I don't feel right eating exercise calories....

GuessIgottalog

I don't feel right eating exercise calories. Makes me feel like a failure and that I'm wasting all of my time logging and eating a certain amount and that I won't lose any weight. Anybody feel this way? I'm I way wrong? What can I do?

thereshegoesagain

Eat half back.

Sheisinlove109

I don't eat any exercise calories back but I am trying to lose. I go to bed most nights with 1,000 calorie deficit after logging all food and exercise.

1234newman

I try not to eat up to the full value of the exercise calories. However I like the promise of more food as a reward for exercising.

Cue->behaviour->reward, which ensures continuation of the healthy for heart and wellbeing exercise behaviour.

So gain and consume those exercise calories they are good for you in other important ways.

malibu927

MFP sets you up to lose weight without exercise. You should eat back at least a portion of your exercise calories to fuel your body and keep your deficit at a safe, consistent rate.

PaulaWallaDingDong

If you're following MyFitnessPal's calorie goal to lose weight, you would lose without exercise. The calorie goal is already doing the work for you. If you're doing lots of exercise and not eating anything extra, you risk undernourishing yourself.

Many times the calorie allowances for exercise are inflated, so eat half of them and see if you lose at the expected rate over a few weeks.

spiriteagle99

If you don't eat enough, you won't have the energy you need to continue to be active. You'll start cheating, more and more often, because you'll be hungry and feel deprived. After a while, you'll give up and start gaining back the weight you lost. You will do better if your way of eating is sustainable over the long term. That means eating enough so you aren't constantly starving.

I am active - a walker and a runner. I eat back all my exercise calories. I lost a pound a week over a three month period. I didn't have that much to lose, but I had no problem losing it, following the MFP model.

jemhh

It sounds like you are exercising in order to lose weight. Try exercising to increase your fitness level and your thought process may change.

MikilouB

If I have exercised a lot, I'm hungrier and so I do eat about half back. If it is just an average day, I might eat back about 10 percent. If I know I have a day coming up where I want some extra space I'll not eat any of them. I tend to look at my calories as over a week than just one day. This lets me have more flexibility.

hasonmd

I eat back about 1/3 of my cardio exercise calories on a daily. I also do strength training, when logged under that you really don't get an extra on MFP, unless you log them as cardio. In my head that's the way I justify eating them back.

SCoil123

I eat mine. I want to fuel my workouts properly to help prevent injury and maintain muscle mass.

JeromeBarry1

Eat food the old fashioned way. Earn it. Eat 'some' of your exercise calories. Realize that values of calories burned in doing exercise are not precisely accurate for you as an individual. It is on you to be accurate, track your progress, and make adjustments.

meldeeonline

This is something I've asked my trainer about a lot. Personally, I'm under the guise that we need a calorie deficit - plain and simple. Eating back the calories reduces that deficit -- and we work out essentially to create one. It truly depends on your caloric goal you eat by, though. It helps to know your BMR -- or your bottom line for calorie intake.

IIFYM and TDEE calculators online can help you find your numbers )

Machka9

If you're only doing a little bit of exercise, you probably don't need to eat any or much back.

But if you're doing quite a bit, it is healthier to eat at least half your exercise calories back. Your body needs fuel.

jennybearlv

I eat back all of my exercise calories. I had zero energy for anything but my workouts not eating back calories. Like I would get maybe 2000 steps a day outside my workouts. Now that I eat back calories I have energy to keep increasing my workouts plus I earn even more calories because I feel like doing extra work around the house or doing things like bird watching on my rest days. Food is fuel. Without it you will just be running on empty.

PaulaWallaDingDong

meldeeonline wrote: »

This is something I've asked my trainer about a lot. Personally, I'm under the guise that we need a calorie deficit - plain and simple. Eating back the calories reduces that deficit -- and we work out essentially to create one. It truly depends on your caloric goal you eat by, though. It helps to know your BMR -- or your bottom line for calorie intake.

IIFYM and TDEE calculators online can help you find your numbers )

Only if you really are creating your deficit with exercise. If you're creating it with diet, you could be doing more harm than good by not eating a little more for exercise, but that depends on how much exercise we're talking.

oneluckiegirl

Unless you are expending greater than 500 cal on you workouts, I wouldn't count them. Conversely, if you are training for anything beyond a 10k, a sprint triathlon or a 35 mile bike event, then I would make sure that your nutrition covers those extra calories with whole foods.

ninerbuff

If your net calories end up being too low, you'll end up causing your metabolic rate to crawl. And then the stagnant weight loss epic begins. There have been lots of threads on them...................losing 10lbs-20lbs or more in less than a month then NOTHING for the next 3 months. Not an uncommon story.
You CAN'T outsmart your body. What you FEEL isn't something your body cares about. It just knows how to acclimate if you don't provide enough for it to function properly.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

CattOfTheGarage

I don't feel right stopping at one serving, but that's the way it's got to be.

Listen, if you find exercise calories to be stressful, don't eat them, but in that case you can't use myfitnesspal's default goals as they are too low. Go and find an online TDEE calculator and type in your stats and get a calorie goal that already takes account of your exercise, then eat up to that.

If you use mfp's default calorie goal, then refuse to eat back any exercise, you are using the system wrong and you are undereating. Undereating is bad for you and likely to derail your weight loss long term. This goes for you too, @sunsweet77 - you're doing it wrong.

TimothyFish

You're looking at it wrong. Your goal should be a calorie deficit to lose weight or a net zero for maintenance. Both what you eat and what you burn go into that calculation. Exercise can sometimes make that deficit larger as can eating less. But once you know what your deficit goal is, you then use eating and exercise to keep it the same size each day.

JaydedMiss

I struggle with this to, I walk ALOT so i try to eat atleast a few hundred extra on long walk/work days (1200 goes to say 1500-1600) It claims i burn like 1000 but i am fine eating my 1500 and calling it a day. Sometimes i drink on weekends so probably all averages out. If consistently not eating calories atleast save them for days you want them and eat extra guilt free. I tend to get hungrier days i dont walk :P

LiminalAscendance

Most can't even figure out how to log their food correctly; taking into account exercise calories just adds another layer of potential confusion.

I use MFP to track intake, not as a source of dietary philosophy. I didn't "eat back" my exercise calories, and I lost my weight just fine (even more quickly, in fact).

Francl27

Most people shouldn't because they underestimate their food intake anyway. Just do what works for you.

CattOfTheGarage

LiminalAscendance wrote: »

I didn't "eat back" my exercise calories, and I lost my weight just fine (even more quickly, in fact).

That's the whole problem, though. For health and sustainability, faster is not better.

tinkerbellang83

LiminalAscendance wrote: »

Most can't even figure out how to log their food correctly; taking into account exercise calories just adds another layer of potential confusion.

I use MFP to track intake, not as a source of dietary philosophy. I didn't "eat back" my exercise calories, and I lost my weight just fine (even more quickly, in fact).

Not sure why it's confusing, it increases your goal to keep you at the weight loss rate you set. You lost it quicker because you were in a larger deficit than it expected you to be.

Many new MFP users choose the most agressive weight loss rate which normally puts them at 1200-1300 per day, by not eating their exercise calories they would be undernourishing themselves, which can cause short term and long term health problems. That is not a better way to lose weight.

WinoGelato

MFP is designed to provide you a deficit without exercise built in such that you would lose weight even with no exercise at all. Exercising, and eating none of them back, is not using the system as designed.

ShareeEmma

sunsweet77 wrote: »

I don't eat any exercise calories back but I am trying to lose. I go to bed most nights with 1,000 calorie deficit after logging all food and exercise.

Do you not feel.... starving?

ShareeEmma

We're all different and we all have different ways of what we THINK works for us...
I'll admit I'll have good days, and then BAD DAYS I think taking a personal trainers advice would be best, do you go to a gym? Maybe ask one there? I know that for me loosing weight quickly had it's cons! I now log my smart watch calories burned from the step counter and TRY to eat all of them back.

tinkerbellang83

ShareeEmma wrote: »

We're all different and we all have different ways of what we THINK works for us...
I'll admit I'll have good days, and then BAD DAYS I think taking a personal trainers advice would be best, do you go to a gym? Maybe ask one there? I know that for me loosing weight quickly had it's cons! I now log my smart watch calories burned from the step counter and TRY to eat all of them back.

Given some of the terrible advice I've seen received from Personal Trainers across these forums (that's not to say that all PTs are terrible btw), I don't think I'd ever advocate asking some random PT at the gym, any man and his dog can pick up a PT qualification online. That doesn't necessarily mean they will understand how the MFP system is set up to work as different programs work in different ways.

Whilst we all have different ways and means of seeing what works for us, MFP is set up based on the science of CI/CO and the best way I've heard it explained is this

ladyreva78 wrote: »

The number MFP gives you already includes your deficit to lose weight. So if you do exercise, then you get extra calories.

For example, a conversation between me and MFP:

Me: Hi MFP, I'm sedentary and want to lose 1lbs per week. Here are my stats!
MFP: Great! You need to eat 1500 cals per day to lose those 1lbs per week.
Me: Hi MFP. Guess what! I exercised today? Isn't that just amazing????
MFP: Great! eat more cause I didn't plan that into that number I gave you!

The general advice is to eat back a part (50-75%) of those calories until you know how accurate they are for you. If you lose faster than planned, eat more. If you lose slower than planned, eat less.

Maxematics

ShareeEmma wrote: »

sunsweet77 wrote: »

I don't eat any exercise calories back but I am trying to lose. I go to bed most nights with 1,000 calorie deficit after logging all food and exercise.

Do you not feel.... starving?

Probably not if they have a lot of body fat. When I was overweight, I was able to eat a portion of my Fitbit calories back and feel fine. Now that I'm pretty lean, I need to eat my Fitbit calories back and then some. I always know when I didn't eat enough because I have crappy sleep.

For people with a lot of body fat, they can only sustain the "I don't eat any exercise calories" badge of honor for so long. They'll soon see that they need food for fuel as they grow leaner. The exceptions are overstated MFP calories and poor logging.

KickassAmazon76

sunsweet77 wrote: »

I don't eat any exercise calories back but I am trying to lose. I go to bed most nights with 1,000 calorie deficit after logging all food and exercise.

Have you also got mfp set to have you lose x pounds by a certain date? If so, then what you are doing is very likely dangerous to your overall health and you'll end up paying for it in ways you do not want to.

The trick isn't to get thin as fast as possible. That's neither healthy, nor sustainable. The goal should be to learn how to adjust your lifestyle, so that as the pounds drop, you are also developing healthy habits.

It take time to lose the mental fat that goes along with physical fat. If you lose weight too quickly, your mind will be left behind as well.

TL/DR... If you've set mfp to a deficit, then YES eat them back. If you're not sure the burn is accurate, then leave a couple hundred on the table and monitor your progress.