Exercise calories

IFMO07

Hello everyone,
Do you all eat back your exercise calories and if so, are you still able to lose weight ?
Thanks

Megan_smartiepants1970

MFP is set up to eat back your exercise calories....Most eat 1/2 of them back since MFP over estimates the calorie burn....yes you still lose weight

AnnPT77

Estimated them carefully, ate pretty much all of them back, worked fine to lose from obese to healthy weight (and stay at a healthy weight for 3 years since).

Log carefully, stick with a manageable routine (eating and exercise both manageable!) for 4-6 weeks, then use your weight results to adjust your intake if necessary. Simple, practical.

Best wishes!

shadow2soul

I eat every single one that I get. Lost over 120lbs doing so and my rate of loss was always reasonable for where I was at in terms of weight (around 1% body weight loss per week until I hit the last 10-15lbs).

MikePTY

I use the TDEE method of setting my goal, so my exercise level is set already into my daily goal, so I do not directly eat the exercise calories back. However the principle is very much the same, as I eat more calories per day because I exercise than if I didn't. You have to account for the extra activity somehow.

If you are using MFP to set your goals, then you should be eating your exercise calories back, as they are not incorporated in your goals. When I was using MFP to set my goals, I was eating my exercise calories back, and still losing weight.

tinkerbellang83

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

lalalacroix

Yes I eat every damn one. Lol.

Personally I found that the MFP calculator really overestimated calories burnt so I do use a different calculator. But once I was able to figure this out I've eaten them all.

To make it easier, some people may eat half for a few weeks and see if they are losing on target. If not losing as expected then adjust accordingly.

grimendale

I don't eat back all of them, but mostly. I use Runkeeper to estimate my burns, which for me has tended to be pretty accurate. I'll usually leave about a 100-200 calorie buffer (on 2100 calorie daily plus 200-900 calorie burns), which has worked well for me. If you're using the MFP method, rather than TDEE, you should eat most of them back (or all, if you feel good about your estimates).

_faedreamer

I don't eat them. I don't really trust any calorie calculator entirely, not enough to tell myself "I can have cake today because I walked 3 miles and earned 400 calories" or whatever. If I want cake, I make room for cake in my daily allotment of deficit calories and exercise is done for its own sake. This has been working best for me. Exercise is for my health, for me, not to earn extra food. It just feels like a messed up thing mentally, to 'earn' food that way. I prefer looking at my exercise as a fun thing I do because it makes me feel good, rather.

AnnPT77

As an aside, and a counter-thought to the idea that all the exercise calorie estimators are too high: One estimate that's guaranteed to be inaccurate is the zero estimate.

If you manage your weight loss rate to keep it sensible and avoid losing too fast (thus creating health risks), then not eating back exercise calories may be fine. Blithely not eating them back, and getting too-fast weight loss as a result, may not be the most excellent choice.

MikePTY

_faedreamer wrote: »

I don't eat them. I don't really trust any calorie calculator entirely, not enough to tell myself "I can have cake today because I walked 3 miles and earned 400 calories" or whatever. If I want cake, I make room for cake in my daily allotment of deficit calories and exercise is done for its own sake. This has been working best for me. Exercise is for my health, for me, not to earn extra food. It just feels like a messed up thing mentally, to 'earn' food that way. I prefer looking at my exercise as a fun thing I do because it makes me feel good, rather.

Then you should use a TDEE calculator to generate your maintenance calories, not MFP's goals. It's fine if you don't like the idea of "rewarding yourself with more food" by eating back exercise calories, but you need to account for the extra calories burned somehow. Not accounting for your exercise is like entering your height as a foot shorter and your weight as 50 pounds less in the MFP calculator to get an artificially low calorie goal. The exercise you do is just as important a part of the equation. You can either budget it directly into your goal (TDEE) or adding it separate (MFP) is your choice, but if you are not accounting for it at all, then you are not meeting your energy needs.

tinkerbellang83

_faedreamer wrote: »

I don't eat them. I don't really trust any calorie calculator entirely, not enough to tell myself "I can have cake today because I walked 3 miles and earned 400 calories" or whatever. If I want cake, I make room for cake in my daily allotment of deficit calories and exercise is done for its own sake. This has been working best for me. Exercise is for my health, for me, not to earn extra food. It just feels like a messed up thing mentally, to 'earn' food that way. I prefer looking at my exercise as a fun thing I do because it makes me feel good, rather.

Or you could look at it as ensuring you're fuelling your exercise and activity properly. Even if MFP's database is not 100% accurate it's more accurate than exercise burn being 0 calories.

Your calorie deficit is already accounted for in your calorie goal so if you're doing a lot of exercise and not accounting for it then you put yourself at health risks.

If you don't want to use the app as intended the more sensible, healthy way to do it would be using the TDEE method to calculate your calorie goal and manually change it.

shadow2soul

_faedreamer wrote: »

I don't eat them. I don't really trust any calorie calculator entirely, not enough to tell myself "I can have cake today because I walked 3 miles and earned 400 calories" or whatever. If I want cake, I make room for cake in my daily allotment of deficit calories and exercise is done for its own sake. This has been working best for me. Exercise is for my health, for me, not to earn extra food. It just feels like a messed up thing mentally, to 'earn' food that way. I prefer looking at my exercise as a fun thing I do because it makes me feel good, rather.

I love to exercise. It’s fun. But I also am aware that the more active I am the more fuel my body needs. Learning to adjust your calories based on your activity is important to weight maintenance IMO. I gained weight in the first place because I didn’t know how to do this. MFPs method of adding extra calories for activity helped me learn how to adjust my intake based on my activity. I think ignoring exercise calories can cause problems in the long run.

ambertopaz75

I have only been doing this a week and haven't eaten them til yesterday. My fit bit is linked to mfp and it gave me a couple hundred calories and I ate all but one. Won't do it again as when I got on to finish my diary for the day my excercise calories has gone down to 70 and ended up at 53. Learned the hard way not to use the calories from my fit bit as it changes every time it syncs and not always positively. If I ever eat them again it will only be for separate excercise I manually entered

Lillymoo01

_faedreamer wrote: »

I don't eat them. I don't really trust any calorie calculator entirely, not enough to tell myself "I can have cake today because I walked 3 miles and earned 400 calories" or whatever. If I want cake, I make room for cake in my daily allotment of deficit calories and exercise is done for its own sake. This has been working best for me. Exercise is for my health, for me, not to earn extra food. It just feels like a messed up thing mentally, to 'earn' food that way. I prefer looking at my exercise as a fun thing I do because it makes me feel good, rather.

Eventually, this will no longer really work properly for you. It is great that you prefer to look at your exercise as a fun thing to do but, at some point, you need to have an idea of how much you are burning while exercising so you can properly fuel your body when you are in maintenance so you are neither gaining or losing weight.