Eating back calories?

Momofboys77

Ok so to lose weight my calorie goal is 1,280 but I go to the gym everyday and burn about 900 to 1,000 calories. Can I eat SOME of those calories back or are you not suppose to do that for weight loss?

janejellyroll

If your calorie goal comes from MFP, it's designed for you to eat back the calories you burn via exercise. That said, 900 to 1,000 is pretty high for a daily gym burn. What are you doing to burn that many calories? I'd be worried about potentially over-estimating at that point.

Momofboys77

I hour running on treadmill on highest incline and 30 minutes on arc trainer

NorthCascades

Your supposed to eat back 100% of the calories you actually burned.

That works because a calorie deficit is already built into your goal. Think about it, people can lose weight without exercise, that's the same thing as exercising and eating more. It's also like driving your car more and putting more gas in it as a result.

But the danger is that many estimates of how many calories you burned see, ahem, "vanity sized."

jjpptt2

Yes, you can. And if you're eating 1280 cals, then not only can you, but you probably should.

PAV8888

Sounds like you're trying for more than 2lbs a week since your cardio increases your deficit.

Moderate your deficit to 25% of TDEE while obese and to no more than 20% when not.

Much more sustainable. Less side effects. Happier weight loss. Might be able to hatch a sustainable lifestyle for future too!

ETA: while your total calories burned do sound like a lot, depending on your current weight they may well be accurate. Especially since, assuming you're set at 2lbs, MFP is estimating your base non exercise activity calories at 2280. Thus i would be tempted to eat a substantial percentage of them back (in the 75% range) and re-evaluate down the road based on my actual loss over a 6 to 8 week period

janejellyroll

Momofboys77 wrote: »

I hour running on treadmill on highest incline and 30 minutes on arc trainer

If those calorie counts are coming from the machines themselves, I would start by eating back just a portion of them because the machines are often known to over-estimate the calories burnt. If you continue to lose more than you expect to per week, you can eat back more of the calories.

NorthCascades

jjpptt2 wrote: »

Yes, you can. And if you're eating 1280 cals, then not only can you, but you probably should.

This is good advice.

Ready2Rock206

I would definitely recommend eating back a reasonable amount of those exercise calories since your calorie goal is so low.