Eating exercise calories.

heybales

belleflop wrote: »

Ok so eating the exercise calories back would stabilize to the "safe" deficit of 500cal a day specifically for weight loss, not maintenance or gains. So your TDEE essentially changes daily based on what you did that day. That seems exhausting. In the long term is counting calories burned and eating them back to hit that 500 cal deficit a sustainable practice for most, either in weight loss mode or maintenance mode? Also where in the heck is this 1200cal minimum a day thing coming from? 1200 seems awfully low for anyone performing exercise on the regular. Is 1200 calories sustainable for a prolonged time frame? Also fasting is a thing, a lot of people do it, is consuming zero calories a day harmful? The science is still out for prolonged fasting techniques (not eating for 7 plus days) but for short term fasting (ADF,20/4,16/8, etc) there has been shown to be huge benefits both to HGH and a plethora of other health benefits for weight loss.

Yes to why eat back to reasonable deficit level.

Yes, your TDEE literally does change daily.
Hence the reason even on MFP you'll find people using the average weekly TDEE method other sites use. And they don't log their exercise - they already accounted for it.

1200 is considered minimal safe level for average sedentary woman eating average food to get in all nutrition needed.
Sadly it seems most want to be average and sedentary because that's all they eat, and want minimal results.
Yes, I'm sure they have workouts that are way worse then they could have - but they'll never know with nothing to compare to.

Yep, the IF stuff has some great things behind it - and still eating appropriate amount of calories when done.

tomteboda

-115 lbs, appx. 3 years apart.

First 2 years, I didn't weigh food, I set myself as sedentary and logged EVERY activity, eating back 50% of the approximated calories. I think the errors cancelled each other out. I lost 60 lbs the first year and 35 lbs the second.

Third year I lost only 20 lbs. You can see I'm getting muscle definition at this point. It's evident in pretty much every photograph I've got now, but I chose this shot because its one of the few full-body ones I have where I'm not wearing long clothes. I've managed to preserve muscle I think (I now have a real, bona-fide booty for the first time in my life). I'm pretty sure this would not have happened if I hadn't taken care to actually eat enough and limit my rate of loss while making my workouts progressively more challenging.

Eating back the calories from exercise is part of the program. Caveat lector; you need to be careful and not get carried away in either direction, eating back way too much or avoiding eating them back at all!

estherdragonbat

estherdragonbat wrote: »

MFP calculates your deficit without exercise. When you exercise you increase that deficit, possibly to dangerous levels. It takes energy to fuel your workouts.

You WANT a 500 calorie deficit to lose 1lb per week 1,000 is really the highest you should go (assuming you're 75lbs or more overweight) unless you've significantly more than 75 to lose. I'm sure someone will chime in with the exact numbers.

Exercise is for health and fitness. Calorie deficit is for weight.

And just my n=1: to lose 1lb/week I'm on 1380 calories, meaning I probably maintain on around 900. If I walk for three hours at 3mph, MFP tells me I burned just under 800 calories. If I don't eat some of those back, I'm pretty darned hungry.

Danged typo. I meant 1900

yirara

Kind of. I'm more of a banking person. I tend to do my runs in the evening, and my long runs end short before going to bed. I'm not eating more then, but I have more calories over the coming days.

scarlett_k

Ive established that mine are accurate enough so yes. Always. All of them.

Holly_981

It really is very simple.
1. Work out your calorie deficit to lose weight. (e.g 1200) Low I know, but a popular number on these forums..
2. Work out how many calories you're burning, preferably using a heart rate monitor to get a more accurate idea. (e.g 600)
* Eat 1800
* 1800 - 600 = 1200 (still at deficit)

Or you burn 400 calories then you would eat 1600
* 1600 - 400 = 1200 (deficit)
As long as you're always back at 1200, you're still at your deficit.

For a long time, I had my app set to 1200 calories and wouldn't eat my exercise calories. I plateaud for ages and never had any energy. I worked out that some days I would only be functioning on 700 calories or less which is just not sustainable long term.