Exercise calories

lbamford82

Hi all,

I’m just wondering, given we burn calories from exercise and these additional calories are added to our daily allowance, should we be eating these extra calories or do we just stick to our usual daily allowance?

four_bumblebees

Different people have different strategies. Theoretically, you would eat back all your exercise calories and still be at the deficit you set up in the app. However, some people find that the app or their fitness watch overestimates calories burned during exercise and they might only eat back 50% of them, for example. Also if you underestimate what you eat and also eat back exercise calories, you may find yourself at less of a deficit than you'd like. Personally, I eat back up to 100% of my exercise calories if I want them, but I often don't want that much. I probably eat ~75% back on average. (Edit: And for context I am losing weight at a slightly higher rate than I set the app to.)

yirara

The calories MFP gives you is for your daily activity level, thus work and house chores but without exercise. Thus if you don't exercise you should theoretically lose weight at the rate you've chosen. If you exercise you burn more energy and you'd theoretically lose faster. Losing faster though is in most cases not a good idea. And hence MFP is set up such that you log your exercise and get extra calories. However, exercise calories are often overstated, thus it's a good idea to start with eating back half, and then see how much you're on track after 4-6 weeks. If you lose faster than eat more. If you lose slower then check your logging. Only exception: you will lose slower if you're given a calorie goal of 1200 (female) or 1500 (male) as this is the lowest MFP will give you if you've chosen a too agressive weightloss goal.

AnnPT77

Basic foundation fact: Losing faster is not necessarily better.

Aggressively fast loss increases health risks (including risks for some very serious conditions), is hard to stick with long enough to use a meaningful total amount of weight, and doesn't help a person learn the new, relatively happy but improved habits that will help them stay at a healthy weight long term rather than regaining the original pounds plus friends.

MFP is designed for us to add exercise, and eat those calories back. That implies that when we set our MFP activity level, we based that on our life before intentional exercise. Including exercise when setting MFP activity level, then logging the exercise besides, would be double-counting.

In general, a person can either set a calorie goal that will be the same every day, and stick with that; or use the MFP base calories plus exercise calories approach, and the results will be about the same, if they understand their chosen method and set values accordingly. Either way, exercise should be part of the consideration, because it burns calories, and it's not smart to lose weight too fast.

In the "eat the same every day" approach, consider exercise when setting activity level, or get a calorie estimate from an outside TDEE calculator and set MFP calories manually. If using that approach, I'd use this TDEE calculator, personally:

https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

That one looks a little complicated at first, but it has more activity levels with better descriptions than most TDEE calculators, and lets the user compare multiple different research-based formulas for estimating calories.

In the MFP approach, set activity level based on life excluding exercise, and eat at least a good chunk of exercise calories on exercise days. (It's OK to bank some of those calories for the weekend or some other soon day; it's average calories over time that matter.) Syncing a good fitness tracker to MFP, turning on negative calorie adjustments in MFP, is a reasonable, reduced-effort way to do this, for many people.

Either of those methods can work: It's just a different accounting method, not a dramatically different calorie reduction.

In either method, someone who sets a very gradual weight loss rate for their current size (less than half a percent of current weight per week, say), and does maybe half an hour of not-very-intense exercise 2-3 days a week is probably fine not eating those exercise calories, and letting that speed up loss rate a small bit.

Also in either method, someone who sets the maximum weight loss rate MFP would allow, or over 1% of current weight per week, then does lengthy, intense exercise every day . . . well, they're likely to lose dangerously fast, may have negative health consequences, see hair falling out in a few weeks, etc.

In between, it's a question of how much health risk a person can tolerate in order to lose weight faster. Personally, I won't risk my health for that.

No matter the approach, stick close to the plan for 4-6 weeks, or one whole menstrual period for those who have one, and look at average weight loss per week over that time. If necessary, adjust the calorie goal to personalize the goal.

Best wishes!

SafariGalNYC

There is no one right answer. Also the most asked question in MFP.

If you do eat them back- monitor if those calories “burned” are correct. I found they messed with my progress and were always inaccurate for me. I shifted towards NOT eating them back unless I was truly hungry. Don’t trust the numbers given, monitor monitor.

YMMV