Add additional calories on workout days? How many?

scordob1

About how many additional calories should i eat, as a female, after an hour and a half weight training + cardio? I know that eating at too much of a deficit will in fact work against me as i begin to repair muscle tissue after training. I want to be able to feed my muscles enough and also lose weight throughout this whole process. Im 190 lbs. currently, 5'7.5" female, 29 years old, athletic build--goal is to be 170 lbs.

Any suggestions?

spiriteagle99

It depends on exactly how much exercise you are doing and what kind. An hour of hard running burns a lot more calories than an hour on a stationary bike. Log in your exercise just as you log in your food. MFP will tell you how many additional calories are in your 'budget'. Some people eat half those additional calories. I eat all of them because they are pretty close to correct for me. (I run and walk.) If you start out eating half, and find yourself either really hungry or losing more weight than expected, then eat back more of the calories. If, OTH, you aren't losing as quickly as you expected, then eat fewer of your exercise calories.

estherdragonbat

I log my exercise on MFP and eat back half the calories. Strength training gets logged under cardio so I get a calorie burn for it. My guess is that the calories I burn from walking are probably spot-on and the calories I burn from strength training may be inflated, but eating back 50% overall has me losing about where I want to be.

melissamae05

I agree with eating around half the calories burned. I try to assess how much I need, by what my body is telling me. Typically I am much hungrier after I do a cardio workout, and try to eat a high protein meal, which is usually what I am craving after I workout for a prolonged period of time. It has worked pretty well for me and I continue to lose. It is a bit of guess work since it is hard for me to tell exactly how many calories I burn, as I do not use a heart rate monitor, so I really rely on how I feel, and if I am craving more protein, I know I need to eat more.

NorthCascades

I eat back exactly what my power meter says I put into the bike. 100% of it.

sijomial

The goal should be to eat back ALL your exercise calories.
The common recommendation to reduce the percentage is (mostly) due to how poor/excessive many of the MFP database entries are.

For your weight training just log entire duration (under cardio section) as strength training - it's not a lot of calories.

For cardio you need to be far more precise than saying "cardio"!
Some cardio it's extremely easy to get a reasonable estimate, for some it's very difficult. And that's why blanket recommendations to eat only a certain percentage really don't make sense on an individual level.
You might be "lucky" and be reducing an excessive estimate towards something more reasonable or you could be reducing a reasonable estimate by half.

scordob1

Thanks for your feedback, everyone!

fishgutzy

Nope.