Eat more when exercising?

NeedToLoseWeight2000

Hi!
I’m on a 1400 calorie a day plan to lose 1.5 lbs a week. I swam laps for 35 minutes today, and I am going to play basketball tonight which burns about 700 calories according to my Fitbit. Should I eat something extra? Or just enjoy the bigger calorie deficit?

AnnPT77

Fast loss isn't a great plan, overall. It's probably OK to under-eat by that large an amount now and then, but not routinely. Too-fast loss increases health risks, can make it hard to stay the course, and can result in things like hair thinning/loss and brittle nails.

Did you assume, in setting up MFP, that your activity level was just based on daily life activity, things like job and home chores, excluding exercise? That would be what MFP expects, then it expects you to eat back a reasonable estimate of exercise calories, too, in order to stay at that same target weight loss rate.

If 1400 is estimated to result in 1.5 pounds a week loss, that implies that your estimated maintenance calories are around 2150 daily, i.e., you have about a 750 calorie daily deficit. Then, if the 700 calorie estimate is accurate for the exercise, you're effectively cutting an additional 700 calories (if you don't eat any of that exercise back). Energetically, that's equivalent to eating 1400 minus 700 calories, i.e., in effect eating 700 calories. Does that really sound like a good idea?

How much do you have to lose, total - at least approximately? 1.5 pounds a week may already be fairly fast, unless you have a substantial amount to lose. If you routinely do something like 700 calories of exercise, routinely eat none of that back, you'd essentially be shifting your loss rate to almost 3 pounds a week. Actually losing 3 pounds a week would be quite risky health-wise, unless well over 300 pounds to start, IMO.

I estimated my exercise calories carefully, and ate all of them back during weight loss (50-some pounds in a bit under a year), and for 7+ years of maintenance since. Some people do it differently from the way MFP is designed, but the basic MFP method worked fine for me.

If you're targeting fairly fast loss in the first place, and regularly doing quite a bit of exercise, I'd recommend fueling that exercise, i.e., eating a fair fraction of the exercise calories back. You don't need to eat them all the same day, it's fine to average over a few days.

NeedToLoseWeight2000

Thanks for the response! I’m just starting out here. I’m 5”2 SW is 197, GW is 130. So I do have a significant amount to lose. I play basketball 1-2 times a week but other than that my only exercise is walking, so I don’t consider myself highly active.

tomcustombuilder

Do whatever you think is necessary and review progress or lack of it in 6 weeks and adjust calories accordingly. It's rare that you'll get it right at the beginning, this is more of a "throw and adjust" type of situation.

AnnPT77

NeedToLoseWeight2000 wrote: »

Thanks for the response! I’m just starting out here. I’m 5”2 SW is 197, GW is 130. So I do have a significant amount to lose. I play basketball 1-2 times a week but other than that my only exercise is walking, so I don’t consider myself highly active.

I'd go with "don't make a habit of it", then. If you're not especially hungry after all the exercise, it's OK to occasionally eat below goal by a good bit, but if you find yourself feeling a little hungry (or weak or fatigued) in the next couple of days, eat some of those calories then.

I'd suggest that you want to be managing your appetite, energy level, satiation and exercise effectiveness for the long haul, not pursuing rapid-as-conceivable weight loss.

Losing 67 pounds is going to take a while - many weeks to months, maybe over a year. That puts a premium on a sustainable routine that keeps you losing, but strong, healthy, energetic and generally happy while you do it. Then comes the long term challenge: Maintaining that loss. Putting positive habits in place now will make that stage more achievable.

FWIW, I started just a bit lighter than you are now, at 183 pounds, lost to healthy weight, now sitting at about 131. It took just under a year. Like I said, I've been at a healthy weight for 7+ years since.

You're getting a good start, but keep it in a sustainable zone, I'd suggest. Fast loss seems enticing, but sometimes moderate loss that's sustainable can get us to goal weight in less calendar time than a more extreme approach that eventually results in deprivation-triggered bouts of over-eating, breaks in the action, or maybe even giving up altogether.

Best wishes!

PAV8888

1.5 lbs a week = 750 Cal + 1400 Cal = 2150 your ESTIMATED maintenance IF your settings on MFP actually match your personal reality. So you're starting with a 35% deficit. For anything but the short term this is a very aggressive deficit.

Which means that I wouldn't go around deliberately trying to increase this deficit until and unless my actual results pointed out a reason for me to do so.

Fitbit, when integrated with MFP, works to REPLACE MFP's estimate of calories burned with Fitbit's estimate of calories burned at the END OF DAY, i.e MIDNIGHT.

This means that your Fitbit "exercise" adjustment will be either over or under compensating during the adjustments you see during the day until the final version of the adjustment arrives at midnight.

It is called an exercise adjustment but really it is an accounting adjustment replacing your MFP estimate of calories spent with Fitbit's estimate of calories spent for the whole day and because of all activity, exercise, as well as the mere fact that you're alive and kicking!

As much as you may or may not consider yourself to be highly active, sufficient walking can most certainly turn someone into being highly active using the classification the way that MFP does, i.e. assigning an activity multiplier of 1.8 to "highly active" people.

In fact somewhere between the two but probably closer to the three hour mark of moderate walking in a day will drop you, quite nicely, into the MFP highly active category... no other exercise necessary!

Best of luck.

zebasschick

i used to eat back about half my exercise calories, mostly in protein. if you exercise and don't eat back what you need, you may lose muscle or energy, and that's not healthy or good for weight loss. the muscle loss can also lead to future injury.

that being said, for me both MFP and fitbit exaggerate the number of calories i burn, usually, which is why i used to eat back half the calories.

yirara

Yep, numbers can be exaggerated. For running my garmin is pretty good, for other exercise a bit shite. For the next person it might be the other way around. Certainly eat something back. If you lose over a period of time faster than expected or you don’t feel well then eat more. Also important to note: devices often display gross calories, and net calories only show up in more detailed info. Gross calories are what your body burns plus the exercise. You want only the net calories without the first part as that is already part of the calories mfp gives you. Thus 700 calories basketball might inly be 500 net.

Sett2023

I don't trust my Fitbit, it exaggerates calories burnt.
For walking, instead, I found MFP fairly reliable. Simply, to be even on the safer side, I register always "slow pace" also when I walk faster. Don't know for other exercises 'cause I only walk.
(Note: I started eating back half of my walking calories, but I was losing too much, so I upped and upped. Now I eat back everything and I'm still losing, but at a more reasonable pace.)

PAV8888

Sett2023 wrote: »

I don't trust my Fitbit, it exaggerates calories burnt.
For walking, instead, I found MFP fairly reliable. Simply, to be even on the safer side, I register always "slow pace" also when I walk faster. Don't know for other exercises 'cause I only walk.
(Note: I started eating back half of my walking calories, but I was losing too much, so I upped and upped. Now I eat back everything and I'm still losing, but at a more reasonable pace.)

????


I can't doubt your experience but math wise this makes no sense which makes me think that maybe settings are not right or heart rate is high during activity throwing off your Fitbit?

Both Fitbit and MFP translate exercise into MET hours. Fitbit averages them in 5 minute increments and arrives at your tdee.

MFP assigns a single tdee value to the day based on the activity multiplier you selected and then adds activity based on the MET value you use (so moderate walking would be around 3 MET)

Inherently MFP double counts calories of slow activities because on a one hour 3 MET activity it does not subtract the equivalent to 1.25 MET calories (if you've selected sedentary) that it has pre-assigned to the time slot.

By contrast Fitbit would have assigned nothing to the time slot and would add based on per 5 min averaged detection or 1.0*BMR per minute if nothing at all detected

Please note that Fitbit exercise adjustment does not represent an exercise. It just serves to transfer the Fitbit tdee estimate over to MFP replacing the original MFP activity selection.

The values are correct at end of day (midnight) because Fitbit ramps down when you stop moving but MFP assumes you move equally during each of the 1440 minutes of the day. So Fitbit adjustments decrease for most people once they slow down in the evening

Sett2023

PAV8888 wrote: »

Sett2023 wrote: »

I don't trust my Fitbit, it exaggerates calories burnt.

Please note that Fitbit exercise adjustment does not represent an exercise. It just serves to transfer the Fitbit tdee estimate over to MFP replacing the original MFP activity selection.

The values are correct at end of day (midnight) because Fitbit ramps down when you stop moving but MFP assumes you move equally during each of the 1440 minutes of the day. So Fitbit adjustments decrease for most people once they slow down in the evening

Sorry, I didn't explain well.
What I don't trust is the calories' number burnt that Fitbit shows you in the exercises' chart. If I go to my walkings of yesterday, for instance, Fitbit says that I burnt a total of 728 calories (in the "activity" panel of the day: 274 + 300 + 154); MFP says only 441.
I uses these values to eat back my calories from walking precisely because I know that the total expenditure of Fitbit is correct only at midnight, and obviously I can't wait midnight to decide if/how much to eat, I "regulate" my intake along the day. And yes, Fitbit includes also the "other" calories - for breathing etc - that's the number more complete, but I noticed that if I use minimum MFP + all MFP calories from only, strict exercise, I lose in the correct way, without odd or complicated calculations, and all my losing travel before - and now maintenance - has been and is in the name of simplicity and easiness. I never had to be under effort, nor with eating nor with exercise nor with calculations, or I know I wouldn't stick. Instead, so it's easy, practical, doable for life).
Hope it's more clear...?
Edit: also, I can't regulate my intake on past activities, because I go for the "follow your whim": some days (and some weeks, because in fact I adhere to week's calories, not daily, but again, can't wait on Sunday evening to decide how much I can eat along the whole week) I walk more, other less, some days walking is fast and brief and other slow and long, some days is on hill and others... etc, so certain weeks I have a lot of calories allowable, other I have a lot lot etc

Sett2023

Sorry, another addendum: to move from losing to maintenance, I updated MFP minimum in this way: during losing I set it on "sedentary", while now it's on the first level of activty (in English I think something like "light active"?). This + walking calories (I add them by hand, entering walking minutes registered by Fitbit) is what I eat (use the week because some days I eat more, for instance in weekends we have always pizza, dessert is doubled and so on).