Eating back burned calories?

quartknee11
quartknee11 Posts: 141 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I use a polar watch when I work out. I think it's the A360. Here's a photo. 3hy31bghif57.jpg

I don't use a chest strap or anything just the watch so I know it's not 100% accurate but I was wondering how many of the calories I can eat back and still be safe to not go over?

Thanks

Replies

  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    Chest straps are more accurate than wrist monitors, but that has NOTHING to do with calories. It has to do with responsiveness to changes in your heart rate and with variations in timing between individual beats, which can give clues to how stressed your body is.
  • concrete_daisies
    concrete_daisies Posts: 44 Member
    I would generally aim to eat back most of my calories, because I'm on a fairly large deficit. I personally aim to eat 50 - 100% of exercise calories.

    So I guess it depends on goals, and current calorie deficit. If you're not sure of the accuracy of the watch, maybe aim to eat 50-70% of your exercise cals. That'll give you a safety margin if it turns out that the watch is overestimating your energy expenditure :)
  • quartknee11
    quartknee11 Posts: 141 Member
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    Chest straps are more accurate than wrist monitors, but that has NOTHING to do with calories. It has to do with responsiveness to changes in your heart rate and with variations in timing between individual beats, which can give clues to how stressed your body is.

    So... then eat them all back??
  • BrianKMcFalls
    BrianKMcFalls Posts: 190 Member
    It really depends on your goal. If you're eating at a deficit and have a goal of losing weight, eating back about half is kinda the general rule.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    quartknee11 wrote: »
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    Chest straps are more accurate than wrist monitors, but that has NOTHING to do with calories. It has to do with responsiveness to changes in your heart rate and with variations in timing between individual beats, which can give clues to how stressed your body is.

    So... then eat them all back??

    Sure. But log the exercise you do and the food you eat, and after a month, see whether you're losing weight at the speed the calories predict. If so, continue. If not, adjust accordingly.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    I use an Apple Watch and eat back most of the exercise cals. I aim for 100 or more under but sometimes I'm just hungry. I'm losing weight steadily.
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
    quartknee11 wrote: »
    I don't use a chest strap or anything just the watch so I know it's not 100% accurate but I was wondering how many of the calories I can eat back and still be safe to not go over?

    What's material is what you were doing to get that burn, an HTML of any kind will give you an inaccurate calorie reading, the level of that inaccuracy is based on how you used it.

    If that was a run, then you can be reasonably confident that it's not too bad. If you did a circuit training session it'll be significantly higher than the reality.

    The main thing is to pick a method and stick with it, test and adjust as you see results.

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