Help! Question

ctucker399

If your daily intake is say, 1500 calories and you eat all 1500, but you excercised and burned 750 of those calories, does your body react as if you have only eaten 750 calories and lose weight accordingly or does your body know you've eaten 1500 calories and loses weight accordingly? Somedays more than others I am a hungry hog and want more food , I have heard both ways that yes you lose weight according to the number of calories calculated after workout and I've also heard that no you lose according to that 1500 calories no matter how much you work out. ( especially after a certain age) .

alid8333

The way MFP is set up is your suppose to eat back the calories you burn. But is also suggested you only eat back 50 to 75% of them to leave room for error.

Ready2Rock206

If you got the 1500 from MFP then eat at least a portion of your exercise calories back. If you did a TDEE calculator and got a calorie goal then it would include exercise and you would not eat them back. People who say not to eat them either a) do not understand how MFP works (NEAT method) or b) use the TDEE method.

dazaliah

Eat back your calories from exercise! You need to make sure your body has enough nutrients to fuel it which is figured into MFP. It also depends on your calorie restriction from what I understand. I eat back all my calories but I'm also on a 1200 calorie plan...I would probably eat my arm off if I didn't eat back those calories I also use exercise as a way to give myself extra calories to play with if I know I'm going out, etc.

Trish1c

Your body knows how many calories you took in & how many you expended in any given day. As long as the calories you take in are less than the calories you take in, you will lose weight. You need a certain amount of calories to simply exist -- to pump your heart, to breath, to think etc

kenyonhaff

You'll get two sets of advice here:
* Eat back those calories! By doing so, you assure you're not going to starve yourself after a heavy workout, and makes it easier to make those macros. Plus, that's how to earn splurges easily.
* Don't do it! Calorie counting on MFP, exercise machines, and the like are not 100% accurate. Very often they over-estimate how many calories are burned. There are all kinds of issues leading to inaccuracy. Also, by eating back .5-.75 of the calories is just that many more calories burned by not eating it all back.

Personally, after a workout day I like to leave about 200 calories at the end of the day in case I'm really starving at 9 pm and need something to eat. It actually doesn't happen all that often anymore since I figure out the whole protein help satiate hunger thing. But if I eat back my calories--especially if I'm going out to eat or something--I don't sweat it.

CafeRacer808

Ready2Rock206 wrote: »

If you got the 1500 from MFP then eat at least a portion of your exercise calories back. If you did a TDEE calculator and got a calorie goal then it would include exercise and you would not eat them back. People who say not to eat them either a) do not understand how MFP works (NEAT method) or b) use the TDEE method.

Pretty much this. Also, this video by @SideSteel is probably the best explanation of MFP/exercise calories I've ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67USKg3w_E4

mitch16

The way MFP calculates your intake intends for you to eat your exercise calories back. However, if the "750 calories" you're theoretically burning during your workout are coming from either a piece of gym equipment (even if you enter your age or weight) or from the MFP database, I would highly suggest NOT eating all of them back as those both overestimate, sometimes by a fair margin.

TimothyFish

ctucker399 wrote: »

If your daily intake is say, 1500 calories and you eat all 1500, but you excercised and burned 750 of those calories, does your body react as if you have only eaten 750 calories and lose weight accordingly or does your body know you've eaten 1500 calories and loses weight accordingly? Somedays more than others I am a hungry hog and want more food , I have heard both ways that yes you lose weight according to the number of calories calculated after workout and I've also heard that no you lose according to that 1500 calories no matter how much you work out. ( especially after a certain age) .

In that situation your body reacts like it would if you ate 1500 calories and you burned 750 calories with exercise. Presumably, your maintenance level is 2,000 calories, so this is deficit of 1,250 calories. So, it is sort of like if you only ate 750 calories and yet it isn't. If you had only eaten 750 calories and didn't exercise then your body would still need 2,000 calories. It would try to pull from fat, but fat doesn't have all of the nutrients you need, so it would begin to draw those from other places throughout your body. By eating 1500 calories and exercising, you are providing nutrients in addition to energy. Your body can pull the nutrients it needs from the food you consumed and then it is easier for it to pull the rest of the energy requirements from fat.