Can I eat back exercise calories?

erxzhz

I’ve been using MyFitnessPal with Negative Calorie Adjustment and Exercise Calorie Adjustments both enabled. It adds up calories when I exercise and deduct calories when I’m sedentary. Can I consume back the Exercise Calories that I have burned through exercise?

yirara

Yes, that's how MFP is supposed to be used. The weightloss goal you set yourself does not include exercise, hence when you exercise and burn more calories you'd lose weight faster, but also potentially undereat. However, exercise calories are often overstated, thus I'd start with eating back half of those and see what your weightloss looks like in about 4-6 weeks, at least though one whole menstrual cycle if you have one.

tomcustombuilder

Some people do some people don’t some people eat maybe half. The problem is sometimes the app over estimates how many calories you’re burning so that ends up making you eat more than you should. A lot will also depend on how accurate your weekly calorie counting is so you have to pick The way you wanna do it and do it for a month and then adjust accordingly if necessary.

Caralarma

I would say don't. Or if anything, eat a little bit more on days you exercise if you feel like you are hungrier.

AnnPT77

I've estimated exercise calories carefully, then eaten them all back, all through a year of loss from class 1 obese to a healthy weight, and 9+ years of successfully maintaining a healthy weight since (all of which followed around 30 previous years of overweight/obesity, BTW).

My weight loss happened at a satisfying rate, and was quite predictable. That predictability happened after I treated the first month or so as an experiment and fine-tuned my calorie goal based on personal results. It turned out I need many more calories than MFP recommended, a rare but possible thing. (At minimum, I think that hints that I wasn't over-estimating exercise calories!)

Here's a key thing: To eat back exercise calories, set MFP activity level based on daily life before exercise, such as how active you are with job and home chores. If someone includes exercise plans in the activity level setting, and logs and eats back exercise on top of that, they're giving themselves double credit for exercise.

It's OK to average exercise into activity level, if the person prefers to have the same calorie goal daily. (It's then important to do that planned exercise!)

It's also fine to set activity level without including exercise, then estimate exercise calories carefully, log and eat those calories back, which will give a different calorie goal on exercise days vs. non-exercise days.

If someone syncs a good fitness tracker to MFP - one they wear 24x7 - and turns negative adjustments on in MFP, that's a good option, too - maybe the best starting point for most people.

Everyone should run the 4-6 week trial period though: MFP, calorie calculators and even fitness trackers just provide numbers that are basically the average calorie need for similar people. Most people are close to average, but some can be noticeably off average, high or low. The reasons aren't always obvious.

If someone is targeting a slow loss rate, and does a small amount of exercise, like half an hour of moderate intensity 2-3 times a week, it's probably fine to not eat those calories, and let that cause slightly faster weight loss.

If someone starts with an aggressive loss rate, then adds frequent, intense, or lengthy exercise without eating any more to fuel that, they're materially increasing health risks (not to mention risk of giving up because it's Just. Too. Hard.).

In between those extremes, it's a question of how much risk a person is willing to take.

Best wishes!

csplatt

I do but I also don’t eat every calorie back because I assume my Apple watch is is not fully accurate. I lose weight around 1350, so getting in a 150 cal workout so I can have a snack actually works great for me.

Retroguy2000

No. That's not how the human body works. It's safer to assume you get about 50% credit for exercise calories, and that also requires the assumption that your exercise calorie estimate is accurate. The bigger the number, the more inaccuracy you introduce.

It's best to track weight change and total calories, while maintaining consistent exercise. If you find you're losing 1 pound per week on average, then you can infer you're in a 500 calorie deficit.

NotJustCurls

Do NOT eat back calories if you are in a deficit and losing weight on purpose!!

AnnPT77

NotJustCurls wrote: »

Do NOT eat back calories if you are in a deficit and losing weight on purpose!!

Faster weight loss isn't necessarily more successful weight loss.

If I burn 2500 calories daily, eating 2000 calories daily will result in about a pound a week of weight loss.

If I add 500 calories of daily exercise, and don't get over-fatigued from it, I'd then be burning 3000 calories daily. If I kept eating 2000 calories daily, I'd lose about 2 pounds a week. That may or may not be a good idea. If I want to keep losing a pound a week, I can eat 2500 calories when burning 3000 calories, and still lose a pound a week.

A person can eat back a sensible estimate of exercise calories and lose weight fine. I did. Or they can let exercise calories give them a bigger deficit, and lose weight faster. But like I said, faster isn't necessarily better.

yirara

NotJustCurls wrote: »

Do NOT eat back calories if you are in a deficit and losing weight on purpose!!

You don't understand how MFP is supposed to be used. But please stick around and learn.