How Many of Your Exercise Calories Do You Eat Back?

darrenbeckworth

1/2 of my cardio calories... none of my weight lifting calories. have not heard of a decent way to track what's burned when lifting, so I round to 0.

sijomial

darrenbeckworth wrote: »

1/2 of my cardio calories... none of my weight lifting calories. have not heard of a decent way to track what's burned when lifting, so I round to 0.

@darrenbeckworth
Well that certainly guarantees an inaccurate estimate!

Log entire duration of your session as "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)" under the CV part of your diary for a reasonable (if not conservative for a heavy lifter) estimate of your burn based on METS.

sijomial

Khovde07 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

100% - I like food and I like exercise so it's a perfect combination.
300 hours of cycling last year (say 150,000 calories conservatively?) and perhaps 150 hours of strength training as my main two hobbies.

Food logging inaccuracy is a far bigger factor for most people but strangely doesn't get the same level of attention or blame for poor results as exercise estimation.

Do put some effort into making your estimates reasonable though. Part of the reason people have the weird, almost Puritanical attitude, to exercise calories is using poor estimating methods.

Thanks for the advice! I have a Fitbit that measures me quite accurately and I'm careful about weighing and measuring all my food.

The kind of ridiculous issue that I'm running into is that I'm not really hungry enough to eat back my exercise calories. MFP has me at 1600 calories per day and I haven't been able to get up to that even without working out. Hubby and I have been making an effort to change what we eat as well (more veggies, a little less red meat, a few less bad carbs) which is giving us more food for less calories. For example, yesterday I ate my usual amount of calories for breakfast and lunch and had an afternoon snack before my workout. But I gained something like 700 extra calories which put me at something like 1,700 calories for dinner. I had as much food as I wanted and was full from dinner but was still 1200 calories under. I had to eat some ice cream that I didn't necessarily need to up my calories. The only time I can foresee adding more calories throughout the day is mid-morning when I'm a little hungry before lunch but that wouldn't add that much. Any advice on this?

The crucial thing I've not seen mentioned (I'm tired and might have missed it...) is your actual rate of loss compared to your planned rate of loss.
The rate of loss is really the goal - all the estimates are ways and methods to achieve your goal.

If you are losing faster than you want then you have a problem that needs fixing, it will only get harder when you get to maintenance and HAVE to eat more to sustain your weight.

Food timing is an irrelevance.

BTW
Interested how do you know your fitbit is accurate.
How have you validated its estimates? (In a sports science lab? Metabolic chamber? Compared against an accurate calorie estimate from a power meter for example?)

AnnPT77

Khovde07 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

100% - I like food and I like exercise so it's a perfect combination.
300 hours of cycling last year (say 150,000 calories conservatively?) and perhaps 150 hours of strength training as my main two hobbies.

Food logging inaccuracy is a far bigger factor for most people but strangely doesn't get the same level of attention or blame for poor results as exercise estimation.

Do put some effort into making your estimates reasonable though. Part of the reason people have the weird, almost Puritanical attitude, to exercise calories is using poor estimating methods.

Thanks for the advice! I have a Fitbit that measures me quite accurately and I'm careful about weighing and measuring all my food.

The kind of ridiculous issue that I'm running into is that I'm not really hungry enough to eat back my exercise calories. MFP has me at 1600 calories per day and I haven't been able to get up to that even without working out. Hubby and I have been making an effort to change what we eat as well (more veggies, a little less red meat, a few less bad carbs) which is giving us more food for less calories. For example, yesterday I ate my usual amount of calories for breakfast and lunch and had an afternoon snack before my workout. But I gained something like 700 extra calories which put me at something like 1,700 calories for dinner. I had as much food as I wanted and was full from dinner but was still 1200 calories under. I had to eat some ice cream that I didn't necessarily need to up my calories. The only time I can foresee adding more calories throughout the day is mid-morning when I'm a little hungry before lunch but that wouldn't add that much. Any advice on this?

Eat them the the next day and balance out calories by the week? Use some calorie dense nutritious foods if necessary (nuts, peanut butter, avocados, full-fat dairy, etc.)?

I agree with the advice that what really matters is keeping your actual weight loss rate at a sensible level, but if you're losing riskily fast, the above ideas are what I'd suggest.

Just for completeness: I estimate mine carefully, comparing multiple different estimate sources at first if possible (especially for forms of exercise I'll do frequently), and use the most suitable. Then I eat them all - all through weight loss & 2 years of maintenance.

Sp1tfire

I'm doing a slow bulk so all + 100

gymprincess1234

All of them

lucerorojo

Khovde07 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

100% - I like food and I like exercise so it's a perfect combination.
300 hours of cycling last year (say 150,000 calories conservatively?) and perhaps 150 hours of strength training as my main two hobbies.

Food logging inaccuracy is a far bigger factor for most people but strangely doesn't get the same level of attention or blame for poor results as exercise estimation.

Do put some effort into making your estimates reasonable though. Part of the reason people have the weird, almost Puritanical attitude, to exercise calories is using poor estimating methods.

Thanks for the advice! I have a Fitbit that measures me quite accurately and I'm careful about weighing and measuring all my food.

The kind of ridiculous issue that I'm running into is that I'm not really hungry enough to eat back my exercise calories. MFP has me at 1600 calories per day and I haven't been able to get up to that even without working out. Hubby and I have been making an effort to change what we eat as well (more veggies, a little less red meat, a few less bad carbs) which is giving us more food for less calories. For example, yesterday I ate my usual amount of calories for breakfast and lunch and had an afternoon snack before my workout. But I gained something like 700 extra calories which put me at something like 1,700 calories for dinner. I had as much food as I wanted and was full from dinner but was still 1200 calories under. I had to eat some ice cream that I didn't necessarily need to up my calories. The only time I can foresee adding more calories throughout the day is mid-morning when I'm a little hungry before lunch but that wouldn't add that much. Any advice on this?

I used to have this problem. So I would plan to eat more--bigger breakfast, more calories in my lunch (and dinner if applicable) so that I would be fueled for the evening or night workout. I would eat something afterwards, but I don't like to eat heavy (or meat) in the evening. It doesn't work for me to have 700 exercise calories (which I do sometimes) and then eat them the next day. I will wake up at 3:00 a.m. starving and never catch up anyway. I usually eat back all my exercise calories, but if by chance I can't, then I eat back enough to at least be over 1300 calories that day. The only problem with eating extra calories before is that if you decide not to work out, then you have overeaten for the day! So in a way, it makes me work out because I don't want that to happen.

There is always peanut butter, nuts, olives, cheese, avocado, jerky, extra piece of chicken at lunch/dinner, extra egg or piece of bacon at breakfast, just a few suggestions.