Should I be eating my calories back?

gracie8234

I’m eating about 1450 calories a day right now in my defict. My fitbit says after my workout I burned around 300 calories. Should I be eating this back since that would make my total intake 1150? Or will this slow down my process? Thank you!!

deannalfisher

If you are using mfp calorie recommendations then yes you should eat back at least a portion of your calories

PAV8888

It depends. Is your Fitbit giving you that specifically for your exercise? or is this the exercise adjustment that you see on MFP based on your Fitbit and mfp integration?

If the first, you should probably start with about 50% and see how accurate this proves for you over time.

If the second, you should probably eat back most of it (given the above caveat of seeing how accurate this proves for you over time based on the changes to your weight level), with increasing confidence in doing so the later in the day you're looking at your adjustment.

So at midnight I would eat, in my particular case, 95% or more of my adjustment. But if I went to exercise at 6 a.m. and was looking at my adjustment at 7:30, and had no intention of doing anything above my general activity level for the rest of the day... then I would be much more conservative.

The integration adjustment from Fitbit has only a little bit to do with your specific exercise.

The adjustment is just a mechanism that replaces the static activity setting you chose when you first set up MFP with an estimation of your tdee based on the information your Fitbit accumulates through the day

yourfitnessenemy

I only eat back some because I feel like MFP way overestimates exercise calories burned. I don’t have a Fitbit or similar.

helen_goldthorpe

It depends on how it's been calculated for me. My indoor cycling setup has a power meter so I'm usually fairly confident of the burn on that. Long rides with a chest strap also seem fairly consistent so I'm usually happy to eat most of them back. Cycle commutes with a wrist based hr sensor seem to overread so I don't eat all of the calories from that.

Shortgirlrunning

I eat back around 80-90% of the calories my Garmin calculates I burn during exercise. It’s important to fuel your body for the exercise you are doing. MFP is designed for you to eat back your exercise calories.

spiriteagle99

MFP is set up so you eat back your exercise calories. How much depends on what kind of exercise and how accurate the estimates are for that exercise. I don't integrate my Garmin with MFP I just manually enter the exercise I do. MFP's calculations for walking and running seem to be accurate, so I eat 100% of those. I'm less sure about things like calisthenics or low impact aerobic exercise or yoga since those are dependent on how much effort I put in, so I may eat less.

nutmegoreo

I found that Fitbit underestimated my calories, so I could eat 200 more than it gave me and still be fine. Others find it to be the other way. Start with eating about 75% and after about 4 weeks, see what's happening. Either increase or decrease accordingly.