Calories to spare, do you eat them the next day?
Replies
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Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
But here’s the thing. Everyone is eating their exercise calories - regardless of what is on paper.
Mfp is designed such that it estimates your calorie burn (excluding exercise) and then you add in exercise (or any activity over and above what your base setting is). That is intended to get you to an estimate of your overall calorie burn for the day.
Estimates are sometimes wrong, sometimes People log loosely/inaccurately, food labels have a level of error. All of those (and others) are reasons that the numbers on paper might not match what’s happening.
But the intent of exercise calories is to get an estimate of your overall calories burned for the day. Same as the intent of logging food is to get an estimate of your calories consumed to the day. Regardless of what is on paper-your body is tracking how many calories you eat and how many calories you burn (including exercise calories). Your weight changes in accordance with what your body is actually tracking (including exercise calories).
So going by scale changes and tracking food - you’re still eating exercise calories. Because that’s how it works. You can’t circumvent physics.5 -
Yeh, Myfitnesspal uses the Mifflin St Jeor method of calorie calculations. Most other sites are based on TDEE.
How does MyFitnessPal calculate my initial goals?
That's where all the discussion gets confusing.0 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »
So going by scale changes and tracking food - you’re still eating exercise calories. Because that’s how it works. You can’t circumvent physics.Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
Sure, but "eat back your exercise calories" is understood by the vast majority of people on here (from what I've read anyway) to mean "eat whatever MFP/my tracker/the exercise bike says I've burned by exercising".
Instead of tracking with tape measure and scales, those numbers are held up as if they mean something to the individual. They don't. They say something about averages in large groups.0 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »
So going by scale changes and tracking food - you’re still eating exercise calories. Because that’s how it works. You can’t circumvent physics.Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
Sure, but "eat back your exercise calories" is understood by the vast majority of people on here (from what I've read anyway) to mean "eat whatever MFP/my tracker/the exercise bike says I've burned by exercising".
Instead of tracking with tape measure and scales, those numbers are held up as if they mean something to the individual. They don't. They say something about averages in large groups.
If you come to MFP and plug your stats into the Goal Wizard, that number you get represents what you need to go about your daily activities without purposeful exercise.
If you were to go to sailrabbit or scooby and enter your stats you would be given a weight loss goal calorie number that INCLUDES your weekly exercise. Myfitnesspal merely expects you to enter it separately.
Otherwise, the numbers come out the same.
I just think you don't understand that there are two ways to calculate. Maybe take some time and learn about that. Some people prefer the TDEE method, some prefer to track exercise as they do it, like me. This system works well for me. I've been at this for 12 years now and the Goal+Exercise calories works great. Granted, I'm a 3-4 times per week, one hour exerciser. If I was a daily exerciser maybe I would prefer the other method.
There is a difference:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation/p1
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1
YOUR solution is to eat none of them, which is not a good solution. Maybe you can get away with it for a while if you are logging loosely and have a lot of weight to lose, but if you want to eat as much as possible and still lose weight, it may become necessary for you to figure this out. True, the exercise calories aren't perfect, but they're close enough if you are also logging food correctly.
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Duck_Puddle wrote: »
So going by scale changes and tracking food - you’re still eating exercise calories. Because that’s how it works. You can’t circumvent physics.Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
Sure, but "eat back your exercise calories" is understood by the vast majority of people on here (from what I've read anyway) to mean "eat whatever MFP/my tracker/the exercise bike says I've burned by exercising".
Instead of tracking with tape measure and scales, those numbers are held up as if they mean something to the individual. They don't. They say something about averages in large groups.
Anyone who asks if they should eat their exercise calories back is told to start with a portion, wait a few weeks for actual results, and adjust up or down from there. At least in all the threads I've read on the subject here.4 -
Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
Instead of tracking with tape measure and scales, those numbers are held up as if they mean something to the individual. They don't. They say something about averages in large groups.[/quote]
This IS the gold standard if you want to get technical. Other things work through guesstimation and adapting through trial and error, but this way is the most precise way available without specialized equipment: track calories eaten, track calories burned, adjust percentage eaten back based on previous data, and then weight changes become ultimately predictable in relation to your calories in/out and you'll know exactly how much you can eat. So basically, it's the gold standard by definition.
Many people tend to pick the largest deficit possible, so encouraging them to not eat back exercise not helpful and can be borderline irresponsible if their deficit is already too high. You want to empower new dieters, not discourage them. Being able to eat more and still lose weight is empowering and confidence boosting. Knowing you don't need to starve yourself makes the whole thing feel more doable and more likely to last beyond January. Once they understand how calories work and have first hand experience, they may choose to switch to TDEE tracking or simply be content with less precise calculations (like me right now).
With the number of posts that ask about the weight loss advantages of "X" or expect unrealistic weight loss scenarios, it's dangerous to assume they'll look at their unhealthy rate of weight loss and think "hmm, maybe I should eat more". "Eat back at least half of your exercise calories" provides a clear easy to follow rule.2 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »
So going by scale changes and tracking food - you’re still eating exercise calories. Because that’s how it works. You can’t circumvent physics.Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
Sure, but "eat back your exercise calories" is understood by the vast majority of people on here (from what I've read anyway) to mean "eat whatever MFP/my tracker/the exercise bike says I've burned by exercising".
Instead of tracking with tape measure and scales, those numbers are held up as if they mean something to the individual. They don't. They say something about averages in large groups.
The recommendation is nearly always to eat a portion of the estimated exercise calories and assess in 4-6 weeks. Then adjust from there.
I’ve never seen anyone suggest that mfp/tracker/exercise bike calories should be treated as gospel. Really the opposite.
But universally-0 will always be the incorrect estimate. So the suggestion is to start with something. Be it mfp, tracker, equipment. Something. Because 0 is always wrong.
And while all estimates are based on analysis of groups of people (so they may not be exactly correct for me), again-0 is never correct, and I’m going to assume that any calorie estimate for my 5 mile run is more applicable and correct than an estimate that assumes I didn’t run 5 miles. Believe it or not-that does actually mean something to me when I ran 5 miles.
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Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
The advice given here is to coordinate a weight loss effort with how MFP works. You can observe your body and use data to manage yourself. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
It is true there can be a learning curve to logging accurately and evaluating the results to produce reliable numbers. Once that is accomplished though it cuts down on the guesswork.
Teaching a person to rely on body listening and intuition may be easy for some and impossible for others. This is why there is no universally right or wrong way to go about it. If a person finds MFP to be too daunting they should try another approach.3 -
Back on topic - I routinely manage myself on a weekly system. I bank calories to eat more on the weekend and I have naturally lower calorie days. I do not like returning to the kitchen to find a way to spend "remnant" calories. I personally find it unsatisfying and it can, for me, lead to eating more than I had left. Once I am done for the day I am better off being done and leave surplus calories for later when I can plan to use them instead of doing it on the fly.
4 -
Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
I agree that it's not the gold standard; it's one coherent system a person can follow.
On a site devoted to calorie counting that - if used according to directions - is going to expect users to eat back exercise calories separately, it's no surprise that people here speak as if it's the default assumption.
Because here, it is.
I'm only suggesting that if you use a different - perfectly valid - system, it would be helpful to say that you do something different than the standard system that MFP is designed to support. That would be more helpful: Perhaps some people would prefer to use your system, rather than MFP's.
And it's fine to use MFP in different ways than it's designed. But it's nice to help people be un-muddled about what's a coherent process (with whatever pros/cons it may have) and what's a mish-mash of methods from different processes.
Personally, I've found it easier to lose weight with MFP and a tracker (whose limitations I understand), compared to the way I started trying to do it back in the late 1960s. Others may vary, and that's fine.1 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »
So going by scale changes and tracking food - you’re still eating exercise calories. Because that’s how it works. You can’t circumvent physics.Why wouldn't it be succesful? Once I determine my maintenance intake, that is what I'll take in. If I eat less than that on a day it's not going to make too big of an impact over the long term.
In the right context, I think it can be successful: Why not?
I believe you mentioned - I think on another thread - that you monitor your intake & scale weight as well as food logging, and adjust intake based on results. That seems fine. Implicitly, it takes exercise into account.
I do think that just saying it's fine not to eat back exercise, on a site where the standard process is intended to involve eating back exercise, is potentially confusing for new folks.
In the regrettable cases where someone has already picked an over-aggressive weight loss rate (which is all too common), and is doing a lot of exercise on top of it, it could even be unhealthful advice.
Thing is, people act as if "eat back your exercise calories" is the gold standard in weight loss and fitness. It is not. It appears to be something lots of people have accepted as the gold standard though.
And with trackers being notoriously unreliable and people not being perfect creatures where it comes to weighing and logging calories in, it is often the case that using your own body and it's response to food (as I and many others do, outside of MFP and MFP forums) as a measure, what you do becomes sustainable for life. It teaches you what your body does.
People very succesfully lost weight pre-trackers by listening to and observing their bodies sec. I miss that a lot in advice given to people.
Sure, but "eat back your exercise calories" is understood by the vast majority of people on here (from what I've read anyway) to mean "eat whatever MFP/my tracker/the exercise bike says I've burned by exercising".
Instead of tracking with tape measure and scales, those numbers are held up as if they mean something to the individual. They don't. They say something about averages in large groups.
You're combining a few different things here which don't fit together: intuitive eating, whether to eat back exercise calories, and whether machine-reported exercise calories are accurate. They don't really have anything to do with each other.
Anyone can try intuitive eating; nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't work for everyone (it was an unmitigated disaster for me when I tried it some years ago). Intuitive Eating's antithesis, calorie counting, works for a lot of people. Here on MFP where the whole site is devoted to calorie counting, Intuitive Eating will be a tough sell, even if it works for you and some people. There is no such thing as combining Intuitive Eating with calorie counting; that's just a mush. If you're calorie counting you're supposed to eat all your calories each day (or week), not "listen to your body" and eat less or "listen to your body" and eat more. (In fact calorie counting is implicitly based on learning to ignore your body a little). Conversely, if you're intuitive eating, you're not supposed to be organizing your food day around counting and logging calories and stopping the food day to a number - you're supposed to rely on hunger signals. It's one or the other. They're mutually exclusive.
There is no general "rule" out there that you have to eat back calories. The issue is, MFP is designed to have you eat them back. The calorie suggestion it gives you already excludes intentional exercise. So if you tell it you want to lose 1 lb per week, it's gonna determine your maintenance calorie level (from your age, gender, height, weight, etc.) and subtract 500. If you eat that calorie level, you will lose the pound per week. If you work out, you're supposed to eat those calories; otherwise you will lose more weight than intended, and may end up at an unsafe caloric intake. The MFP system is designed to keep things safe and sustainable. Not everyone uses MFP's approach. I got my TDEE (maintenance level calories - break even) from TDEEcalculator.net, which includes an assumption of moderate daily activity to cover my exercise, and I just work with that number. Nothing wrong with that way of doing things. But if you're going to use MFP's calorie goal, in that case not eating back at least some of the exercise calories is a bad idea. The MFP number is lower than what a TDEE-based diet would give you, because it assumes you will eat your exercise calories back.
I can't see how the accuracy (or lack thereof) of an exercise machine or app's calorie estimate would impact whether to eat calories back. How are those two things related? Most machines and apps wildly overestimate exercise. My stationary bike tells me I burn 722 an hour with moderate-intensity riding, which is ridiculous. I count an hour as 400 and, as noted above, it doesn't matter anyway because I don't include exercise in my calorie calculation. But if I did, I'd be happy with 400 and eating back half of that, 200. One just has to be sensible about it.4
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