Is it all about the net? Can I walk so that I can eat?

bwogilvie

I see that this thread has exploded...let me go back to the original question. My response would be: give it a try.

However, use your food diary, exercise diary, and weight loss to provide feedback. If you aren't losing the weight you expect, then either you're overestimating exercise calories or underestimating food calories. In that case, either record fewer exercise calories or see whether you're missing some food calories. The latter is easy to do, in part because we try to fool ourselves, but also because labels are often inaccurate. One bread I buy lists calories per 43 g slice, but most slices actually weigh 48-50 g.

Your muscles have enough stored energy to walk for several hours, so you should have no problem exercising in the morning, eating lightly during the day, and then having a large meal at night. I have my main meal in the evening, and I routinely wind up having burned more calories exercising than I have eaten during the day (e.g., I eat 700 calories for breakfast and lunch, then go for a 2-hour bike ride that burns 1100 calories). It's worked for me. And I'll admit that on days I don't bike, I'm sometimes motivated to take a walk in order to eat a little more at dinner. I get more exercise, which is good, and I have to eat more (in order not to run too great a calorie deficit), which I enjoy. What's not to like?

Mr_Knight

I am hoping that by using the plan above I can still enjoy potatoes, french fries, the occasional cheese cake, a hamburger loaded with blue cheese, etc and still loose some weight. Does that seem reasonable?

The problem you're going to run into is eating out. Modern portion sizes, especially at chain restaurants, are massive. It is not hard at all to run into an innocent looking slice of cheesecake that would require 60 minutes of hard cycling to burn off. That's an entire week's worth of "walking 30 minutes on a treadmill", and you've used up all your exercise benefits on one dessert, at one meal.

If this is all done religiously and conscientiously, it can work out. But I also agree with those saying "Danger Will Robinson, Danger!"

likitisplit

If people are so bad at estimating, how does MFP work at all?

ghostrider1970

If people are so bad at estimating, how does MFP work at all?

MFP is a tool, one that works... for those that are honest to themselves and log what they eat almost exactly. About the exercise database, the amount of calories burned is just an estimate, very often overestimate.
If you have already set your activity level in the fitness profile, you don't have to eat you exercise calorie back, because those are included in your daily calories.

ghostrider1970

I am hoping that by using the plan above I can still enjoy potatoes, french fries, the occasional cheese cake, a hamburger loaded with blue cheese, etc and still loose some weight. Does that seem reasonable?

A simple cheeseburger (mcdonalds, taking the data from their website) is 305 calories and they are so small that one is not really satisfying.... according to MFP exeercise database, you have to cycle (stationary bike, moderate effort) for 40 minutes, or swim for 25/30 minutes (swimming, not floating around in the pool). 100g of blue cheese is way more than 300 calories.
A fast food meal is probably around 800/1000 calories, easy... that's a load of cycling/running to do.
I'll keep the exercise more=eat more equation, for when you have reached a decent level of fitness and can really bust your *kitten* with whatever activity you enjoy, running, cycling, swimming...

Allterrain_Lady

Bump

honkytonks85

I don't have time nor the desire for a complex diet and I am too cheap to use a diet service such as Weigh Watchers or Nutrisystems. I do like goals, numbers, and technology so MFP seems to be a great fit for me. Is it fair to say that in order to loose weight it's all about net calories...no more or less complicated than that? Is it a crazy thought process to think that I will walk in the morning, eat a low calorie breakfast and lunch so that I have "saved" calories for the evening that I can "spend" on a couple beers and pizza and still be at or below my goal for the day. I was going to start walking on the treadmill 15 minutes a day but using MFP I saw that 30 minutes would allow me several more calories for the day so now I am walking 30 minutes so I can bank more calories...is that ok? In other words does it make sense to walk more to eat more?

YES - YOU CAN! Ain't exercise grand?

Edit: it's important to note as others above have said that calories burned are an estimate (and even calories in can be an estimate, unless you are weighing every last bit of food you eat). To get around this I generally create a bit of a calorie buffer (I might eat some exercise calories back but not all).

lulz14

Yes, it is all calories in, calories out.

But very quickly you learn that cycling for 30mins is not worth a single slice of pizza.

At least I did once I started seeing how many calories in everything.

beattie1

seeing as throughout human evolution, exercise was to acquire food (you can't hunt and gather food without walking, running and killing an animal or two) - I can't see what's remotely wrong with the idea of exercising so you can eat more. It's what our ancestors have done for millions of years. Also, exercising more and eating more to support doing more exercise is the way to build a strong, healthy body, probably because that's what enabled our ancestors to survive. I think that being able to eat more is an excellent way for people to be motivated to do more exercise and get all the health benefits of exercise.

You're kidding me right? Tell me how the hell can you compare someone who has to run to catch his dinner, who would probably put up a fight to avoid becoming dinner, to the average joe who lazily walk on a treadmill, to cheat himself into beleiving that the double glazed, triple chocolate cream filled donut he's going to eat afterward is already burned... come on!

Middle and upper palaeolithic humans were top predators that were not in danger of becoming some other animal's lunch, unless they did something stupid like wandering off into deep, dark woods all by themselves like snow white, which they would have had enough sense not to do.

Lower palaeolithic humans were no more likely to end up as someone else's lunch as chimpanzees are... in fact a lot less likely as Homo sapiens hadn't evolved yet to poach them using firearms the way chimps are poached by humans nowadays.

Exercise = food aquisition. Exercise = food aquisition in the palaeolithic era, and using exercise = earning more calories to eat more nowadays is really not very different at all. It's how our bodies evolved to work... exercise, and then eat.

And saying that and using it as motivation to eat more is not the same as "kidding yourself that you already burned off some triple chocolate donut etc etc etc" nonsense.... I've already stated that you have to be honest and accurate when calculating calories, of course you have to calculate them accurately. There is absolutely nothing wrong with thinking of exercise as a means to acquire more food to eat.... it's very successful for many people, as this thread is showing...

And our palaeolithic ancestors were good enough at aquiring food that they had plenty of leisure time. Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis were capable of catching huge animals like bison and mammoths. You really think they had to catch animals like that every single day?

IMO, if someone talks about training to eat more, have already the wrong mindset, and it will, in a couple of months, starts a thread asking why is gaining weight instead of losing it... "but I train so hard".
Again, just my 2 cent.

Funny that, because the most successful long term maintainers I know are the ones that allow themselves to eat what they like in moderation, and exercise in order to be able to eat more, while those with a mentality of deprivation and self punishment get into cycles of yo-yo dieting.

I'm not disputing the necessity to be honest about calorie calculations, i.e. both calories burned and calories eaten. Of course it's not going to work if you do the maths wrong. However that doesn't mean that people who do the maths right can't make it work, or that it's a "bad mentality" or that it equates to "kidding yourself".... seriously. If you're that bad at maths and measuring things to the point that this method would never work for you, then don't do it. But don't project your inability on the rest of the human population.

This is SOOO right!

Looking at this and other similar threads, the people who post "Yes, eat your exercise calories" have normally lost significant amounts of weight and those posting "No, don't eat your exercise calories" haven't.

'Nuff said!

RoyBeck

It's that simple yes. I'm lucky in that I live a 5/6 minute walk from my leisure centre. Recently I really fancied a chocolate slice. I had the calories remaining but the slice contained 130 calories. So to make myself feel better (No other reason) I went on the treadmill and burned 200 calories. Simple

jennifer_417

OP, some people look down on that mindset, but I think it's fine! It's at least half the reason I worked out at all when I first started!


ETA: I do believe MFP overestimates calories burned...so I only record about 2/3 of the time of exercise I do.

glin23

If people are so bad at estimating, how does MFP work at all?

MFP is a tool, one that works... for those that are honest to themselves and log what they eat almost exactly. About the exercise database, the amount of calories burned is just an estimate, very often overestimate.
If you have already set your activity level in the fitness profile, you don't have to eat you exercise calorie back, because those are included in your daily calories.

I find that for me, I recognize that MFP is flawed and I work within those confines, but am also honest with myself. That said, to me it's a good starting point, especially for people who've never truly given weightloss a legit shot.

ausheli

OP, knock yourself out mate, that's how I'm doing it. It a lifestyle that I can live with, no cutting, no bulking, I just want to lose the weight but still be able to maintain a normal life, so I know that if I enjoy the occasional choc fudge brownie, I have to go for a walk first, I hunt my brownies slowly, but I do use a hrm to keep the maths in check, MFP tracks cals in < hrm tracks cals out, its a long term sustainable approach

Michal833

In the beginning I tried to eat little for breakfast and lunch to save for a nice dinner but that did not work as it just caused me to be hungry and snack during the day. So don't be afraid to eat a nice healthy breakfast.

lauraleighsm

Yes, it is all calories in, calories out.

But very quickly you learn that cycling for 30mins is not worth a single slice of pizza.

At least I did once I started seeing how many calories in everything.

I agree!

OP-it sounds like you've making some great steps to changing your lifestyle and I commend you for that! My hubs has a similar frame as yours before he lost a lot of weight.

I started exercising more at first because I wanted more leeway with my calories. I have always had trouble combining exercise with weight loss because exercise makes me hungry! I do love how exercise makes me feel and the muscle tone I'm gaining. I just make sure not to eat all of my exercise calories back, and I usually lower the estimate that MFP gives me.

I too have found that after busting my *kitten* to burn 300 calories the last thing I want to do is "waste" them on a slice of pizza. Now..a cupcake is another story.

Good luck!

lauraleighsm

If people are so bad at estimating, how does MFP work at all?

MFP is a tool, one that works... for those that are honest to themselves and log what they eat almost exactly. About the exercise database, the amount of calories burned is just an estimate, very often overestimate.
If you have already set your activity level in the fitness profile, you don't have to eat you exercise calorie back, because those are included in your daily calories.

I find that for me, I recognize that MFP is flawed and I work within those confines, but am also honest with myself. That said, to me it's a good starting point, especially for people who've never truly given weightloss a legit shot.

WAIT! Is that a bunny with a pancake on his head?!!!!

Seesawboomerang

Eating back your exercise calories can be really fantastic motivation to get off your *kitten* and exercise.

No, the calories in vs calories out might not tally, but if you get motivated to exercise it's a good thing.

After time you will work out what you can 'get away with' and what you can't.

It's a long game of adjusting your goals, your input, and your output.

BeachGingerOnTheRocks

However you choose to create a calorie deficit is up to you.

If you are eating more because you are exercising more and eating below maintenance, then you're doing it right. If you're eating more because you are exercising and eating above maintenance, then you're doing it wrong. Unless you're on a bulk, then you'd be doing it right.

It really is that simple.

I exercise to eat more all the time. If I know I'm going to be eating something high calorie or drinking a couple beers, then I run a 5K. It usually gives me enough of a burn to account for a good bit of what I consume that would be in excess of what I would normally consume. This sort of thing is in addition to my normal activity.

It's worked for me for a few years now.

LearnFromTheRed

WAIT! Is that a bunny with a pancake on his head?!!!!

That's bizarre...I had the same thought two seconds before scrolling down and seeing your post...

amandatapar

Sometimes if I know I am going out to eat for dinner I will make sure to work out, I work out 3-5 days a week anyways for a hour each time. I don't eat pizza and pasta anymore but I still like a big steak and then I will add a baked sweet potato or broccoli or green beans etc as a side dish to it. I have also started eating back 200 to 300 calories of my exercise calories so my net calories are not so low and my weight loss has picked back up.

tonyyung779

Working out is a terribly inefficient way to put your body into caloric deficit....use your diet for that.


Unless you have sports specific goals....go to the gym to build strength/muscle not to burn calories.

neandermagnon

You don't have to go back that long, when I was a kid , fat kids were the exception.

yeah that's true. I'm just a total nerd when it comes to all things palaeolithic and evolutionary biology generally. But yeah pretty much until modern times people have had to be active, whether to acquire food directly or to acquire goods/money to barter for/buy food... but nowadays people can sit at a desk all day to earn money and sit on a couch all day and order food on the internet and get it delivered to their door, and very calorie dense food is easily available... that pretty much sums up the cause of the obesity epidemic, other contributing factors are just details that can further confound things, but the key to beating obesity for the main part is for people to get back to moving around a lot more and learning how to be moderate in their food intake.

I think that by now, is more than clear that we agree on the exercise more=eat more. I still think that for someone at the beginning of a weight loss (or better, fat loss) journey is not a good idea, before going that route, they should really understand how intense their workout are, how good are they at burning calories and how strict to the plan they can be.

I think the only point on which we differ is on other people's abilities to be honest with themselves and make the maths work. MFP is a calorie logging site, and most people here are already logging the calories in part of the equation, and there are loads of people out there giving advice to make food logging more accurate, e.g. weighing food rather than using volume measurements. Plenty of people are also using heart rate monitors for measuring calories out... and if not, whenever this subject comes up, lots of users will caution people about the necessity to calculate calorie burns accurately, and suggestions like only eating back 80% of MFP calculated calorie burns to account for any innaccuracy.

Guesstimating based on no information at all, like someone thinking 10 minutes on a treadmill earns them half a pizza or something, goes both ways. There are also many users here who seem to think they have to go 2 hrs on a treadmill to justify eating 1200 calories a day gross (so end up netting very little like 500 or so), and are terrified to eat back exercise calories, and they guesstimate badly in the wrong direction, i.e. in the direction of eating way too little, because they're terrified of gaining weight... in the amount of time I've been on this site (I had another account before this one) I'd say there are probably more people out there who need to hear "yes, you should eat back your exercise calories" than "don't overestimate your calorie burns" - yes there are examples of the latter group out there as well, but there are so many who undereat, overexercise, and get trapped in a cycle of bingeing and excessive restriction that in fact it's really refreshing to see this OP's post actually wanting to eat back exercise calories... and yes the OP can and should do that, provided the maths is correct. I believe that the OP is capable of getting the maths right, if he or she weighs food, double checks calorie burns and observes whether they're seeing a slow and steady fat loss over a period of weeks. We can agree to disagree about that if you think that most people are not good enough at maths to get it right.

And if someone finds calculating calorie burns too much hassle, then there's always the TDEE - x% method, which gives you a higher number of calories than MFP does, which has your exercise calories included already. So long as you actually do the exercise you included in the calorie number from that method, that also works. But different things motivate different people, and logging exercise to earn extra calories to eat, is a great motivator for many people to exercise more.

As for the difference between eating more to exercise, or eating more because you exercise.. the end result is the same, the person does exercise, the person eats enough to fuel the exercise, the motivation may be a little different, but the difference isn't going to make them unhealthy. Many other people's mentalities result in them never exercising, or in them not eating enough to fuel the exercise they're doing... neither of which is healthy.

nads1012

I probably wasn't clear enough about what I am trying to accomplish. I weigh 230 pounds and have weighed 230 pounds for as long as I can remember so what ever I was doing previous to this caused me to maintain my weight. According to MFP in order to loose 1.5 to 2 pounds a week I will need to eat 1500 calories. Based on what I was eating before and what I am learning about foods and their calorie counts it would not surprise me if I was taking in 2500 calories a day, probably more on many days. I was drinking 1 or 2 cans of soda a day, lots of snacking, lots of sugar, etc. I have now started using MFP and wondering if I could push the 1500 to 1750 or so with some exercise, still a net decrease in the calories I was eating but in an increase in what I am allowed.

I am eating more fruits and vegatables, drinking a lot more water (went from none to about 10 cups per day), cutting out snacks, not eating after supper, and walking on the treadmill 120 minutes a week. Should that be a good start for a weight loss plan?

Ok so you want to eat about 1500 calories a day (maybe 1800 if you exercise). Do you know how little that actually is? You're asking if you can have pizza and beer on that? I wish you all the best to have the mindpower in first place. I've tried it and lasted 6 days, but I won't go into detail. It is possible, but you have to really plan precisely what and when you eat. I did 5 x 300cals a day, wrote a list of a bout 20 foods I ate. 1 shake a day, on workout days 2 (as a meal not on top). You need to eat that often, because otherwise on that low calories you will suddenly feel really hungy. Don't skip meals!!
One tip I got, how to treat yourself: So you're eating 35 meals a week, 2 of these are allowed as a treat, but make sure it's not over 300 cals. I made that up

Once you start loosing weight I you should start lifting some weights. I suggest you start a new thread and ask some of the bodybuilders why, too long to explain.

likitisplit

You can absolutely have pizza and beer on that. 1 large slice of cheese pizza and some fruit. And a beer.

katorihanzo

Yes. The answer to the topic question: yes.

dancinmama

If you really are into technology, get a Bodymedia Fit monitor, it's fabulous. It is real time, reporting to you what you ACTUALLY burn, so yeah, you want to lose 2 pounds a week? Eat exactly one thousand calories a day less than what you burn. You'll lose that 2 pounds every week, without fail. The more you exercise, the more you can eat. It hooks right into MFP to figure in your calories you've eaten. The online reports will estimate every time you download what your burn will be for the day, according to what you've already input, and what it learns about your habits. So cool! I paid $77 for mine on ebay, brand new in the box...so worth it! I've lost 62 pounds this year. Never did that before...no plateaus.

vampiree91

you'll still lose with net calories as long as you're not over of course, but it'll prob be quicker if you don't eat back all of the calories you burn (i noticed that with me at least). dont even bother with weight watchers its a joke- i lost 7 lbs on that and then gained back double of that before using my fitness pal only and losing 74 lbs and counting since just december 2012. nutri-system is absolutely disgusting, my dad tried to do it once and i tasted it.... big mistake haha you'll be fine w this. you'll still lose with net calories its just a matter of how fast you'd want to lose it as not eating them back/them all back will likely make it come off quicker. good luck!

jewel22887

Op you are doing great YES

faely

Working out is a terribly inefficient way to put your body into caloric deficit....use your diet for that.


Unless you have sports specific goals....go to the gym to build strength/muscle not to burn calories.

Working out is an incredibly efficient way to put your body into caloric deficit, in addition to adjusting your eating habits.

Go to the gym to build strength/muscle and to burn calories.

Fixed that for ya :drinker:

herblackwings39

I don't have time nor the desire for a complex diet and I am too cheap to use a diet service such as Weigh Watchers or Nutrisystems. I do like goals, numbers, and technology so MFP seems to be a great fit for me. Is it fair to say that in order to loose weight it's all about net calories...no more or less complicated than that? Is it a crazy thought process to think that I will walk in the morning, eat a low calorie breakfast and lunch so that I have "saved" calories for the evening that I can "spend" on a couple beers and pizza and still be at or below my goal for the day. I was going to start walking on the treadmill 15 minutes a day but using MFP I saw that 30 minutes would allow me several more calories for the day so now I am walking 30 minutes so I can bank more calories...is that ok? In other words does it make sense to walk more to eat more?

You have it exactly right. As others have said, however, be sure to not over-estimate your calorie burns. This site is set up to give you a calorie deficit before exercise, so you are supposed to eat back exercise calories.

This. I'd suggest picking one method of calculating your calorie burns and stick to it. If you don't lose weight instead of eating all the burned calories eat 3/4 or 1/2 instead.