Calories burned

1234spankies

I am confused on whether to eat back my calories I earned during exercising

GymGoddessGoals

That is completely up to you. Some people do and some people don't. There are critics for each point of view. If at the end of day you are on count but are feeling fatigued or overly tired, eating back some cals may be your answer. If not, maybe you don't need the extra cals. In the end what works for you may not work for others and vice versa; Decide which is right for you.

I will say to be aware that cal burns are not exact and tend to be on the less than accurate side of things. So if you choose to eat back cals, maybe selective about how many you eat back.

Good Luck to you.

cwolfman13

1234spankies wrote: »

I am confused on whether to eat back my calories I earned during exercising

For starters, that is the way this tool is designed...why else would MFP give them to you as additional calories to consume if that weren't the case? MFP isn't trying to trick you or anything.

If you have set up your profile as MFP expects you to, exercise is NOT included in your activity level. The calorie target you get from MFP is a weight loss target if you were to do no exercise at all...zip...nada...nothing except your day to day stuff. That is why there is no mention of exercise in the descriptors for the activity levels. So when you set your activity level to say, "sedentary"...and then you do your exercise, you are doing more than what you told MFP. Calories are fuel...the more you move, the more fuel (calories/energy) your body requires.

But this also depends on what you mean by "exercise"...that is a fairly broad term. When I was using the MFP method, I didn't really concern myself with, say, going out to walk my dog and logging and eating back those calories...I figured it was just gravy and walking a couple miles isn't particularly taxing for me and not something that is really going to require recovery (not to mention that even a sedentary setting is going to account for somewhere between 3,000-5,000 steps). A 30 mile bike ride on the other hand is a completely different story. Not accounting for that would leave me in an overly large deficit to the extent of being unhealthy and really under-fueling my body and activity because now I not only have the deficit that has been built into my diet, but also a greater calorie deficit created by a substantial amount of exercise activity if I don't account for it.

Ultimately, it's just basic math. I'll use my numbers.

MFP gives me around 1900 calories to lose about 1 Lb per week...this means that MFP is estimating my non-exercise maintenance (NEAT) to be around 2400 calories per day. Let's say I exercise most days and burn around 400 calories. I eat those back because that activity isn't included in my 1900 calorie weight loss target, nor is it included in my NEAT maintenance...so I would eat those back and still maintain a 500 calorie deficit because though I would be eating 2300 calories, my maintenance would have also moved from 2400 calories to 2400+400=2800 calories. 2800-2300 = 500 calorie deficit still.

The difficulty and trial and error piece is determining a reasonable calorie expenditure for a given exercise. It isn't 0, but it also isn't 1,000 calories in an hour of exercise either.

jjpptt2

It depends on how you are tracking and logging things. So without knowing more it's hard to say what you should or shouldn't be doing.

I guess the place to start is...
If you are following MFP's numbers/advice/plan, then yes you should be eating back most/all of those calories.