Do you eat your work out calories?

roseee311

I have been eating the full amount of calories that mfp tells me to eat, including the calories that I burn in my workout. I love the benefits of exercise, but it seems like it may not be giving me the weight loss benefit of exercise if I am eating the calories. I ran my first marathon this Fall and I have gained weight each summer due to training.

Right now I do about 30 minutes per day on the elliptical and weights/yoga for 15 minutes so I don't need the same calories as training for a long distance race.

Thoughts? Is it counter productive? What do you do?

edwardkim85

If you grossly underestimate how many calories you burn and jot it down, yes.

Even HRM doesn't reflect the calories burnt accurately and there's no way you can accurately measure the 'afterburn' throughout the day.

For example, I am a 245 lbs 6 foot male. I do crossfit for 1 hour, I jot it down as '15 min/circuit training', which is about 250 kcal.

I eat that kcal back because I know I burn more than 250kcal in that hour and throughout the day.

If I wrote down 30 min/circuit then that would be 500kcal. If I eat that back, there's no point working out.

Whole point is to create a calorie deficit. Eating back calories defeats the purpose of that.

GradatimFerociter

Generally speaking, no I don't. I just adjust my calories up or down depending on what adjustments I want to make to my diet. I do log my exercise, but this is more for consistency than anything else. As Edward says, it is difficult to achieve an accurate representation of how much you are burning so underestimating considerably and then adjusting depending on results is probably going to be the best thing for you to do going forward.

SezxyStef

If you grossly underestimate how many calories you burn and jot it down, yes.

Even HRM doesn't reflect the calories burnt accurately and there's no way you can accurately measure the 'afterburn' throughout the day.

For example, I am a 245 lbs 6 foot male. I do crossfit for 1 hour, I jot it down as '15 min/circuit training', which is about 250 kcal.

I eat that kcal back because I know I burn more than 250kcal in that hour and throughout the day.

If I wrote down 30 min/circuit then that would be 500kcal. If I eat that back, there's no point working out.

Whole point is to create a calorie deficit. Eating back calories defeats the purpose of that.

Yah no on the bolded part.

If someone is eating 1200 calories and exercise and burn 250 calories (using low estimate) they would be under 1200 net calories that is not healthy.

The best thing to do is take the estimates that MFP gives you and eat back a portion as they are known to be "over esitmated".

You get the calorie deficet through diet, cardio is for heart/lung health and those few extra calories if you want to treat yourself.

Other exercise such as strenght training is for fitness and those calories are hard to calculate.

That is why a lot of people use TDEE-% because then there is no question about the calories you get to eat it's the same everyday.

Chieflrg

If I wrote down 30 min/circuit then that would be 500kcal. If I eat that back, there's no point working out.

Whole point is to create a calorie deficit. Eating back calories defeats the purpose of that.

No.

Working out gives you many benefits.

This would be true if you didn't have your diary settings for a deficit in the first place. Majority of people have a standard -500 calorie set up.

If you have a TDEE -(x amount of calories) that is already figured into your daily intake of calories in which you would eat the calories allotted on you food page.

edwardkim85

Perhaps I should edit what I meant:

'eating back ALL of the calories mentioned by MFP is not productive'

1. MFP calories burnt are not accurate and often overexaggerated

2. thus, if you eat back your 'exercise' calories, you will tend to eat more than what you actually burnt.

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That's what I meant

eldamiano

If you want to lose weight, dont eat everything back?....