calories earned

kathdooley9809

hi 👋 how do people feel about using their extra calories earned each day from activity?

yirara

Depends.

If you use MFP as it's meant to be used you should eat at least a part back. If you use a different method that takes exercise into account you don't. If you're using MFP as it's intended to be used and you're on the minimum amount of calories, 1200kcal for females and 1500kcal for males then you should certainly eat them back.

briscogun

I generally don't eat back my exercise calories because I do NOT trust the data I am getting for an accurate calorie burn so any exercise calories I do "earn" I just "bank".

The only time I will use them is if I know I'm going to eat out or have some kind of meal that will push me over my usual allotment and I just don't want to see myself go over my goal for pure emotional and psychological reasons. Now that I'm in maintenance pretty much it's not so damaging when I do go over, so when I exercise now I'm banking calories for when I go out and eat a bit more or drink a bit more.

AnnPT77

It's just a question about accounting methods.

Two different approaches are OK:

• Estimate base calorie needs excluding intentional exercise, then carefully estimate exercise calories, add those, and eat those, too. Someone doing that will eat quite different calories on exercise days vs. non-exercise days.
• Estimate total calorie needs including averaging in planned intentional exercise, make sure to follow through on those exercise plans, and eat that number of calories every day. Someone doing that will eat about the same number of calories every day.

With workably accurate estimates and solid logging habits, those two different approaches should yield about the same results.

In one sense, exercise calories aren't special: We burn them, they count, we'd need to eat them if we want to be weight stable. If we have a calorie deficit, it doesn't matter - and we can't really tell - whether that deficit comes from exercise calories, on-the-job calories, tooth-brushing calories (and similar stuff), or just-being-alive calories.

Eat fewer calories than we burn in all ways, lose weight. That's it. Everything else is about how we do the calorie accounting.

Lose weight too fast, bad. Bad for health, hard to stick with long enough to lose a meaningful total amount of weight. Therefore, someone doing a big bunch of intense daily exercise, not including that somehow in their calorie accounting . . . they're likely to crash and burn. That's a fail, right?

Need to lose weight, want to lose weight, try to lose weight, but not lose weight: Also bad, for obvious reasons. Since it's all estimates - base calorie needs, exercise calorie needs, logged food calories - bad estimating of something is what leads to that result. Also a fail, right?

Some people like one accounting method, some people like the other accounting method. Personally, I think what's important is to understand the method we're choosing, and not screw up the accounting. Screwing up results in losing weight too fast, or not at all, and either method has pros and cons that can contribute to those negative outcomes. That's why understanding our chosen method is important.

Me, I'm an "estimate exercise calories separately" person. I did it through just under a year while I lost around 50 pounds, and for 9+ years of successful weight maintenance since. I like it because my main forms of exercise are weather dependent and seasonal, which makes that part of my calorie burn a bit less predictable. Also, I'm pretty old, which makes bouts of illness or injury or surgical recovery a bit more likely, and also tends to make those last a little longer. I'm pretty healthy, but in these 10+ years of calorie counting, I've had a number of times when I couldn't do my normal exercise stuff for a few weeks. Because I was accustomed to estimating exercise separately, it was pretty easy to keep my weight predictable under those varying conditions. I'm comfortable with the calorie arithmetic involved. This method is great for me.

I'm not going to say everyone should do it the way I do. I'll repeat myself: What I recommend is picking one method, the one that seems to suit you best, and understand that method, then apply it rationally. With either method, learn and adjust based on the first few weeks' average results. Understand the potential pitfalls of whichever method you choose, and be alert for them. That'll work.

Best wishes!

cmriverside

I always ate every delicious calorie I earned by purposeful exercise. I just used the myfitnesspal numbers for exercise and I lost weight right on track. That's the way the site is designed to account for exercise.

I lost 65 pounds in eight months and then an additional 15 pounds the next year for a total of 80 pounds lost back in 2007-08.

I've kept it off for those 18 years just logging food and exercise and yes, eating back the exercise calories.

Just log everything for 4-6 weeks and see how you do. It's your experiment to run.

spiriteagle99

I also eat back all my exercise calories. I lost 55 lbs. and have kept the weight off for 10+ years.

In part, it depends on what kind of exercise you are doing. I run 30 mpw and walk the dog an hour a day. That adds up. If I didn't eat back the exercise calories, I would be too thin and have no energy. That would not be sustainable. When I was losing weight deliberately, eating back my exercise calories allowed me more flexibility in my eating, which meant I was able to keep losing weight without feeling too deprived.

DiscusTank5

If I want to see the number on the scale move, I can eat back some of my exercise calories but not all of them on any given day.

csplatt

I put my activity level on “not active / sedentary” then eat back most of my exercise calories. I also am pretty tight with my logging (enter individual ingredients at a time, use a digital food scale, etc). That helps.

pridesabtch

As long as you are being realistic about how much you burn (always an estimate), eating back at least a portion of them should keep you right on track. Not eating them back depending on you goal can be too restrictive and lead to setbacks.

Good luck!

westrich20940

I eat them. They are meant to be eaten if you used MFP to calculate your daily calorie goal.

I even used a TDEE calculator to estimate my daily calorie goal (still using 'sedentary' as my activity level bc I have a desk job and unless I'm doing something intentionally active, I'm mainly pretty sedentary) and still eat back my workout calories.

The trick is to use multiple sources to estimate your calorie burn also - the things that show up in MFP are not always accurate. I used to use a Polar HRM with a chest strap that would give me an estimate of my calories burned during a run or hike - but also track my runs using RunKeeper (which if you put in your personal info will also give an estimated calorie burn). I also might have used an online calorie burn estimator and used the data from either/both of those to also get a 3rd estimate and used a number in between all them, a median.

Eventually I just found that at lower HRs everything was minimally different so I used whatever….when my run/hike was more strenuous and my HR was higher during those times my HRM tended to seem high - but RunKeeper tended to seem low. However, I used the lower number since I eat back my exercise calories - so that gave me a bit of a buffer. I lost weight as expected throughout my journey so it must have been accurate enough. I didn't get bogged down with each and every single calorie necessarily.

rms62003

I actually don't eat back my exercise calories, because I find them very erratic. I just changed to a Samsung Galaxy watch, and it calculates 'activity' differently than my Garmin did (but, sorry Garmin, I like the watch better.)

EX: Monday, 3 miles on the treadmill, 30 minutes of strength, and it gave me 1347 exercise calories. For some reason, it doubled my treadmill, was 954 when I took away the duplicate. Wednesday, I did 30 minutes of stair climber (intense, HR was up to 150's) and 30 minutes of strength, and it only gave me 594. Today, it was 2.5 miles on the treadmill, 5 miles on the bike, 30 minutes of strength, and I got 811. My pace on the treadmill was just slightly slower than on Monday and I added another 20 minutes of exercise, but got 150 less?

I like the idea of using the TDEE at the correct activity level for your workouts, and NOT adding back the exercise calories. I think this is a little more accurate.

46regina64

I don’t eat back any calories, it seems counterproductive to me. I didn’t turn my health app on my iPhone before starting housework this morning, I really regret that. Just a few minutes short of two hours and I feel like I just ran after a freight train and so dewy needed a shower.