eating right on rest day

leadiax3

How close to your calorie budget do u stay on your "rest day?" I am not exercising today and i fear that i will eat too much.

elliej

As I have my profile set to sedentary I eat extra calories when I exercise and don't when I don't.

Is yours set to active? If so, use a TDEE calculation (there are a heap online, I don't understand it well enough to explain but they're pretty easy to follow.) For weight loss it's something like BMR x 1.2 - 10% but don't quote me!

leadiax3

Thanx. I am set to light activity level. I am supposed to eat 1650 cals a days. I am always under on workout days. But i get paranoid on rest days.

CyberEd312

Depends on what method you are using?? If you are using the MFP method where they require you to eat back your calories earned through exercise then you would adjust your daily intake accordingly if you are on a rest day..

If you are using TDEE then your exercise is figured into your goals so you would just eat your normal daily caloric intake minus whatever calorie deficit you had built in daily....

Best of Luck......

lporter229

I am assuming you eat your exercise calories back? You should view your food diary as more of a weekly average. If you are under on most exercise days, it won't be a big problem to go over a bit on a rest day. If you are really bothered by being over by a bit, take a nice little walk and log it.

leadiax3

Thanx for ur advice.

deksgrl

Edit: I didn't realize this was the Maintenance board and gave advice based on someone trying to lose. Nevermind.

StaticEntropy

I use TDEE and have set a rest day and a workout day goal to hit (2400/2900 as of this week, with maintenance TDEE being somewhere in the middle). I pretty much hit those numbers everyday.

SideSteel

I think a reasonable method would be to take your average caloric intake over the course of weeks, monitor your average bodyweight over the course of that same time frame, and nudge your average intake up or down according to that.

So for example, if your bodyweight is maintaining then you don't necessarily need to change anything.
If you find that you are slowly losing weight and you don't want to, start by adding calories slowly.
If you find that you are slowly gaining weight and you don't want to, start by reducing calories slowly.

EDIT: I realize that this is a very indirect answer to your question. What I'm getting at is the question itself indicates that you're focusing quite a bit on matching your intake to your expenditure day in and day out. I don't think you need to attempt to manage this as closely as you think you do. What you need to control is your total intake over several days and make sure that collectively, it causes you to keep your bodyweight relatively stable.

55in13

Another more of the same idea post. My main exercise is running an average of about 8 miles lately every other day. I am eating as if I run 4 miles every day. It is okay to average across a small span of days. Food does not directly fuel muscles; it is far more complicated and there is a buffer of sorts in the works.

alyssa92982

Days I don't work out I make sure to eat low in calories as opposed to work out days

kitkat4141

Depends on what method you are using?? If you are using the MFP method where they require you to eat back your calories earned through exercise then you would adjust your daily intake accordingly if you are on a rest day..

If you are using TDEE then your exercise is figured into your goals so you would just eat your normal daily caloric intake minus whatever calorie deficit you had built in daily....

Best of Luck......

^^^^this^^^^

TDEE is much easier for me to do without overeating or keeping track of carry over calories for another day.