What is the purpose of eating back your exercise calories

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  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    soon2beeskinny wrote: »
    I'm not understanding the purpose of eating back your exercise calories. It defeats the purpose of exercising if you are using it to burn more calories. If you eat them back you don't burn more calories. Your're in the same place you were before you started. Am I missing something here?

    Yes, you are missing something. MFP is designed to give you a constant calorie deficit. By exercising you get to eat more and still lose weight. Exercise also does more for your health than weight loss.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    Nony_Mouse wrote: »
    Ericnutrition wrote: »
    cmriverside wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    Ericnutrition wrote: »
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Ericnutrition wrote: »
    FYI - Those calorie counters on exercise machines are notoriously inaccurate on the high side, for obvious reasons.

    Yes, which is why you will see virtually everyone in these threads stress the importance of estimating exercise calories accurately and using their real life results to make adjustments.

    All of this.

    Everyone has explained many of these points before, about how to best utilize the MFP approach to accurately tracking and logging calories in and calories out to achieve their individual goals. Time and again, eric has suggested that things are so difficult and daunting that new users will be turned off and ultimately unsuccessful, and ignoring the fact that so many of us have achieved our goals using this very tool and find it to be completely manageable and helpful.

    I am convinced that eric is soon going to reveal his own site or method for weight loss that he believes is far superior to MFP. That's the only end game I can envision here that makes sense - why someone would continue to ignore the comments of people successfully using this site and trying to downplay the positive results that so many have had.

    How many people do you personally know that have tracked and log calories for the long term? If it were so easy, we would all be thin.

    There are actually quite a few such people on this site...

    I'm about to go into my eleventh year logging food on this site. Not every day for that whole eleven years, but I'd say at least half of that, and for the past two years I've logged everything.

    Based on everything you've learned about appropriate eating through calorie counting, wouldn't it be a lot easier not to log, weigh yourself everyday, and start logging again if you gain a pound or two?

    Chances are you will rarely gain weight because you know what to eat and not eat.

    Not logging does not mean going to Burger King and ordering a triple cheeseburger with a large fries and a large Coke. It means eating what you've been eating.

    Logging just isn't the huge burden that you seem to find it for a lot of people. Srsly, not difficult.

    Example:

    Breakfast - place bowl on scale, turn on, add yoghurt, tare, add LSA, tare, add fruit (varies depending on season). Then go to MFP diary (usually whilst eating, or straight after), click 'add food' under breakfast, tick boxes for yoghurt, LSA, and whatever fruit (along with the coffee and milk I've already had), adjust weight for fruit if necessary (yoghurt and LSA are precisely weighed to the same amount every day), click 'add checked'. Done.

    Same with lunch and dinner. Everything is there in my recent/frequent foods list, I just have to tick the boxes and adjust weights if necessary. And I keep those weights in my head usually between preparing my food and logging it (unless it's something with heaps of ingredients), cos it's good for my brain.

    As Jane said, it's a lot easier to maintain your weight than to have to lose 2 lb of fat again. If I'm logging, I know that any fluctuations on the scale are just natural and I don't need to worry about them.

    This is such a good point. Because I'm logging, I don't have to worry when I see the scale jump up from water retention or whatever. I can be confident that it's not actual weight gain.

    In the 2+ years I've been maintaining through logging, I can honestly say I've thought about my weight less than I have at any previous point in my adult life. It's completely removed the drama for me around my weight and my food choices. Eating is just a thing I do for pleasure, energy, and nutrition now, all the baggage has been stripped away (I'm not saying it has this result for everyone, but it's the result it's had for me).
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
    Oh, that is such a good point.

    I remember the first time I hit a stall. Three weeks.

    You know what? I was not stressed at all.

    You know why? I knew my logging was on point and it had served me well and I trusted the math.

    I came on the forums and learned all about the "stall and whoosh" pattern of weight loss and sat tight. That's eventually what happened.

    Every road bump I've hit over the last year has happened when I've had days I haven't logged and then wondered what was water weight, what was actual weight.
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