Do you eat Your Exercise Calories
Replies
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mpkpbk2015 wrote: »my calorie needed for a given day was calculated via a metabolism test done by my doctor's office what's on MFP which was higher for my age, height and beginning weight. Just checking other users experience - Thanks for sharing.
Bear in mind your resting metabolism is just part of your total daily needs.
Two people with the same RMR can have very different activity and exercise which results in very different total calorie needs.
If you tell people what your exercise is then it is entirely possible that the exercise database here isn't the best way to get decent estimates.
My experience is that I'm lucky that my main exercise is easy to get good estimates for, I must take my large exercise burns into account or I'd waste away to nothing. Very roughly my exercise averages out to 600cals / day but with massive variations day on day, week on week, even season by season.
Would the person who disagrees with my previous post please speak up?
I'd love to know what part you disagree with and why.
Here's a summary of just my last 365 days cycling calories for context of why I have large exercise burns.
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middleagegirl wrote: »
Yep. I'm highly active at 57. I don't net less than 1900 calories minimum. I have to eat back my exercise calories or I'd not only be ravenous, but weak as well.janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »So . . . you're using MFP in a way that pushing you below 1,500 net per day?
Yes. Just as everyone who actually is highly active and whose MFP calorie recommendation is around 1650 would also be doing.
I don't know who told you this, but no. Everyone who is highly active isn't using MFP to net below the 1,200/1,500 minimum.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
If I eat my exercise calories back, I do not lose weight. I am 56.
Keep in mind that the base calorie burn estimate can be inaccurate (high or low), too, without exercise even being in the picture. I'm convinced it's inaccurate for me. It's just an estimate, effectively a statistical average. By definition, not everyone is average.2 -
This question comes up a lot and I can never understand how people who are so full all the time wound up on a weight loss app.6
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You must be special then because I DON'T have clients that have issues of eating back exercise calories IF the initial deficit set for them was correct for them to lose weight.middleagegirl wrote: »
Yep. I'm highly active at 57. I don't net less than 1900 calories minimum. I have to eat back my exercise calories or I'd not only be ravenous, but weak as well.janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »So . . . you're using MFP in a way that pushing you below 1,500 net per day?
Yes. Just as everyone who actually is highly active and whose MFP calorie recommendation is around 1650 would also be doing.
I don't know who told you this, but no. Everyone who is highly active isn't using MFP to net below the 1,200/1,500 minimum.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
If I eat my exercise calories back, I do not lose weight. I am 56.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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mpkpbk2015 wrote: »my calorie needed for a given day was calculated via a metabolism test done by my doctor's office what's on MFP which was higher for my age, height and beginning weight. Just checking other users experience - Thanks for sharing.
Bear in mind your resting metabolism is just part of your total daily needs.
Two people with the same RMR can have very different activity and exercise which results in very different total calorie needs.
If you tell people what your exercise is then it is entirely possible that the exercise database here isn't the best way to get decent estimates.
My experience is that I'm lucky that my main exercise is easy to get good estimates for, I must take my large exercise burns into account or I'd waste away to nothing. Very roughly my exercise averages out to 600cals / day but with massive variations day on day, week on week, even season by season.
Would the person who disagrees with my previous post please speak up?
I'd love to know what part you disagree with and why.
Here's a summary of just my last 365 days cycling calories for context of why I have large exercise burns.
Ohhh - that was me!
Just kidding.
But - you would not waste away to nothing.
Your workouts would take a massive nosedive in intensity and would suck.
You'd fall off your bike at some point and get injured.
And then you'd be laid up in bed for 6-8 weeks attempting to heal many things. Maybe longer.
The body does seem to have an incredible ability to eventually get what it needs and take care of foolishness.
Hopefully it's not the ultimate rest, the one that has no recovery from it.4 -
middleagegirl wrote: »
Yep. I'm highly active at 57. I don't net less than 1900 calories minimum. I have to eat back my exercise calories or I'd not only be ravenous, but weak as well.janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »So . . . you're using MFP in a way that pushing you below 1,500 net per day?
Yes. Just as everyone who actually is highly active and whose MFP calorie recommendation is around 1650 would also be doing.
I don't know who told you this, but no. Everyone who is highly active isn't using MFP to net below the 1,200/1,500 minimum.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
If I eat my exercise calories back, I do not lose weight. I am 56.
I'm always curious in these cases what people's numbers are.
If you have deficit say 500 losing 1 lb weekly, and a workout that burns say 500 calories, but then somehow eat 500 calories more than maintenance in order to gain 1 lb of fat weight each week - how does that happen, or what are your numbers to cause that?
Even if 500 was inflated 100% and you only burned 250, you'd still have to eat 1000 more daily to cause 1 lb fat gain weekly, to eat through the deficit and add on more.
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mpkpbk2015 wrote: »my calorie needed for a given day was calculated via a metabolism test done by my doctor's office what's on MFP which was higher for my age, height and beginning weight. Just checking other users experience - Thanks for sharing.
Bear in mind your resting metabolism is just part of your total daily needs.
Two people with the same RMR can have very different activity and exercise which results in very different total calorie needs.
If you tell people what your exercise is then it is entirely possible that the exercise database here isn't the best way to get decent estimates.
My experience is that I'm lucky that my main exercise is easy to get good estimates for, I must take my large exercise burns into account or I'd waste away to nothing. Very roughly my exercise averages out to 600cals / day but with massive variations day on day, week on week, even season by season.
Would the person who disagrees with my previous post please speak up?
I'd love to know what part you disagree with and why.
Here's a summary of just my last 365 days cycling calories for context of why I have large exercise burns.
Ohhh - that was me! Just kidding.
But - you would not waste away to nothing.
Your workouts would take a massive nosedive in intensity and would suck.
You'd fall off your bike at some point and get injured.
And then you'd be laid up in bed for 6-8 weeks attempting to heal many things. Maybe longer.
The body does seem to have an incredible ability to eventually get what it needs and take care of foolishness.
Hopefully it's not the ultimate rest, the one that has no recovery from it.
Just think what my VO2 max results would be 25kg lighter!
That's if I could actually still cycle of course.2 -
If I set my goal as 1kg/week and activity level as sedentary, I get a target of 1500 cals/day and a projected loss of 0.4kg/week. If I set my activity level at highly active since I do 5-6 workouts of 1-4 hours each, I get a target of 1640 cals/day and a projected loss of 1kg/week. That tells me not to eat all my exercise calories back.
I'm intentionally going back and quoting what I believe is your first post on this thread, but commenting on the whole flow of the back-and-forth posts.
Based on a re-read, I'm going to be very frank, and suggest that primarily people are not arguing with your mathematical logic. What people are talking about is the advisability of losing weight at a rate that's fast enough that it's likely *not* to be the best-assured path to long-term thriving good health. The discussion is in terms of exercise calories, because that's the thread topic, but exercise calories are not the main point others (and me, for sure) are trying to make, IMO.
To the bolded, I think what MFP is trying to tell you is that at your current body mass level, there's a very good chance that losing a kg a week is too aggressive, that it creates an undesirable level of health risk, essentially.
It doesn't matter how someone assembles the tinkertoys (BMR, daily activity, exercise, intake, etc.). Losing aggressively fast is not a good idea, IMO.
I don't know how large you are, but if you have a BMR around 1520 (as your spreadsheet suggests) and your 1kg (2.2lb) per week loss goal puts you below 1500 net calories, many of us would say that's aggressively fast. That's the point. (I'm using "net" in the usual MFP sense here.)
You can make a personal choice to lose faster, of course. Your body, your risk assessment. But IMO people are arguing with the implication that it's generically totally fine for someone to game the activity and exercise settings to rationalize what is likely to be a too-aggressive loss. It doesn't matter how the math is done, it matters what the outcome is.
This path of arguing that MFP's math is wrong or illogical, because it implies you shouldn't lose as fast as you prefer, is essentially implying that that's a reasonable way for others to look at it, too. I think it's bad advice for others, personally, and that's why I'm arguing with it. I think you're missing my (and others) main points. It isn't about differences between bricklayers and marathoners and how they account for work vs. exercise.
I have one last comment, related to your most recent reply to me:
Just quoting one snippet, but my addressing your whole comment.It doesn't matter how one gets there, speaking generically, netting less than 1500 calories tends to be an aggressive calorie goal for most men. In some specific cases (quite short, older), it may be OK. But as generic advice, IMO it's iffy.
Since I specifically chose my current BMR, that appears to have allowed you to misdirect my argument to be about whether I go below some sort of 1500 calorie limit. Even if I had a BMR of 3000, the point is the same: A bricklayer working his extra 800 calories a day as "very active", is not expected to eat an extra 800 calories, but a "sedentary" person running 800 calories a day, is expected to eat that back. It does not make any sense.
If someone asks is it ok to eat back their exercise calories, and you respond with "aim to lose no more than 1% of your body weight per week and eat at least 1500 calories a day", then that answer sounds fine to me. It allows that person to lay bricks all day or run a half marathon every day and eat what's required to keep below the 1% line without muddying the issue with calories "net of something but not net of something else".
You mention snipping parts of my full post, and I appreciate that acknowledged that, so that people realize there was a larger context.
In so doing, though, I think you left out something relevant, in a way that looks like more rationalization of aggressive loss, in context. What I said was:I think that 1% of current weight per week is about the most anyone should be targeting on a sustained basis, unless under close medical supervision, and that something more like 0.5% is a better plan when somewhere within 25-50 pounds of goal (depending on other potential sources of stress in the person's life, since stress is cumulative across sources).
I think, just spitballing the arithmetic, that a man who has a BMR around 1520, and is getting a goal of 1500 at sedentary, stands a decent chance of being in that "0.5% is more suitable" subgroup. Bricklayer or marathoner, within around 25-50 pounds of goal, 0.5% is a better plan.0 -
mpkpbk2015 wrote: »middleagegirl wrote: »Isn't the point of exercising to burn calories? Why would I eat them back after all of the work???
So no, I do not eat mine back. I don't even log what I burn.
From what I have read and been told your supposed to according to MFP program. That's why I put the question out there to see exactly how many people actually do. Because when I tried I winded up gaining. thanks for sharing
Tried it for how long?
Because you are saying you were in a diet, eating less than some daily burn estimate without exercise. say 500.
Then when you exercised and burned more, you also ate more. say 250.
And somehow you ate more than the deficit to cause weight loss, and ate more than the exercise burned, so much more that you actually gained fat weight?
Say the exercise estimate was 100% inflated - only burned 125 calories.
How could eating 250 extra calories overcome the 500 cal deficit and the 125 cal exercise?
See how something doesn't work out there, and therefore more to the story is to be found by examining what happened.
Or you tried for 2 days and gained water weight type of response?
It was over a two week period - two weigh ins because I only weigh once a week, same day , same time of day. And at the time the only exercise I was doing because my gym closed was low impact aerobics alternating with walking. In other words the days I walked 3 miles I didn't do the aerobics.0 -
mpkpbk2015 wrote: »mpkpbk2015 wrote: »Do you eat back your exercise calories even when your stomach/body is telling you your full for the day.
My stomach/body doesn't have a brain - and I originally had to lose weight because that described feedback was obviously not working correctly.
I now know the foreign language the body speaks in most cases, most don't.
I am not saying the stomach/body has a brain but you or at least I know when I feel full. And according to my dietician I should pay attention to that feeling and stop eating or I will go back to weighing 227 pounds again and I am not letting that happen.
But didn't you gain weight such it needs to be lost now because you were eating until you felt full?
Or you mean you felt full - and kept eating?
The reason I said it that way - to show you can't trust it without knowledge of it - and again it's like a foreign language, and if you don't know you'll misunderstand it.
Just as many can easily overeat without "feeling" full, the body can also fool you by not feeling hungry when in actuality you can be undereating by an amount that can cause problems.
Feeling full, and fully feeding your body is not the same thing.
It's gotten to a bad point when a person has undereaten too long, and body starts to adapt to the foolishness and they no longer feel hungry. It's a bad state if frequent or continuous thing.
I mean I felt full so I stopped eating.
I gained weight because I stuffed my face with junk food and processed food.0 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »People refer to the "TDEE Method," which is a bit of a misnomer (not that there's any problem with that). Really what they mean is that they're eating a fixed number of calories per day and not adjusting for variations in TDEE due to activity level, but achieving an average that controls their weight. A fine approach!
If you have very large exertions on certain days, it's becomes harder to do the fixed calorie approach. My workouts can burn anywhere from 500 to 1500kcals, so I try to know where I land on a particular day, eating a bit more when necessary. Actually, I wish MFP would show your cumulative deficit for the past several days to make it easier to spread a re-feed out, but you can just keep it in mind.
Finally, I will complain that, if you link a Garmin to your account, it's always throwing you extra calories. For example, today it's given me an extra 67kcals just for taking the trash out. I find it best to undershoot those calories, perhaps to make up for my sloppy logging.
Thanks for sharing appreciate your insights on TDEE. Have a great weekend.0 -
If I set my goal as 1kg/week and activity level as sedentary, I get a target of 1500 cals/day and a projected loss of 0.4kg/week. If I set my activity level at highly active since I do 5-6 workouts of 1-4 hours each, I get a target of 1640 cals/day and a projected loss of 1kg/week. That tells me not to eat all my exercise calories back.
Thanks so much - for sharing. Have a great weekend. Make sense to me.0 -
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Part of what sometimes gets lost in this kind of discussion is that exercise calories aren't really special.
They're like tooth-brushing calories, or TV-watching calories. We burn them. We eat them, or if we don't, they contribute to our deficit.
If our deficit gets too small, and we want to lose weight, we won't lose. If our deficit gets too big, we create health risk. We want the deficit to be "just right", a la Goldilocks.
It doesn't matter whether the deficit is running calories, or tooth-brushing calories, or brain-activity calories. They're all calories burned. They all go in the same bucket. What matters is the total, and how that compares to the total number we eat. Both sides are estimates, unavoidably, with those estimates validated long term by what happens on average on the body-weight scale.
If what we reasonably desire doesn't happen with our bodyweight, we adjust intake or activity. We can do that adjustment any way we choose: Eat back more/less exercise calories, raise/lower base calorie goal manually, leave a "calorie cushion" of uneaten calories or create a intake excess above goal every day, change activity level up/down in MFP guided setup (even to some setting that isn't objectively true, if necessary/desired), actually increase daily life or exercise calorie expenditure, maybe other ways. Doesn't matter. Any method of adjusting the deficit reaches the same weight-management outcome, if the actual calorie adjustment number is the same.
All that's different about exercise calories is how we choose to account for them, not the calories themselves.
The TDEE-based approaches averages in planned exercise. A pro of this (for some people) is that one gets the same calorie goal every day, exercise or no. A con is that if one has aggressive exercise plans, but isn't consistent about doing that exercise at the needed intensity, weight won't behave as expected (except by blind luck of inaccuracies in other estimates).
The MFP-style approach logs exercise separately. A pro of this is the useful lesson that eating more means higher food needs, and that being inactive requires lower intake. A con is that we have to estimate the exercise separately, which has inaccuracy potential in either method, but the potential inaccuracy slaps us in the face, with this method.
There can be personal reasons to prefer either. (For example, I like the MFP method, because my exercise is variable, seasonal, and affected by weather in season, so somewhat unpredictable.)
The difference is accounting. Exercise calories aren't special. They're part of *actual* TDEE either way, and need to be considered in calorie intake somehow, either way.
Side note: The MFP or TDEE calculator base calorie estimates can be wrong, too, in rare cases dramatically wrong. Even fitness tracker calorie estimates can be dramatically wrong, in rare cases. They're pretty much all just a statistical average of similar people, based on research. Not everyone is average. Most people are close to average. A few aren't.
I suspect some of what gets blamed on exercise calorie estimation is actually inaccuracy in base calorie estimation. I'm certain that some of what gets blamed on exercise calorie estimation is food-intake estimation inaccuracy.
Since they are estimations I don't think age and a person's metabolism is taken into account either. Some people just have slow metabolisms which I think effects the accuracy as well. thanks for sharing.0 -
You should never eat your exercise calories as figured by MyFitnessPal because you are likely overestimating your calorie burn. Set a daily target and try to hit that. If you can get a true average TDEE (Apple Watch calls it "Resting Energy") then that's your target calorie level to maintain ignoring exercise.
Thanks doe sharing appreciate your input. Have a great weekend.0 -
riffraff2112 wrote: »I underestimate the exercise burn by manually entering the estimate (to about 1/3) and I usually eat that amount back. I guess thats the same as eating back 1/3 of the calories but its just what I have always done
at this point I didn't realize my post was going to be so controversial - I say do whatever works for you. Thanks for sharing.1 -
middleagegirl wrote: »
Yep. I'm highly active at 57. I don't net less than 1900 calories minimum. I have to eat back my exercise calories or I'd not only be ravenous, but weak as well.janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »So . . . you're using MFP in a way that pushing you below 1,500 net per day?
Yes. Just as everyone who actually is highly active and whose MFP calorie recommendation is around 1650 would also be doing.
I don't know who told you this, but no. Everyone who is highly active isn't using MFP to net below the 1,200/1,500 minimum.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
If I eat my exercise calories back, I do not lose weight. I am 56.
Maybe it's a age thing because I am 66 and when I eat mine back I don't lose either. So I don't which is what prompted me to start this discussion to see what other peoples experience is.1 -
L1zardQueen wrote: »I eat 110% of my calories back and I’m 61. Have not had any trouble maintaining my weight at my age. To add, my calorie counting is spot on.
To add: my fitness tracker is not all that accurate either, I need to add calories to my day or I will be in a slight deficit and losing weight.
thanks for sharing I guess it's not an age thing since your doing well at it. It's probably just a me thing.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »This question comes up a lot and I can never understand how people who are so full all the time wound up on a weight loss app.
Depends on what your full of.1 -
middleagegirl wrote: »
Yep. I'm highly active at 57. I don't net less than 1900 calories minimum. I have to eat back my exercise calories or I'd not only be ravenous, but weak as well.janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »So . . . you're using MFP in a way that pushing you below 1,500 net per day?
Yes. Just as everyone who actually is highly active and whose MFP calorie recommendation is around 1650 would also be doing.
I don't know who told you this, but no. Everyone who is highly active isn't using MFP to net below the 1,200/1,500 minimum.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
If I eat my exercise calories back, I do not lose weight. I am 56.
Totally understand. If I eat my Thursday calories I gain weight.4
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