Eating Back Exercise Calories

Mr_Knight

If you need to fuel today's run with today's calories, why can you use last month's excess calories to fuel some other portion of today's burn?

Because a one hour, 10k run for me burns ~1000 calories, and it takes my body about 16 hours to metabolize 1000 calories worth of energy from fat stores. Which means my body *has* to hit the glycogen and intramuscular fat stores. Which means if I don't replenish them - ie, eat a significant amount of my exercise burn back - my body will be physically unable to keep running 10k.

Are you saying you can't physically run a 10k without first eating a significant portion of the 1000 calories that you burn running it, in addition to a sensible base level of calories, despite being overweight?

No. In fact, I normally do my running first thing in the morning, in a fasted state.

I am saying that if start running 10Ks regularly and don't eat the burned calories back, it will quickly become impossible to run 10k effectively, if at all.

The human body cannot fuel activities such as running from fat stores or even from ingested food - the metabolic processes involved are too slow to keep up with that level of energy output. And since the batteries that get tapped for these activities have limited capacity, the ability to perform will severely degrede unless the batteries are topped up. And topping up the internal batteries is just a different way of saying "eat back the bulk of your exercise calories".

Letje_Lux

Find your sedentary maintenance calories, subtract 500. Eat that.

Wear a heart rate monitor to track calories burned during exercise and eat your exercise calories back.

The confusion comes in because a lot of people have unwittingly already factored exercise into their maintenance calories, so they inadvertently count it twice.

And/or, they are going by the mfp exercise calculations, which are wildly inaccurate. It usually tells me I've burned 2X the amount of calories I actually burned.

While I agree about accurately tracking calories in/expended, I don't know if you mean your TDEE for sedentary or your BMR for sedentary.

Sorry, I meant sedentary TDEE calorie level.

SLLRunner

Find your sedentary maintenance calories, subtract 500. Eat that.

Wear a heart rate monitor to track calories burned during exercise and eat your exercise calories back.

The confusion comes in because a lot of people have unwittingly already factored exercise into their maintenance calories, so they inadvertently count it twice.

And/or, they are going by the mfp exercise calculations, which are wildly inaccurate. It usually tells me I've burned 2X the amount of calories I actually burned.

While I agree about accurately tracking calories in/expended, I don't know if you mean your TDEE for sedentary or your BMR for sedentary.

Sorry, I meant sedentary TDEE calorie level.

That's what I thought, i just wasn't sure.

ktsimons

Honestly I would never have started to exercise as much as I do if it were not for the fact that I get to eat those calories back. Now I just love to exercise, so really a win win.

You took the words right out of my brain...I went from being completely sedentary (like one step above comatose) to working out for an hour a day six days a week with a variety of cardio and weight lifting because I saw those calories go up from 1,200 - 1,600. I usually strive for a 1400 calorie day, but when I am really hungry, I will eat every loving one of those exercise cals back!!!

WalkingAlong

No. In fact, I normally do my running first thing in the morning, in a fasted state.

I am saying that if start running 10Ks regularly and don't eat the burned calories back, it will quickly become impossible to run 10k effectively, if at all.

The human body cannot fuel activities such as running from fat stores or even from ingested food - the metabolic processes involved are too slow to keep up with that level of energy output. And since the batteries that get tapped for these activities have limited capacity, the ability to perform will severely degrede unless the batteries are topped up. And topping up the internal batteries is just a different way of saying "eat back the bulk of your exercise calories".

The OP is walking a couple miles a day and being told she has to eat that calorie expenditure back for good health. I'm pretty sure her batteries can handle the glycogen drain. I have a feeling your's could, too, with a 200 calorie glass of chocolate milk, but you know yourself best.