Calories remaining

Rocio12

Hello!
I’ve never believed in eating back my calories hence why I’ve failed at this. I’m back with a different mindset and want to follow MFP as closely as possible. If I have 380 remaining after eating about 1500 calories and working out, is it harmful to leave those calories there or should I eat something? I’d prefer not to eat but I don’t want to mess this up!

lgfrie

It isn't a good idea to leave calories over. Some people do it to "bank" calories for a treat day once a week and that's fine, but if you're trying to get the train on the tracks here, just do it exactly as written: eat your 1500 plus somewhere between half and all of your exercise cals. Once you get in the rhythm of that, you can fine tune things later if you want.

My take from bitter experience: undereating is at LEAST as much a problem as overeating for losing weight. Overeating at least is temporary, you do it and then you lick your wounds and move on. Undereating can cause weeks, months, or years of binge-y bad behavior and weight gain. I've been there. Don't eat less than you should.

1500 + half your exercise should be the rock bottom minimum. Try your best not to eat less than that.

sijomial

If you used a TDEE calculator your exercise expenditure would be taken into account when giving you a calorie goal. Just a bit more vague of an estimate and averaged out over the week.

If you used an all day wearable tracker your exercise would be taken into account. A variable daily goal just like you get here when using this tool as designed. Trackers aren't universally more or less accurate than MyFitnessPal.

When you get to goal weight you will have to take your exercise into account to maintain. You can learn that skill now.

Your body counts the calories burned during exercise even if you don't. If you set an appropriate rate of weight loss in your goal set up why would you risk making that an inappropriate rate of loss? That sounds very much like a way to "mess this up". Health implications as well as simply making a hard job harder.

Does that put in a better perspective why MyFitnessPal also intends you to take a significant calorie expenditure into account when you are attempting to calorie count? You wouldn't ignore 380 cals on the calorie in side would you?

There's of course benefit in making the exercise estimate reasonable just the same as making your food logging reasonably accurate also helps. Depending on what your "workout" is can mean different methods of estimating can work better or worse.

tinkerbellang83

Is it harmful? That depends on a few things:

What your chosen rate of loss is - if you're already at the highest rate of loss and not eating those calories back, then you could end up netting less than the lowest recommended amount of calories to get adequate nutrition, if this becomes a regular thing then this can lead to malnutrition.

How much weight you have to lose - if you have a lot to lose being in a larger deficit may not have too much of an impact, those who are extremely obese can afford to be at a slightly higher deficit, although it should be done with some medical supervision.

How accurate your calorie burns are - depending on your source of your calorie burn figures they may be accurate, they may not, some machines in the gym do seem to give wildly inflated figures. So although you had a burn of 380 from it, it could in theory be half of that.

Ultimately, not eating any calories back is the least likely to be correct, you don't burn zero calories doing any exercise. If you're going to use a tool (MFP) why not try using it as intended first (eating back the calories as they are not included in your calorie goal? If you log accurately for a period of 4-6 weeks, eating back your calories as burnt or even 50% of them, you will be able to see how accurate it is for you based on your weight trend. If you lose as expected, great! If not you can adjust appropriately.

Luke_rabbit

Great advice above.

I find it helpful to keep a simple spreadsheet.

On a daily basis, I make sure that my net calories (eaten - exercise) stays above 1200 (minimum for female body). On my spreadsheet, the net calorie cells turn red if under 1200.

On a monthly basis, I make sure I am on goal for maintenance (weight loss in the past).

My daily deficit can vary in a +/- 300 calorie range. I don't worry too much about that as long as the net is okay.

For me, my tracked calories plus Fitbit provided exercise calories is very close to accurate.