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to eat back exercise calories
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This would likely be received as high praise from both.
...and yes - I suspect these two were separated at birth.
Now I understand
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SirSmurfalot wrote: »Please learn about how MFP works before you give advice on how to use it - you appear to have no idea.
Your eating goal ALREADY has a deficit in it to lose weight. No exercise expected or accounted for.
Deficit is NOT created by exercise and then you eat at maintenance - that is an optional way of doing it - but it's much easier to cut 500 from eating level than to workout 500 calories every day above and beyond what you were going to burn anyway.
OP - MFP is trying to teach a life lesson regarding weight management.
You do more, you eat more (like when you exercise).
You do less, you eat less (like when you become more sedentary during winter).
In a diet a tad less in either case.
So ignore the misunderstood advice above from other poster who doesn't understand how MFP works.
Thank you, but I already fully understand "how it works". What I am saying is that "how it works" is somewhat counterproductive if your goal is to lose weight as quickly as possible.
Bigger deficit = faster weight loss.
Thus, it is better to let your exercise calories create a slightly bigger calorie deficit (in addition to the one already built into the MFP calculation), instead of trying to eat them back.
The amount of calories you are expending through exercise is probably trivial unless you are doing some very high intensity workouts.
Eating back your exercise calories will have one effect, slower weight loss.
Not that hard to comprehend.
If this is the goal, then the issue is with the goal. This is not realistic or sustainable. The secret to success in any endeavor is goal oriented consistency and discipline. This is true in education, finance, weight management, sports, etc.
Just as it would be foolish to recommend to simply start running marathons, it is equally foolish to recommend that someone eat the bare minimum calories required to sustain metabolic function and disregard all else. Note that this is precisely why the vast majority of crash/elimination/restrictive diets fail.
Success is achieved by modifying behavior. Behavior is modified by several means, but drastic changes require drastic support structures - military boot camp level support. Attempting to do this without support is simply wasteful.
The data suggests that moderation is key:
http://nwcr.ws/research/default.htm
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This would likely be received as high praise from both.
...and yes - I suspect these two were separated at birth.
:laugh:
I don't have any brothers. I'll claim @stanmann5712 -
I'm a recreational cycling enthusiast...I like participating in events...I'm not highly competitive, I just enjoy them and I enjoy riding. I always ate back my exercise calories when I was losing weight and lost weight at the average of 1 Lb per week which is what I stated was my goal...ultimately switched to TDEE. If I didn't account for my exercise in some capacity or another, I'd be on my *kitten* and my deficit would have been far too large. I routinely ride 25+ miles and I burn nearly 1,000 calories on a 30 mile ride...never mind all of my other activity.3
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quiksylver296 wrote: »SirSmurfalot wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »SirSmurfalot wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »But the goal isn't to lose weight as quickly as possible.
The goal is to sustainably and safely lose weight and keep it off.
Keep reading and come back when you are caught up on the rest of the thread.
My comment stands.
You're obviously confused about how healthy weight loss occurs and how MFP works.
Despite having been provided with detailed explanation and information.
Yeah, but your explanation and information are wrong!
You are obviously locked into your dogma and do not care about the science or how it actually works in the human body.
If you want to sabatoge your own weight loss by eating back your exercise calories, that is your choice, but please stop spreading the bad advice to others.
It is completely unnecessary and in fact counter productive to eat your exercise calories in a weight loss scenario.
So, if on Day #1 I sit on my rear all day and binge watch Netflix, and on Day #2 I run a marathon, I should eat the same amount of calories both days?!?
So, are you ever going to actually answer my question, @SirSmurfalot or just keep deflecting?5 -
SirSmurfalot wrote: »This is directed at the average person trying to lose weight.
The average person is not training to run a marathon,
The average person is not cycling 50 miles per day,
The average person is not lifting 10 tons per day in weight training.
I'm an average middle-aged person.
I'm an ASIC engineer, and spend all day staring at a computer screen, therefore sedentary. (well, I just got one of those under-desk ellipticals, to try and bump my NEAT)
Because of some wonderful ladies on here, I started lifting heavy weights about three years ago. (Well, 9 month break due to having a baby in Jan)
I run a couple miles several times a week. I run (well, verrrrry slow jog) several 5k's a year. I come in close to last. I don't care. I pushed my 5 month old in his stroller over the finish line a couple weeks ago. (Don't know how that little rascal always stays ahead of me, and beat me to the finish).
I would like to run a marathon. (I WILL DO EEET! you know...someday)
I'm pretty average.......
I don't think you understand that if you don't eat back exercise calories, you very likely will drop your NEAT after exercise for the rest of the day. (or days)
Say I normally burn 500 calories exercising in a day, and normally burn 500 calories through NEAT.
If I don't eat back my exercise calories, and find that I am so sluggish that my NEAT drops to 200 calories for several days, (sadly, I have done this). Then 500 - 2*300 = -100 (i.e. I have sabotaged my weight loss)
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I ate back all my exercise calories and still lost 30 lbs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯7
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I don't know about you, but while I'm still losing, I'm adjusting down my daily calorie targets. When I lost 10% of my original body weight, I dropped my targets by 5%. Lather, rinse and repeat.
Once I am within 5% of my goal weight, I will probably reverse that figure. I think my NEAT (or one of the values, don't hold me to it) as a 200# 5'11" mid 50s male is around 2500 calories.
So I'll start increasing my daily targets and watch my weight and other measurements. (You know, like those weeks when I don't lose much, but my pants fall off easier, necessitating another lap around the thrift stores looking for smaller pants.)
I'm not going to suddenly increase my intake from ~2000 calories to ~3000. I don't want to end up back at 265+ pounds again.
It's like driving. A good driver doesn't keep their foot on the throttle when approaching a stop light. They take their foot off the throttle as they know they are stopping shortly.
I will take my proverbial foot off the calorie deficit throttle, adding back some of the calories, say 5% at a time, and see what happens to my weight.
But I'll be doing it BEFORE I get to goal, say 210#, not when I'm at 200#.
That way, if I drop to 195# or lower, great. If I maintain, that's fine too.
But I'm not going to just move from 2135 calories/day to 3125 calories/day. I'll probably work towards the 2500-3000 calorie target and consider eating MORE of my exercise calories, all while keeping an eye on the scale and other measurements.
FWIWLillymoo01 wrote: »SirSmurfalot wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »
Maybe someone needs to state the obvious, but creating a too large deficit, for example by not eating your exercise calories when you burn a ton of them can lead to lean body mass loss.
<Sigh> I originally had this in the previous post, but took it out because it was getting too lengthy, turns out I should have left it in after all.
Let's compare both approaches with the same deficit goal in mind:
If you set an aggressive dietary deficit of 500 calories, and exercise for an additional 250 calories, then "eat them back", how big of a deficit do you have? Answer: 500 calories, because your net change from exercise is now 0.
Now what happens if you set a more modest dietary deficit of 250 calories, do the same amount of exercise and not eat them back? Answer: Still 500 calories.
Assuming you follow both regimens perfectly*:
You are not "setting too large of a deficit", it is the same deficit.
You are not "losing weight too fast", it is the same rate of weight loss
You do not "lose more lean muscle mass", that is an myth.
You do not "need extra fuel to workout", your overly-abundant body fat is your fuel!
*But people are not perfect are they?
The key difference between these approaches, as several people have already mentioned, most people are bad about over-estimating exercise calories and under-estimating food calories.
People love to "round up" when it comes to the calories burned and guesstimate when it comes time to measure food. The net effect is a is smaller than intended calorie deficit which results in slower weight loss.
The bottom line is:
When you deliberately "eat back" your exercise calories you are reinforcing bad habits and unnecessarily setting yourself up for a double dose of human error.
With ZERO benefit.
Exercise should not be used as an excuse to eat more. All you are doing is sabotaging your weight loss efforts and reinforcing the very bad habit of using food as a reward, which quite frankly is one of the big reasons a lot people ended up overweight in the first place.
It is better to set a more modest deficit, exercise consistently and let your exercise calories create a slightly bigger deficit to reach your goals. Thus you eat the same calories every day (building a good routine), you exercise the same amount every day (building a good routine), and if you err by getting "too much" exercise (gasp), you err on the side of slightly faster, yet still very easily sustainable, weight loss...
The sky is not falling.
This might be an approach for weight loss but what about when you reach your goals and need to maintain? At that point you need to eat back your exercise calories or you will continue to lose. Simply put, exercise is a reason that you have to eat more to properly fuel your bodies needs, regardless of how you decide to look at it. Not only that but your approach only works if you exercise at around the same amount every single day. Sometimes I might only burn 250 calories in a day, others well over 1000.
I believe the most successful approach is to eat back exercise calories from the beginning because I am a firm believer in only making sustainable changes that are life long rather than doing something one way for weight loss and a different way for maintenance. Get in the correct mindset from the beginning.
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SirSmurfalot wrote: »nutmegoreo wrote: »I'm not jumping to any conclusions on your behalf. I was trying to clarify your position, since you seem to be having difficulties getting it across. As you've stated in a previous post, the net effect is exactly the same. Whether I consume 500 calories and not move that day, or if I consume 1200 calories and then exercise 700 calories worth. Same thing.
Over the course of one day, that's not likely going to be a problem. Overtime, it's going to be an issue for many different reasons, including malnutrition, unnecessary muscle wastage, plus a myriad of potential health issues. Your first post mentions losing weight as quickly as possible, and then in subsequent posts you claim to be advocating for a "reasonable" deficit. At what point are you differentiating between the two, because you don't seem to understand what "reasonable" is.
Let me try it from another angle, pull everything together in one spot and (hopefully) clarify, but this is going to be the last shot, as I am tired of repeating myself.
I am talking about an average person trying to lose weight, not body builders, high performance athletes, people with a very low body fat, people training for a marathon, and/or any of the other high intensity exercises people have tried to use as counter examples... even though I have been very clear that I am talking about an average person in a weight loss scenario.
Think overweight middle-aged guy/gal on a treadmill, not Michael Phelps.
All I am trying to get across here is this:
It would be preferable to set a more modest dietary calorie deficit (whatever that means for your height/weight/gender/body type, etc.) and make the effort to exercise up to your desired calorie deficit.
Instead of setting an aggressive dietary calorie deficit (whatever that means for your height/weight/gender/body type, etc.) and then trying to eat your exercise calories to get down to the desired deficit.
One reason I suggest his is because, as several others have already mentioned, most people are bad about over-estimating exercise calories and under-estimating food calories.
People love to "round up" when it comes to the calories burned and guesstimate when it comes time to measure food. The net effect is a is smaller than intended calorie deficit which results in slower weight loss.
When you deliberately "eat back" your exercise calories you are reinforcing bad habits and unnecessarily setting yourself up for a double dose of human error.
The nominal amount of exercise the average person does should not be used as an excuse to eat more. All you are doing is sabotaging your weight loss efforts and reinforcing the very bad habit of using food as a reward, which quite frankly is one of the big reasons a lot people ended up overweight in the first place.
Doing this will not cause "too large of a deficit",
They will not "lose weight too fast",
They will not "lose more lean muscle mass",
They do not "need extra fuel to workout",
Why?
Because they already have plenty of extra "fuel" to burn in the form of body fat!
Which is why I keep saying they do not need to eat their exercise calories.
If that is too much to ask, then try only eating half your calories, as some have suggested. That will at the very least help with the estimation errors.
Again, if you are a high performance athlete looking to maintain or gain, then yes, by all means eat your exercise calories... because you actually need to replace what you use in order to maintain or gain weight. I am not talking about you.
This is directed at the average person trying to lose weight.
The average person is not training to run a marathon,
The average person is not cycling 50 miles per day,
The average person is not lifting 10 tons per day in weight training.
If you do all that, congrats!... but you are not the target audience for this advice.
So all of us “average” people who were able to lose weight following the MFP method which includes eating back exercise calories, and in my case and I think many others, motivated me to become more active and thus raising my overall TDEE - we just what... had dumb luck? The fact that I could have lost the weight faster didn’t appeal to me because my goal wasn’t to lose the weight fast it was to lose the excess weight AND develop healthy long term habits to enable me to keep the weight off.
But by all means, please continue to argue with those of us who have had success using the tool as designed and tell us how the tool and our approach is flawed...12 -
Personally, the reason why I've been "trying to lose weight" so many times in the past was that I thought I had to practically starve myself to see results. Too big of a deficit, and I'd have low energy, which, as a mom with 2 young children, was not only a recipe for disaster, but a recipe for binge-eating and undoing all of the work I'd previously done.
People want to think there's a magic bullet when it comes to weight loss. Sure, you can lose at a larger deficit, but will you be able to keep it off in the long run? Is it sustainable? I'm guessing not many people gained weight because they didn't like food. We like food, so we should eat it!
It's still early days for me with MFP, but I thank all of the fellow users here who have steered me in the right direction. Slow and steady wins the race.7 -
Also, forgot to add that I don't have "exercise calories," per se. I told MFP how active I am and it gave me a target number of calories to eat per day. I have negative calorie adjustments set, so I try to eat to whatever number MFP gives me based on my activity level for that day. Some days it's 1790, others it's 2100, but always at a 750 calorie deficit. Point being, I don't look at individual activities, but at the day holistically.0
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witchaywoman81 wrote: »Also, forgot to add that I don't have "exercise calories," per se. I told MFP how active I am and it gave me a target number of calories to eat per day. I have negative calorie adjustments set, so I try to eat to whatever number MFP gives me based on my activity level for that day. Some days it's 1790, others it's 2100, but always at a 750 calorie deficit. Point being, I don't look at individual activities, but at the day holistically.
But that adjustment is representative of your total activity, inclusive of your exercise and your NEAT. When you are more active than MFP thought based on your original entries, it gives you a positive adjustment, which is similar to someone who doesn’t have a synced activity tracker logging and eating back exercise calories above and beyond what MFP thought their NEAT was.0 -
WinoGelato wrote: »witchaywoman81 wrote: »Also, forgot to add that I don't have "exercise calories," per se. I told MFP how active I am and it gave me a target number of calories to eat per day. I have negative calorie adjustments set, so I try to eat to whatever number MFP gives me based on my activity level for that day. Some days it's 1790, others it's 2100, but always at a 750 calorie deficit. Point being, I don't look at individual activities, but at the day holistically.
But that adjustment is representative of your total activity, inclusive of your exercise and your NEAT. When you are more active than MFP thought based on your original entries, it gives you a positive adjustment, which is similar to someone who doesn’t have a synced activity tracker logging and eating back exercise calories above and beyond what MFP thought their NEAT was.
Right, exactly. And I'm not looking at it as "I did 30 minutes of aerobics, so I get to eat a donut now," it's "here's my the deficit I want, and I'm working toward that," arguing against the earlier point the user who is apparently against the MFP way and how "eating back exercise calories encourages people to eat more" like that's a bad thing. You expend more energy, you should eat more.
I think many of us coming into MFP have an unhealthy relationship with dieting based on the plethora of misinformation out there. The people in my life are no exception. I actually had to promise myself to stop discussing my weight with my mother, who would always say things like "you're more patient than I am" or "you should be losing more each week." Is she at her ideal weight? No. Has she been "on a diet" more times than I count? Yes.2 -
witchaywoman81 wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »witchaywoman81 wrote: »Also, forgot to add that I don't have "exercise calories," per se. I told MFP how active I am and it gave me a target number of calories to eat per day. I have negative calorie adjustments set, so I try to eat to whatever number MFP gives me based on my activity level for that day. Some days it's 1790, others it's 2100, but always at a 750 calorie deficit. Point being, I don't look at individual activities, but at the day holistically.
But that adjustment is representative of your total activity, inclusive of your exercise and your NEAT. When you are more active than MFP thought based on your original entries, it gives you a positive adjustment, which is similar to someone who doesn’t have a synced activity tracker logging and eating back exercise calories above and beyond what MFP thought their NEAT was.
Right, exactly. And I'm not looking at it as "I did 30 minutes of aerobics, so I get to eat a donut now," it's "here's my the deficit I want, and I'm working toward that," arguing against the earlier point the user who is apparently against the MFP way and how "eating back exercise calories encourages people to eat more" like that's a bad thing. You expend more energy, you should eat more.
I think many of us coming into MFP have an unhealthy relationship with dieting based on the plethora of misinformation out there. The people in my life are no exception. I actually had to promise myself to stop discussing my weight with my mother, who would always say things like "you're more patient than I am" or "you should be losing more each week." Is she at her ideal weight? No. Has she been "on a diet" more times than I count? Yes.
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.0 -
I really think it’s a combination of personal preference and how much exercise you’re doing. Generally speaking, I never eat back my calories. I have a target amount to eat. And that’s what I aim for. I consider “exercise calories” a bonus in my deficit.
The exception would be high energy expenditure activities. For example, when I lived in Hawaii, I went on an 8 hour ridge hike, and burned upwards of 1200 calories. You can bet I packed a couple of extra snacks to keep me going.
I really don’t think there’s a right way to do it. Everyone is an individual and will do what works best for them individually.0 -
cammiecane wrote: »I really think it’s a combination of personal preference and how much exercise you’re doing. Generally speaking, I never eat back my calories. I have a target amount to eat. And that’s what I aim for. I consider “exercise calories” a bonus in my deficit.
The exception would be high energy expenditure activities. For example, when I lived in Hawaii, I went on an 8 hour ridge hike, and burned upwards of 1200 calories. You can bet I packed a couple of extra snacks to keep me going.
I really don’t think there’s a right way to do it. Everyone is an individual and will do what works best for them individually.
Except if you are using MFP to set your calorie targets, the information you provide is excluding estimates of exercise - so that is not factored into your goal. When you exercise, you are supposed to eat some of those calories back, even all of those calories back. A bonus deficit is not always something to aim for - too high of a deficit can lead to loss of lean body mass, fatigue, hair loss, brittle nails, sallow skin, and just unsustainability in the overall process.2 -
WinoGelato wrote: »A bonus deficit is not always something to aim for - too high of a deficit can lead to ... hair loss...
If only I could blame my hair loss on not eating enough
Believe it or not, I was already going bald when my profile picture was taken in 1982...
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