Eating the extra calories from exercising...?

SuzyT01

So as I was entering in all my food and work out info for the day, I realized that I ate most of my calories that I earned from exercising. And it said I would weigh just as much in 5 weeks as I would have if I wouldn't have exercised at all!!!! So what's the deal with that? I thought it would be healthy to at least eat SOME of the calories but I'm not seeing a reason to bust my butt (and believe me, I do...about 1100 calories burned every time I go to the gym) if it won't get me that far ahead. Any insight on this?

LotusF1ower

So as I was entering in all my food and work out info for the day, I realized that I ate most of my calories that I earned from exercising. And it said I would weigh just as much in 5 weeks as I would have if I wouldn't have exercised at all!!!! So what's the deal with that? I thought it would be healthy to at least eat SOME of the calories but I'm not seeing a reason to bust my butt (and believe me, I do...about 1100 calories burned every time I go to the gym) if it won't get me that far ahead. Any insight on this?

I do not know how much you entered into MFP that you wanted to lose each week.

For the sake of this posting, let's say you entered that you wished ot lose 1lb per week. This equates to a 3500 calorie deficit each week as 3,500 calories = 1lb weightloss.

Now lets say you burn 3,500 calories per week from exercising, if you were not to eat those calories, you would end up losing 2lb per week as you would be in a deficit of 7,000 calories for the week (3,500 deficit from eating and 3,500 deficit from exercise). However, you are eating your exercise calories, therefore your deficit remains at 1lb weightloss which is just the 3,500 calories deficit from the eating.

Personally I do not eat my exercise calories. Some people do, some don't, some eat some of the exercise calories.

LotusF1ower

Dang sorry, I also meant to say, that even if you choose to eat every calories you burn from exercise, the benefits of exercise far outweight not exercising.

By exercising as you lose weight, you are toning up as you go along and there is less chance of lots of loose skin and a "flabby looking effect" if you continue to exercise throughout xxx

fullboost

I don't and have never ate mine (intentionally)
I say intentionally as i don't make a habbit of it but every now and again if you end up going out drinking, having a takeaway with friends etc and you think s**t i've eaten WAY too much you then think hang on a minute, i burned 1000 calories off today, it doesn't matter.

For example, the last few days i've eaten under my normal set calorie goal without even including excercise, however i know that Monday i'm going to go out clubbing for a friends birthday and consume a lot of calories in alcohol, but i also know monday that i'm going to burn about 1000 in the gym so it's as if i've done neither (liver damage excluded of course )

I share the same opinion as you though, why excercise if you're going to eat it all back?