Eating back calories

Beth_Marshall

Hi All.
Just wondering if I should be eating back any calories i burn during exercise.
When I started on here I was aiming for 1200 and not eating any exercise calories back (for the most part).
I.have recently upped my cals to around 1350 but still don't know about eating back lost cals?

TavistockToad

Yes, eat them

RelCanonical

Start with eating back about half since MFP sometimes overestimates calorie burn through exercise. If you're losing faster than expected, eat back more than that. If you go a month and it seems you're slowing down a bit, eat a little less back. Always try to aim for your goal so that your deficit is not too big.

WinoGelato

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation/p1

Lorleee

The problem with "eating back calories" is that your exercise doesn't burn as many calories as you may think it does. That doesn't mean you're not working hard and benefiting your body, but those trackers on treadmills, etc. are usually not terribly accurate. On the advice of a Registered Dietician I kept diet and exercise as two separate spheres because when I muddled them, it didn't work well at all.

WinoGelato

Lorleee wrote: »

The problem with "eating back calories" is that exercise doesn't burn as many calories as you may think it does.

Blanket statements like this are rarely helpful. Some people find calorie burn estimates to be inflated but there are myriad sources of information that can be validated to assess whether they are accurate for the individual. Calorie burn estimates could be from a formula online, from MFP estimates, from a piece of cardio equipment at the gym, from an activity tracker or from an HRM. To dismiss these all out of hand is unnecessary without knowing more details.

And whether you have supreme confidence in the estimate or not, there are ways to validate, through your own data points, whether a calorie burn estimate is accurate for you and adjust accordingly. But if you are exercising, there is definitely one number that is wrong when it comes to calorie burn estimates, and that’s ZERO. To be afraid to eat back any calories because you aren’t sure exactly how many you’ve burned is the most wrong answer you can choose.

TavistockToad

Lorleee wrote: »

The problem with "eating back calories" is that your exercise doesn't burn as many calories as you may think it does. That doesn't mean you're not working hard and benefiting your body, but those trackers on treadmills, etc. are usually not terribly accurate. On the advice of a Registered Dietician I kept diet and exercise as two separate spheres because when I muddled them, it didn't work well at all.

the flip side to that is that i have always used MFP to track my exercise and have lost as predicted by eating back every single exercise calorie....

Lorleee

TavistockToad wrote: »

Lorleee wrote: »

The problem with "eating back calories" is that your exercise doesn't burn as many calories as you may think it does. That doesn't mean you're not working hard and benefiting your body, but those trackers on treadmills, etc. are usually not terribly accurate. On the advice of a Registered Dietician I kept diet and exercise as two separate spheres because when I muddled them, it didn't work well at all.

the flip side to that is that i have always used MFP to track my exercise and have lost as predicted by eating back every single exercise calorie....

I'm glad it's worked for you. I guess the key is to know your own body, and if something's not working for you, don't be afraid to change it up.

erickirb

Lorleee wrote: »

The problem with "eating back calories" is that your exercise doesn't burn as many calories as you may think it does. That doesn't mean you're not working hard and benefiting your body, but those trackers on treadmills, etc. are usually not terribly accurate. On the advice of a Registered Dietician I kept diet and exercise as two separate spheres because when I muddled them, it didn't work well at all.

Then you shold be following the caloric intake of a TDEE calcualtor if you don't want to eat them back.... those calc average out your expected exercise burn over 7 days, MFP addes them after you do it.

ETA: if you are using a treadmill that you input age, weight, etc, it will actually be quite accurate, that said most give you total cals burned, which includes what you would have burned had you sat on a sofa (1-1.5 cals/minute). Ellipticals and machines such as those tend to overestimate calories, as they don't have a universally accepted calculation for watts as treadmills and bikes tend to.

janejellyroll

Lorleee wrote: »

The problem with "eating back calories" is that your exercise doesn't burn as many calories as you may think it does. That doesn't mean you're not working hard and benefiting your body, but those trackers on treadmills, etc. are usually not terribly accurate. On the advice of a Registered Dietician I kept diet and exercise as two separate spheres because when I muddled them, it didn't work well at all.

The solution to this is to become better at estimating how many calories you're burning through exercise, not ignoring that exercise burns calories. An estimate of "0" is completely inaccurate.

kshama2001

Lorleee wrote: »

TavistockToad wrote: »

Lorleee wrote: »

The problem with "eating back calories" is that your exercise doesn't burn as many calories as you may think it does. That doesn't mean you're not working hard and benefiting your body, but those trackers on treadmills, etc. are usually not terribly accurate. On the advice of a Registered Dietician I kept diet and exercise as two separate spheres because when I muddled them, it didn't work well at all.

the flip side to that is that i have always used MFP to track my exercise and have lost as predicted by eating back every single exercise calorie....

I'm glad it's worked for you. I guess the key is to know your own body, and if something's not working for you, don't be afraid to change it up.

In general I agree with "know your own body" but in this case I suspect the issue is with the accuracy of calories in and calories out.

There are some people who are not precise with their food logging and so do not count exercise calories, and have thus accidentally found a way to lose weight as expected.

And sure, the tracker on your treadmill might not be accurate.

However, I have found the burns for various activities in the MFP exercise database to be accurate for me, minus about 25%. Others use 50%, others use 100%. So we who use the exercise database are all operating under the "know your own body" principle, but with an exercise burn value greater than 0%.