Do you eat the calories you earn from exercise?

Sassyallday

Hi. Hope everyone is having a great summer day.

In my effort to increase my success, I am considering not entering my exercise in my diary. I have found that, once I start eating the calories earned from exercising, I am tempted to overindulge.

My exercise, at this time, consists of calisthenic sessions of about 20 minutes daily and a daily walk of 20 - 30 minutes. I also spend about 30 minutes each week doing a combination of lap swimming and water aerobics. Other than that, I am sedentary.

Has anyone tried not eating the calories earned from exercise? Did you notice any benefit or detriment.

Thanks for any thoughts.

ryry_

For similar reasons you have listed, I will eat a set calorie level everyday, and not eat back excercise calories. I will still log what I do but I enter 1 for calories burned.

This way I am eating the same amount everyday. Then you adjust up or down based on results. Both methods are valid, it just depends on which one works best for you.

RllyGudTweetr

Eat back your calories if you're using MFP's method. Eat a static amount regardless of exercise if using a TDEE method derived from another site, like Scooby's Workshop.

This topic comes up a lot. You might find it worth your while to search the site's history.

refinedredbird

If you calculate your TDEE you can include your exercise calories and then eat a deficit of that number by 10-15% and not eat your exercise calories back If you are eating at 1200 calories which is the minimum you should be eating per day, you must eat at least some of the exercise calories back because that would be too extreme of a deficit.

Zaniejane

When I was losing weight I used to eat back half my calories burned only sometimes. I think Mfp overestimates my calorie burn.
Now that I am maintaining I have more wiggle room and often will eat back my cardio calories.

Sassyallday

Thanks so much for the advice and information! I will feel more confident going forward with calorie calculations based on my individual activity profile.

cwolfman13

When you set your activity level with MFP, it EXCLUDES exercise. So you log exercise separately and are supposed to eat those calories back. With other calculators, they include an estimate for exercise in your activity level already, so you don't eat them back.

Where people have issues is that they overestimate burn. Data base numbers are highly inaccurate due to so many variable and people tend to overestimate intensity. They'll put, for example, a 90 minute bike ride at high intensity and the database will spit out something ridiculous like 1500 calories. Sorry...the only way you're burning 1500 calories in 90 minutes on your bike is if you are pedaling non-stop at like 30 MPH...and if you can do that, you should most definitely be in the Tour de France.

When you're using the MFP method you just have to be conservative in your estimation of calories. I good bar to keep in mind is that it is very, very, very difficult to burn more than 10 calories per minute as this is pretty much max effort...you can't hold a conversation...you can't read or watch tv...you're literally giving pretty much everything you have. So if you're really working it, you could take how many ever minutes and multiply by 10. If you were, for example just going for a moderately paced walk you could estimate roughly 7 calories per minute.