Eating Calories Burned

rebesleigh

Hey! I’m just a couple weeks in on my health and weight loss journey. Although I’m focused on making healthy changes, I would like to see the number I. My scale decrease. So I’m curious… do you eat the calories that you burn from exercise? I have my goal calories, but then there is the increased allotted calories based on my activity for the day. Do you stick to your original goal calories? Or do you eat your increased calories?

yirara

Yes, generally you should eat them if you're using MFP. However, calorie estimates for exercise are often grossly overstated. Can you give us a bit more information? What are your current stats and your calorie goal? If you're only eating 1200 calories then yes, you should eat more. If you're losing faster than expected and you're not on 1200 calories then you should also eat more. Fast weightloss sounds cool, but is not really that healthy.

Nephelys

Personally, I don't eat the calories burned by exercising. For me, I'd really feel like putting in so much effort for nothing (although the benefits go beyond just burning calories of course). My daily calories is set at 1400, and if I have a cardio workout which, according to the machines (so here the numbers are to be taken with a pinch of salt) indicates 650kcal burned, I'm still eating just 1400kcal. Unless I'm extremely hungry or feel too tired to finish the day, in rare cases I might allow myself to eat 150/200kcal more, but still below what I burned during the workout.

My weight loss is extremely slow (but I don't have much left to lose, it's more about getting really lean), so I can't see myself eating the calories burned during exercise, which would really be like sabotaging the whole process. But in the end, it's something that needs to be adjusted according to your case and depending on how tired you are, how hungry you are and what results you've obtained so far. It's going to be a lot of trial and adjustment at first, to see what allows you to lose weight reasonably (so not too quickly) while maintaining it for as long as necessary.

westrich20940

MFP does not take into account intentional activity/exercise when calculating your daily calorie goal...so it adds back your exercise calories because you are supposed to eat them back.

Your daily calorie goal is already set a deficit from your maintenance calories. So, if you workout and burn more calories, you eat them back, and you are *still* in a deficit. Theoretically you should eat them all back - but many users find that eating between 50-100% of their exercise calories back works. It just depends on how much wiggle room you really have to create a deficit while still consuming a sufficient amount of calories. For example: I lost 25lbs while eating back pretty much 100% of my exercise calories back. Now that I am in maintenance I'm more-so probably eating between 50-100% depending on my hunger and/or energy levels.

MFP uses NEAT (does not account for intentional exercise - just your overall lifestyle/job level of activity)....something like TDEE is different and DOES take into account your intentional activity. Since many users here are using multiple methods to calculate their calorie needs (or using different ones at different times) it can be confusing but it's important to understand how those methods are calculating things to make sure that you are consuming an appropriate amount of calories overall.

kshama2001

If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.

https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

Retroguy2000

MFP should really change their setup page. So many people seem to be endlessly confused by exercise calories.

The setup page asks people to estimate their "normal daily activities" as sedentary / active / etc. They should say there, "...excluding workouts".

It also asks, "How many times a week do you plan on exercising? For how long?" Why does MFP ask the exercise question? It just seems to create confusion.

AnnPT77

I ate all my carefully estimated exercise calories all through weight loss from class 1 obese to a healthy weight, and for 7+ years of staying at a healthy weight since (after about 30 previous years of overweight/obesity).

What really matters is your actual weight loss rate, once you've been at this long enough (4-6 weeks) to get a reasonable real-experience average.

I'd recommend not losing faster than 0.5-1% of then-current body weight per week, as averaged over several-week periods; with a bias toward the lower end of that range unless severely obese and under close medical supervision for deficiencies or complications.

Fast weight loss is really tempting, but it's often counterproductive. It tends to be hard to stick with (requires more radical changes, more extreme exercises and eating restrictions). Losing any meaningful total amount of weight - even if lost fast - is going to take multiple weeks to months, maybe even years if extremely overweight.

Sometimes a slower loss rate that's doable will get us to goal weight in less calendar time than a fast loss that leads to periodic deprivation-triggered over-eating, long breaks in the action, or even giving up altogether.

On top of that, the faster the loss rate, the higher the health risks. Is something bad guaranteed to happen? Of course not. But the likelihood of bad outcomes increases. What bad outcomes? Weakness, fatigue, under-nutrition, unnecessarily much lean tissue loss alongside fat loss, suppressed immune system, hair thinning or loss, gallbladder problems, and more. It's a question of how much risk you want in your life, to reach goal weight somewhat sooner.

Then, when you get to goal, what? IMO, the big prize is finding the new, pretty-easy, pretty-enjoyable eating and activity habits one can continue almost on autopilot long term, even when other parts of life get demanding/complicated . . . which they will. Slower loss can better support the experimentation to find those habits, and the practice to groove them in as routine.

"Lose weight fast, then go back to normal" is a common approach, but that's the recipe for yo-yo loss and regain, possibly the least healthy option. I think weight management is not a project with a quick end date, but a forever endeavor.

If you look at "Introductions" and "Getting Started" parts of the MFP Community, you'll usually see quite a few "back again having regained" kinds of posts, some of them "back for the Nth time". The posts will often say that MFP was successful for them before, but that's not my definition of success. For myself, staying at a healthy weight is the definition of success.

YMMV.

yirara

Nephelys wrote: »

Personally, I don't eat the calories burned by exercising. For me, I'd really feel like putting in so much effort for nothing (although the benefits go beyond just burning calories of course). My daily calories is set at 1400, and if I have a cardio workout which, according to the machines (so here the numbers are to be taken with a pinch of salt) indicates 650kcal burned, I'm still eating just 1400kcal. Unless I'm extremely hungry or feel too tired to finish the day, in rare cases I might allow myself to eat 150/200kcal more, but still below what I burned during the workout.

My weight loss is extremely slow (but I don't have much left to lose, it's more about getting really lean), so I can't see myself eating the calories burned during exercise, which would really be like sabotaging the whole process. But in the end, it's something that needs to be adjusted according to your case and depending on how tired you are, how hungry you are and what results you've obtained so far. It's going to be a lot of trial and adjustment at first, to see what allows you to lose weight reasonably (so not too quickly) while maintaining it for as long as necessary.

It's probably good that the calorie burn of that machine is likely very overstated. You write you still eat your 1400 calories, but if you really burned 650 calories then what you're doing would be the same as not exercising and only eating 750 calories. Which is totally not healthy at all, leads to massive muscle loss and damage to your body.

Nephelys

yirara wrote: »

It's probably good that the calorie burn of that machine is likely very overstated. You write you still eat your 1400 calories, but if you really burned 650 calories then what you're doing would be the same as not exercising and only eating 750 calories. Which is totally not healthy at all, leads to massive muscle loss and damage to your body.

I don't do cardio every day, only two or three times a week for 1 hour per session, the other days I do weight training and I have a rest day per week. I don't experience any muscle loss, on the contrary, I gain muscle gradually, not quickly of course, but I always increase my performance from one session to the next. The thing is, except my workouts, my job makes me extremely sedentary (some days I work from home), so I don't need a lot of calories for maintenance.

zebasschick

most days i eat about half my exercise calories, usually with yummy and protein heavy foods, sometimes with complex carbs. sometimes i adjust this, depending. the other day, MFP gave me 600 exercise calories for a bike ride, and i was pretty sure it was about double what i burned, and for me, that's fairly common.

cmriverside

Nephelys wrote: »

yirara wrote: »

It's probably good that the calorie burn of that machine is likely very overstated. You write you still eat your 1400 calories, but if you really burned 650 calories then what you're doing would be the same as not exercising and only eating 750 calories. Which is totally not healthy at all, leads to massive muscle loss and damage to your body.

I don't do cardio every day, only two or three times a week for 1 hour per session, the other days I do weight training and I have a rest day per week. I don't experience any muscle loss, on the contrary, I gain muscle gradually, not quickly of course, but I always increase my performance from one session to the next. The thing is, except my workouts, my job makes me extremely sedentary (some days I work from home), so I don't need a lot of calories for maintenance.

Specifically:

I don't experience any muscle loss, on the contrary, I gain muscle

Yeah, um...how long have you been doing this? Come back in six months and tell us how it's going. It's really doubtful you can hang on to muscle in that much of a deficit over time. Your body requires a certain amount of nutrition, specifically protein in order to not self-cannibalize the muscle you have. How are you tracking that ?

Sure, under-eating to lose faster *seems* like it will be a good plan...till it isn't. I'd be willing to bet a bucket of fried chicken that at some point in the not so distant future you will start losing hair, your skin will be dry - maybe cracked finger tips, and your nails will be brittle. That will just be what you can see, so what's going on inside your body? You may have trouble concentrating, or you may need more sleep or you may find yourself with an empty tub of Rocky Road and not know what happened.

Just - be careful. Ask me how I know.


To the original poster (the OP) - log your food, eat back the exercise calories. Do that for 4-6 weeks so you will have good trending data from which to learn. The key is for YOU to find your calories. Myfitnesspal gives you a number from which to start. I can tell you I under-ate for the first four months of my weight loss until I had so many symptoms of fatigue and irritability and the physical things I listed above; hair loss, skin dryness, and brittle nails and I just couldn't keep it up. I raised calories to 1600 + Exercise calories (so, 1800-2000 per day) and continued to lose the last 40 pounds at that number. I found that out by doing it: logging food and exercise, paying attention to what my body was telling me and watching the trend. Run the experiment, only you can do it.