To eat your excercise calories or not! That is the question!

AKAmplished_Pearl

I want to maximize my weight loss. Should I eat back my excercise calories or stick to my set calories? What are the pros and cons? Do you eat your calories back?

inertiastrength

I eat some, not all to account for overestimation of burns.

nowine4me

Some. That is the answer.

janejellyroll

If your goal comes from MFP, it's based on the assumption you will eat your calories back. I do because I like maintaining my lean body mass, I don't like being hungry, and I like hitting my fitness goals.

AKAmplished_Pearl

crazyravr wrote: »

Hungry = eat.
Not hungry = dont eat.

Thank you.

JetJaguar

The way MFP is designed, your calorie deficit is already built in to your base calories for the day. You should then be eating back all of your exercise calories. However, calorie burn estimates, either from the MFP database or exercise machines, tend to be rather generous, so the usual recommendation is to eat back half your exercise calories and look at the trend after a few weeks, then adjust as necessary. Eating too little has a number of negative consequences: hair loss, brittle nails, fatigue, headaches, muscle loss, reduced bone density, and so on.

Personally, my workouts are all tracked by GPS and are therefore probably closer to the truth than MFP estimates would be, so I eat back nearly all of my calories. I lose too quickly if I only eat half.

DamieBird

If you go by the MFP recommendation and have your settings at "sedentary", you should absolutely eat back a portion of your exercise calories. Many people find that MFP, as well as other exercise estimates to be inflated, so they eat back 50-75% instead of all of them. Your goal should be to 'net' the recommended number that MFP sets for you, so if you're recommended to eat 1600 calories, but you burn 300 in exercise, you should eat at least some of those burned calories back in order to finish the day at close to 1600.

Losing weight very fast is not the same thins as losing fat. In order to lose fat, a reasonable deficit (which WILL seem to take more time) is a better solution. The body can only burn so much fat per day; after that any loss that you see will likely be muscle (after water weight). If you keep too steep of a deficit, you will lose muscle all over your body to include critical organs like your heart. If you keep it up for too long, you can do serious damage.

Another thing to consider is that when people attempt a too aggressive deficit, the tendency is that they burn out before reaching their goal and end up either stopping fat loss, or gaining fat back. In six months or a year, they end up back where they started and it takes that much longer to reach the ultimate goal. IMO, it's a better strategy to stick with a reasonable and realistic deficit from the start. You'll be happier during the process and end up more successful, probably in less time.

Remember - it's not about maximizing weight loss. Your goal should be to maximize FAT loss, and for that you have to take a slower approach.

Old_Cat_Lady

A lot of people say they eat 1/2 of the exercise calories. I don't eat any.

kshama2001

MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others, however, are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

My FitBit One is far less generous with calories than the MFP database and I comfortably eat 100% of the calories I earn from it back.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1

gothchiq

Half. I don't trust that the numbers are exact.

NorthCascades

Of course I eat them. This isn't some kind of punishment. And I understand math.

soccerjerseyguy

I use Strava for my activities, and after 3 mos of close monitoring I have figured out that for me it calculates "double" the ACTUAL calories burned. So FOR ME, in order to be accurate, I eat back "half" of the calories it says I expended during the exercise. Before I figured this out, I was gaining weight on exercise days, before I figured out what was going on.

Chef_Barbell

NorthCascades wrote: »

Of course I eat them. This isn't some kind of punishment. And I understand math.

This. Exercise calories are yummy.

SafioraLinnea

It depends what your goals are and how you set MFP to reflect those goals.

I eat my exercise calories. MFP is set to maintain for me and I'm using breastfeeding to create my deficit. Exercise calories would make my deficit too large and have an impact on my milk supply. So I eat every scrumptious morsel of my exercise calories.

Once I'm not breastfeeding anymore, I intend to continue eating at maintenance and use exercise to create my deficit. That way at worst I maintain my weight and at best continue to lose. Yes it's potentially not as efficient, but I like this as my push to continue being active.

I have lost 57 pounds utilizing this technique. I like it and it works for me.

laurenebargar

I eat 25% to 50% depending on what activity I do that day. Some nights I go walking for 1 to 2 hours, I'll eat back 25% but its a leisurely pace, if Im hiking for several hours and exhausted afterwards Ill eat more of the exercise calories back, strangely though, Im less hungry on the days I do vigorous exercise

Luna3386

I do. Use mfp as it's designed.

estherdragonbat

It depends a bit on how much you have to lose and how much exercise we're talking about. When I started MFP eight months ago, I stood 5'3" (still do), weighed 254 lbs, and was extremely sedentary. Partly enforced by a medical condition where the doctors wanted me spending a lot of time off my feet, but I hadn't been active before that. Being medically ordered not to walk was great reverse psychology, because once the vascular surgeon cleared me to walk, I was rarin' to go. But I started small, shooting for a daily 25-minute walk that burned less than 200 calories. And no. I didn't eat them back. I was on 1710 calories to lose 1lb/week. I wasn't sure I trusted the exercise burns. And I wasn't hungry.

...But then I stepped things up. The walks got longer. I dusted off my fitness glider. I started strength training. And the exercise calories shot up from about 170 to 600, 700, 800... and as the weight dropped, MFP reassessed my calories and dropped them. So now? I started feeling hungry if I stuck to my base calories.

Presently, I'm down 65.2 lbs and regularly burn between 600 and 800 calories according to MFP/the calorie gauge on my glider. I find that eating back half of them has me losing about 1.5 lbs per week. I have MFP set to 1 lb, but I'm 58.8 pounds away from goal, so 1.5 is still a safe target. If I didn't, I doubt I'd have the energy to fuel my workouts, which feel somewhat intense for an unathletic, klutz with mild motor- and hand-eye coordination issues who hasn't done anything strenuous in years.

paulwatts747

I'm wondering if MFP's exercise allowances include basic metabolic rate for the time involved, which would mean the latter is counted twice. The allowances certainly seem too high.