Less food or more food with exercise?

awindemuller8999

awindemuller8999

Anything will help.

AnnPT77

If you do more exercise, you burn more calories.

If you told MFP you want to lose a pound a week, and set your activity level in your MFP profile based on your pre-exercise routine (as per instructions), it gave you a calorie goal that's 500 calories below what it estimates it would take to keep you at a steady weight.

If you then do 250 calories of exercise, you eat 250 more calories of food to keep the same pound a week weight loss rate goal.

If someone has a not-too-aggressive weight loss target to start (like half a pound a week), and does a small amount of exercise (maybe couple of hundred calories 3 times a week), and has a fair amount of weight to lose, it's fine to let the exercise calorie burn speed up the weight loss rate.

If someone's already trying to lose fat fast (like greater than 0.5-1% of current weight per week) so has a large calorie deficit, and does hundreds of calories of exercise most days but doesn't eat at least some of those exercise calories, they're increasing health risks, and risks of giving up (or having over-eating episodes) because undereating will catch up with a person.

In between those extremes, it's a judgement call about how much health risk you like in your life.

I ate all of my carefully estimated exercise calories during weight loss, and lost weight just fine. I've done the same in 7+ years of weight maintenance since, and am glad I got the practice in estimating my exercise calories from the get-go, because there have been times I needed to drop exercise for a while (illness, surgery recovery, whatever). I can maintain my weight either way because of that practice.

csplatt

what do you mean by “less” and “more”?

ninerbuff

More food

Losing weight is fairly simple.

Know what your TDEE is.

If you eat 500 calories less than that, you'll lose weight.

If you eat at maintenance and burn 500 calories over that, you'll lose weight.

I'd rather burn more to eat more. I feel better, sleep better and workout better.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition