Does it hurt not eating workout calories?

jflongo

All of these discussions going around, are starting to make me think about my calorie intake. I am currently set to 1810 Calories per day(1lb / week loss). I do about 10 minutes of cardio to warm up the body, then hit weights for 40 - 50 minutes 6 days per week. Normally it calculates that around 500 - 600 calories(I know that isn't perfect).

I hit around 1810 calories every day, and very close to my macros. I have been dropping weight, but I'm wondering, should I actually take in another 300 - 400 calories each day because of the exercise? I'm wondering if I'm actually starving my body a little? I feel fine, just curious your thoughts.

TavistockToad

MFP gives you a deficit before exercise, so you can eat them back and still miss weight. Not eating them could lead to under eating.

malibu927

Even 300 calories eaten back for lifting sounds off. How are you measuring the calories burned?

janejellyroll

There's no blanket answer. Things to consider are: How aggressive is your initial calorie goal? What is your current weight? How much weight loss are you averaging per week? How active are you?

Generally if you're very active or have an aggressive calorie goal, you will want to eat at least some of your exercise calories back. Some people find they do well without eating any of them back. In my observation, these tend to be people with non-aggressive goals, people who aren't very active, or people who are using the exercise calories as a "buffer" for logging inaccuracies (that is, they're eating more than they think they are and the exercise burn is evening it out for them).

How much weight loss are you averaging per week and how does that compare to the goal you set on MFP?

speedingticket

You don't say if you're male/female, weight, etc., but in any case you won't be burning 500-600 calories with your 50-60 minute routine. I ran 55 minutes this evening and burned about 350 (5'6 woman, 160lbs). Weight training burns significantly less. If you're losing at about 1lb/week, keep doing what you're doing. If you're losing faster and/or are struggling with the deficit, try eating an extra 100, and adjust every few weeks as you get an idea of how your body is responding (i.e. if you're getting too close to maintenance, or still losing easily).

cwolfman13

Depends...if I didn't account for my exercise with additional calories, my fitness and recovery would suffer tremendously. The tricky part with MFP and the "eat back" method to account for that activity is that it can be difficult to estimate calorie expenditure per given exercise. Some things like walking or running are fairly straight forward...others, not so much.

I ultimately got tired of it and when I found myself in the habit of exercising on the regular, I just went to the TDEE method rather than the MFP method.

HoneyBadger302

I guess it depends on your goals and how accurate your counts and tracking are.

Is fitness or weight loss your primary goal?
How are you calculating your calories burned?
How are you tracking your food (weight, measure, eyeball)?

I'm in a place where fitness is my primary goal. My weight loss is slow because I'm eating back nearly all of my exercise calories (there's still steady fat loss per my measurements, but the scale is stubborn). My workouts are pretty intense. I'm using a good HR monitor and app to calculate my burn.

I thought about trying for a more aggressive loss, but the big consensus was that would ultimately hurt my fitness.

jflongo

Let me answer all of the questions here.

I am a Male 47, 6'1", currently 203, started at 215 awhile back, and have been averaging around 1lb or so per week.

I set it at Sedentary, since I work at a desk most of the day. I workout out about 1 hr each day, except Fridays. I do Bowl Friday nights still, so still get some activity. I set this to Lose 1lb / week, so it put me at 1810 calories.

Regarding how do I track my calories, this is via the mapmyride app, I set it to a Gym Workout. I get it may not be 500 - 600 calories, even if it's 200 - 300 calories, I'm wondering should I actually each 2000 - 2100 calories instead of 1810 to account for this? Is there any negative/positive?

As far as entering my food, yes I weigh everything, even protein powder.

Hopefully this answers everyone so far.

LivingtheLeanDream

Yes eat some back, at least 50% if your uncertain of the true calorie burn. You'll know by your rate of loss each week if you can actually eat more of those exercise cals.

The MFP way is to eat those exercise cals back. I know I did - I needed them! It didn't hinder my weight loss.

jflongo

LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »

Yes eat some back, at least 50% if your uncertain of the true calorie burn. You'll know by your rate of loss each week if you can actually eat more of those exercise cals.

The MFP way is to eat those exercise cals back. I know I did - I needed them! It didn't hinder my weight loss.

Maybe I'll kick it up to 2100 for a week or two and see what happens.

cwolfman13

jflongo wrote: »

Let me answer all of the questions here.

I am a Male 47, 6'1", currently 203, started at 215 awhile back, and have been averaging around 1lb or so per week.

I set it at Sedentary, since I work at a desk most of the day. I workout out about 1 hr each day, except Fridays. I do Bowl Friday nights still, so still get some activity. I set this to Lose 1lb / week, so it put me at 1810 calories.

Regarding how do I track my calories, this is via the mapmyride app, I set it to a Gym Workout. I get it may not be 500 - 600 calories, even if it's 200 - 300 calories, I'm wondering should I actually each 2000 - 2100 calories instead of 1810 to account for this? Is there any negative/positive?

As far as entering my food, yes I weigh everything, even protein powder.

Hopefully this answers everyone so far.

My take is that real world results trump everything. You set your weight loss goal at 1 Lb per week and you're losing 1 Lb per week...I wouldn't change anything.

My guess is that with the inherent inaccuracies that come with logging and calorie counting that what you're not counting and eating back in exercise is likely counteracting errors with calories coming in. In other words, on paper it looks like you're eating 1800 calories, but in reality you're probably eating around 2000.

Things are going as planned, so I wouldn't change anything.

janejellyroll

jflongo wrote: »

Let me answer all of the questions here.

I am a Male 47, 6'1", currently 203, started at 215 awhile back, and have been averaging around 1lb or so per week.

I set it at Sedentary, since I work at a desk most of the day. I workout out about 1 hr each day, except Fridays. I do Bowl Friday nights still, so still get some activity. I set this to Lose 1lb / week, so it put me at 1810 calories.

Regarding how do I track my calories, this is via the mapmyride app, I set it to a Gym Workout. I get it may not be 500 - 600 calories, even if it's 200 - 300 calories, I'm wondering should I actually each 2000 - 2100 calories instead of 1810 to account for this? Is there any negative/positive?

As far as entering my food, yes I weigh everything, even protein powder.

Hopefully this answers everyone so far.

Is your goal 1 pound per week? If it is, I wouldn't change anything.

The advice to eat back your exercise calories is for people who are *undereating* and losing more than their goal per week on average. If you're losing exactly what you are intending to lose, then I wouldn't change anything.

It's possible that your exercise calories are helping level out inaccuracies in your logging or your daily (non-exercise) calorie burn being lower than what MFP would have predicted given your entries for activity level. Whatever the reason, you don't need to eat more if you're seeing the results that you expect.

Now if your goal is something like .5 a week and you're averaging 1, then you do have room to eat some of your calories back.

blackmantis

If your deficit is set to lose 1lb a week already then YES, if you're hungry or don't if you're not. If it's set to 2lbs a week then YES eat it back.

janejellyroll

blackmantis wrote: »

If your deficit is set to lose 1lb a week already then YES, if you're hungry or don't if you're not. If it's set to 2lbs a week then YES eat it back.

If OP's goal is set to 2 pounds a week and he's only averaging 1, that's a sign that he probably *doesn't* need to be eating his exercise calories back.

steveko89

The stock MFP methodology answer "yes, eat back your exercise calories." That said, based on my experiences I echo other who say to let your results drive your calories. I went along eating back all my calories without seeing any progress for far too long before trying to make an adjustment. I workout for a similar amount of time each week and found that the calorie burn I was getting from my HR monitor was overestimating the impact of exercise and killing any deficit I was trying to incur. My real-world TDEE matches up well with what most calculators have me as "lightly active" (three full-body lifting days lasting ~90min with some shorter cardio on rest days. Subsequently putting your stats in a TDEE calculator to compare I'm getting a comparable TDEE to my own (6'1" 172, 28y/o) so 1800 matches up well with what I'm been targeting while on a cut. I'd stick with what you're doing and bump it up a little if you start to feel a little fatigued. Good Luck!