Starting workouts & daily caloric intake

staylitlove

Hey hi, so I started doing more intense workouts. And I am a sedentary being, I do secretary work. I do my own spin on OMAD/IF. So I drink hot tea/coffee with stevia & light cream all day morning/at work. And come home and eat one meal.

Well I did a workout class that kicked my butt after work (after eating my one meal) and tried to do my normal OMAD thing the next day. I had such intense hunger at work so I ate lunch. NBD. Realized that if I had a post workout shake thing I'd probably have felt fine. So I'd like to incorporate that after workouts.

I am trying to lose weight, have heard DON'T EAT YOUR WORKOUT CALORIES.
So, would it make sense to either
A: Increase calorie intake on exercise days
B: Eat smaller dinner portions to allot enough calories to have a post workout shake

steveko89

C. Increase calorie intake on exercise days by having a post workout shake

Though often cited to not eat back 100% of workout calories, this doesn't mean you don't need extra food to fuel workouts. There aren't terribly accurate ways to measure true expenditure specific to a given workout and many find that HR monitors or estimates over-allocate calories for activity and that eating back all of those calories (if inaccurate) have a tendency to mitigate their deficit.

Also, if IF/OMAD works for you as an adherence methodology, that's great. However, if it becomes problematic for your lifestyle there's no harm in having more meals so long as calories are equated. I've never personally done OMAD but have dabble with everything from 16:8 IF to six meals/protein doses spread across my entire waking time (I guess you could call it 8:16?). I'm hypervigilant about data collection and my weight correlates to my intake level regardless of meal number and timing. Qualitatively, I've seen body composition improvements and better energy levels when I spread meals out throughout the day with an even protein distribution throughout, more carb-heavy around my workout and shift to more fat-heavy away from my workout, per recommendations in the Renaissance Periodization templates.

sijomial

If you gave me $500 and I gave you back $500 would you be better or worse off financially?
Or just the same as if the transaction never happened?

"Don't eat your workout calories" as a blanket statement is frankly dumb if someone is calorie counting.
(Don't over-estimate your workout calories makes sense though....)

BTW - careful about relating sedentary to exercise when using MyFitnessPal as the two things, daily activity setting and purposeful exercise are completely separate entities.
Hence why your exercise isn't taken into account when your base calories are computed.

staylitlove

steveko89 wrote: »

C. Increase calorie intake on exercise days by having a post workout shake

Though often cited to not eat back 100% of workout calories, this doesn't mean you don't need extra food to fuel workouts. There aren't terribly accurate ways to measure true expenditure specific to a given workout and many find that HR monitors or estimates over-allocate calories for activity and that eating back all of those calories (if inaccurate) have a tendency to mitigate their deficit.

Also, if IF/OMAD works for you as an adherence methodology, that's great. However, if it becomes problematic for your lifestyle there's no harm in having more meals so long as calories are equated. I've never personally done OMAD but have dabble with everything from 16:8 IF to six meals/protein doses spread across my entire waking time (I guess you could call it 8:16?). I'm hypervigilant about data collection and my weight correlates to my intake level regardless of meal number and timing. Qualitatively, I've seen body composition improvements and better energy levels when I spread meals out throughout the day with an even protein distribution throughout, more carb-heavy around my workout and shift to more fat-heavy away from my workout, per recommendations in the Renaissance Periodization templates.

That makes sense. I need to figure out if my fitbit tracks calories spent from exercising.
And yes I love OMAD or IF. Been not eating breakfast for years, then last year decided to try OMAD. When I do eat lunch I get very very sleepy, while skipping I feel awake/elevated all day. Yeah it doesn't work for everyone but I do love it for my work week while weekends I'm more active & usually have breakfast/dinner. Also, qualitatively is a big word I've probably never used in my life. Lol thanks for your input!

springlering62

I’m just popping by to remind you that sudden increases in activity or intensity can lead to temporary water retention.

Just want to prepare you if the scale goes up a bit.

It’ll pass. Literally.

Wish I’d had someone tell me that earlier in my own loss!

westrich20940

You can do it either way that works best for you - if you used MFP to set up your weight loss goals, it will already have your calorie goal at a level that has you at a deficit in order to lose weight --- so in that case you WOULD eat back your exercise calories (or at least some of them, ppl find what works for them but I ate back at least 50% of them or all of them if I was still hungry).

I personally, also have a sedentary job - but run about 3-4 times per week, and hike 1 or 2 other days, or at least go for a 30min+ walk around my neighborhood. I now use the TDEE method and calculate my TDEE based on 'sedentary' as my lifestyle and then log my workout calories - and eat those back. So there, just like if you used MFP to get your calorie goal....I eat more on days that I intentionally workout.

I could also calculate my TDEE and say that my lifestyle is 'Active' or 'Moderately Active' and just eat my TDEE based on that, which would prob just give me an extra 200-300 cals per day...but I'd eat the same amount if I worked out or not. And also not eat back my workout cals.

I think it works best for me to eat more on a day that I work out vs. just eating more in general...but that's me and it could be different for you. The net overall would be the same.

heybales

staylitlove wrote: »

steveko89 wrote: »

C. Increase calorie intake on exercise days by having a post workout shake

Though often cited to not eat back 100% of workout calories, this doesn't mean you don't need extra food to fuel workouts. There aren't terribly accurate ways to measure true expenditure specific to a given workout and many find that HR monitors or estimates over-allocate calories for activity and that eating back all of those calories (if inaccurate) have a tendency to mitigate their deficit.

Also, if IF/OMAD works for you as an adherence methodology, that's great. However, if it becomes problematic for your lifestyle there's no harm in having more meals so long as calories are equated. I've never personally done OMAD but have dabble with everything from 16:8 IF to six meals/protein doses spread across my entire waking time (I guess you could call it 8:16?). I'm hypervigilant about data collection and my weight correlates to my intake level regardless of meal number and timing. Qualitatively, I've seen body composition improvements and better energy levels when I spread meals out throughout the day with an even protein distribution throughout, more carb-heavy around my workout and shift to more fat-heavy away from my workout, per recommendations in the Renaissance Periodization templates.

That makes sense. I need to figure out if my fitbit tracks calories spent from exercising.
And yes I love OMAD or IF. Been not eating breakfast for years, then last year decided to try OMAD. When I do eat lunch I get very very sleepy, while skipping I feel awake/elevated all day. Yeah it doesn't work for everyone but I do love it for my work week while weekends I'm more active & usually have breakfast/dinner. Also, qualitatively is a big word I've probably never used in my life. Lol thanks for your input!

Yes Fitbit does.

And when linked to MFP set to Sedentary - it'll also inform MFP that you actually burned more than sedentary - so not really exercise, merely correcting to a different activity level basically.

Because as many discover - your 8 hrs sedentary at work for 5 days is not your other 8 hrs of the day, nor the weekend. And I mean outside of even exercise.

So you'll get adjustments to that which is totally valid. If you could somehow pick from 100's of activity levels and pick the correct one you'd never see that adjustment and just accept the eating goal that went along with it.
Therefore accept the adjustment.

And Fitbit will estimate an exercise calorie burn - that estimate depends on what the activity is.
For exercise Fitbit will use HR-based calculation - and that is best use only for steady-state HR aerobic exercise.
If that is your workout - cardio, it'll be good enough.
Intervals and anaerobic like lifting move you farther away from that best use, therefore inflated burn by some amount.

Then again if you did 15 min of strength training and even if somehow 100% inflated calorie burn - what is that in a day's worth of calories really? More inaccuracies in your food labels probably.

Now, I'll do 1.5-2 hr bike ride and get inflated calorie burn by 150-300 calories easy, on an otherwise below sedentary day - that kind of stuff matters.


For your OMAD and workout - your body will respond and start storing more glycogen in muscles for that effort. May end up being enough you can eat afterwards and have a good workout. Not sure how long after eating you have tried it so far.

I've gotten to point with mine I can do up to a 1.5 hr hard ride from eating prior day near midnight and be fine.

Doing the workout after a big meal that would naturally have a longer insulin elevation period means the fat release is disabled, and you are using up carbs you ate (and available fat), and it's harder tapping into muscle glycogen stores since insulin is storage hormone - and overall just using up more carbs for the effort than might normally have been used.
Without the insulin effect, there would have been a ratio of fat/carbs used based on the intensity of the effort and that easily could have spared glucose, which your meal afterwords would replenish anyway. Usually it's that low amount of stored liver glucose that starts throwing hunger signals as the brain is using them through the day.