Set calories to maintenance and don't log exercise

mhetzel1983

I'm just curious if anyone else has tried this? I have a fitbit to track my daily exercise/steps/heart rate. For a while I was syncing it to myfitnesspal while setting MF at a -250 or -500 deficit and letting it add calories as a I was more active. I'm assuming it would also work to not sync the two and eat at a maintenance level and keep hitting weekly exercise goals. It would still create a deficit since there would be days I'm much more active than others.

shadow2soul

Technically that wouldn't be eating at maintenance, since you would still be losing weight

However to answer your question, yes it would work to an extent. The thing is that it is much harder to create a deficit with exercise alone, so your loss would likely be slower.

Have you considered the TDEE method? It's similar to what your talking about doing. Though you would use a calculator like the one found on IIFYM or Heybales spreadsheet (will link in a min), that would take your stats, exercise and approximate daily activity to come up with an average burn then take a % off of that to eat at everyday. So you do eat the exercise calories, but instead of eating them all on the days you workout they are spread out evenly across the week.

mhetzel1983

Thanks for the link! I checked it out and actually when I added in all the exercise I do and walking for my job and taking out my dog, it said I could eat more than MF says is maintenance and still cut 15% :-)

courtneyfabulous

Theoretically that should work.
Try it and see!
If it doesn't work after a couple months then implement a bit of a calorie deficit in your diet as well.

MoveitlikeManda

my clories are set to what my maintaince woill be at goal weight.
I do log my exercise to keep track of what im doing where im at but dont usually eat those calories back and if I do dip in to then it usually only by a few (probably by less than 50 every so often)

I do have days off logging now and then too like if im out for a night (meal and drinking)

but im down 20lbs since the end of june which im happy with so while its working im sticking with it but i do think the closer i get to goal (nowhere near yet) i will have to lower calories again