Eating your 'Exercise' calories?

stn760

I really don't understand why, after you enter your exercise for the day, the calorie allowance for your day increases. This seems to work against the axiom to NOT eat more just because you are exercising.

Can anyone explain this to me? Do you 'eat' your exercise calories and what impact does it have for you? If you don't, are you creating a greater deficit and therefore losing weight more quickly/easily?

Thanks!

burtle

i think the plan is to have a goal calorie target that will enable you to lose weight at a good pace. Yes if you exercise you can eat more calories, you'll need to because otherwise you wont have any energy!

Additionally if you were going to have an "over" day, with no exercise, having some exercise will turn that into an under day. Just my 2 cents.

ShadeyC

If you have a look in the settings it gives you an idea of what your body burns on a normal day, without exercise etc. The total that MFP gives you as a goal to eat is based on no added exercise. This means in order function properly during the day, whilst still eating at a deficit, you must eat "blah" amount.
As soon as you add exercise, You are burning more than what your body has to store. You eat back (most) of your exercise calories because otherwise there isn't anything left in the tank to burn.
Burtle has it right.
There is a limit though. You shouldn't really go below 1000-1200 a day because your body starts to slow down other processes and store energy, so effectively your metabolism doesn't work as hard as it normally does.
If you don't want to eat back your exercise calories and you aren't hungry then don't. Just be aware that if you are starving after you exercise and your body hurts more than normal, it's not getting enough fuel.
I personally use mfp, runkeeper and have a fitbit. I find my fitbit is a far more accurate calculator of what I'm burning everyday.
Even just reading about various fitness tools like those, give you more of an idea how bodies work.
Either way, listen to your body, not your head. You'll soon realise if you are actually hungry or thirsty, or bored.
And eating way less calories to start will make you drop quickly. But as I said, at some point it will just stop and start conserving instead of letting you lose.

ShadeyC

Oh I forgot to add, the food you eat helps your body recover from each exercise session too, so limiting your intake too much can also mean you can't perform as well as you want to each exercise session.

Plus. You should reevaluate your calorie intake every 3-5kg. I upped mine as I am getting closer to my goal, and I don't want it to be such a shock when I go to maintenance. Plus what you burn changes by weight.
This website is pretty cool actually http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

Maybe see how you feel for a few weeks and then reevaluate.
It's whatever works for your body