well with large exercise deficits that I tend to get with my exercise pattern. If I do pure MFP method, I find food intake spikes make it more "normal" to eat a larger meal and harder to keep calories in check, but part of this is because my spikes are so big: I can easily burn a few thousand calories with a hike for example, and if I were to suddenly add a 2k cal meal or meals, it has a lasting effect on what I want for meals the next day or so. As soon as I add heavy lifting in or long demanding aerobic exercise, my hunger shoots up and I want to eat like crazy, and I cant maintain the MFP method, so I do a hybrid: I try approximate MFP method but under eat on the mass calorie burn day and the next day I slightly over eat to level things out. I am not regular enough with my large burn days to just average it in, so this is a way to "manually" average it in. It would be nice to be able to do the MFP method of logging everything and eating what it says, but it doesn't always work out that way in the real world for me. But if you are confused just following MFP is probably the easiest way to get to your goals.

cwolfman13

elisa123gal wrote: »

I'll pile on another opinion …. If you eat all of them back.. you are still at a deficit if you stick to what MFP suggested as your calorie goal However, you'd lose even faster if you didn't eat them back. But, you could use some of them to incase your daily calories by a few hundred so you enjoy your life more.
With me, I use 100 to 200 calories from exercise to eat before and after my gym visit to fuel my workouts. But I wold never.. unless at maintenance…eat them all back ..why?

Losing faster isn't always the best thing...losing weight and getting to a healthy weight is only one small part of being healthy...it's not the be all and end all, though it often seems that way here. Also, some of us can have pretty substantial calorie burns...I'm an endurance road cyclist...I can go out on a Saturday or Sunday and torch a couple thousand calories...if I was only eating 2000 calories and then burning 2000 calories with exercise I'd be on my *kitten* and wouldn't have any energy available for just existing and doing my daily...

As to why eat them all back...well, if you've taken an accurate measure then why not? When I was losing (4 years ago) I selected a rate of loss I was comfortable with that would allow me to not be miserable but more importantly allow me to perform and recover from my fitness endeavors...thus I didn't need to make the deficit bigger...if I wanted to make it bigger I would have selected bigger. Basically, to some people being healthy and fit and properly fueling the body and performance and recovery is just as important as losing weight...it's pretty easy to balance both objectives unless you're just in the "fast weightloss" mentality.

Psychgrrl

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

FelonE1 wrote: »

Pointless eating back calories if you're trying to lose weight

What if you are trying to lose weight while also pushing yourself to higher levels of fitness? You want to maintain a small deficit so you still have adequate fuel for pushing yourself hard during your workouts rather than just feeling exhausted by them.

It really is a delicate balance when you're a small-ish female and don't have a lot of wiggle room. My choice was to lose more slowly at the end than to compromise my overall energy or workouts. Worked for me.

Psychgrrl

NorthCascades wrote: »

wally2wiki wrote: »

I don't think you should eat back calories. If you do then what's the purpose of your workout? Also, you can easily overestimate the amount of calories you need to eat back.

(1) It got you out of the house.

(2) The sun was shining.

(3) It improved your cardiovascular fitness.

(4) It was a race.

(5) You just bought a new thing (jacket, bike wheels, running shoes) and needed to see how it performs.

(6) To be social. Perhaps you went hiking with friends or on a group bike ride.

(7) It was on your schedule.

(8) It allowed you to eat more than you otherwise would have been able to, and still lose weight at the rate you signed up for.

(9) You had to get somewhere and didn't want to deal with traffic and parking.

(10) Etc.

Also, you can easily underestimate the number of calories you burned and should eat back.

It was just FUN!