Exercise Calories

all4my4girls

So, I've been exercising REALLY well. I started Jillian Michaels 30 day Shred and I hit the gym 4 days a week and on off days I get on the elliptical. I sometimes earn between 600 and 900 calories a day from exercise. So, my question is...am I supposed to be eating those extra calories? Sometimes I find it hard to hit the 1600 I am allotted. I am definitely not hungry. Please help. :flowerforyou:

aquarianpixi

I like to follow the "don't force yourself if your not hungry" rule, but that's just me. If you feel energetic and satisfied not eating them back, and you're still losing, then I wouldn't bother. Just means your that much more ahead if and when you do eat over your calories (life happens to everyone and would life be without desserts :P)

Hungry_Annie

MFP is designed so that you eat back your exercise calories. There is a deficit built into your goal. There's a reason why they give you more calories when you exercise!! You don't want to build too big of a deficit. Don't be afraid to them back, you earned them. Even eat half of them back. You don't want to net too few calories. Trust me. I used to net as few calories as possible and lost weight, but I was miserable, starving all the time, tired, and missed food. And I also gained the weight back plus more because its not a sustainable or realistic way of eating forever!

anastasiasmirror

MFP is designed so that you eat back your exercise calories. There is a deficit built into your goal. There's a reason why they give you more calories when you exercise!! You don't want to build too big of a deficit. Don't be afraid to them back, you earned them. Even eat half of them back. You don't want to net too few calories. Trust me. I used to net as few calories as possible and lost weight, but I was miserable, starving all the time, tired, and missed food. And I also gained the weight back plus more because its not a sustainable or realistic way of eating forever!

I second this opinion.. it's what i tended to do wrong in the past.. i am just starting again--see how that works? eat too little and you gain it all back again at some point.

Mr_Knight

Sometimes I find it hard to hit the 1600 I am allotted. I am definitely not hungry.

The nice thing about being highly active is that you can't fool yourself very easily. If you are under-eating, it will become very apparent, very quickly, in your workouts. You will struggle, and your performance will suffer.

Trust your body.

bwogilvie

Your ticker says that your goal is to lose 63 lbs. (You're nearly 10% of the way there, by the way - congratulations!)

The only way that you could have gained those extra pounds is by eating more than you needed to maintain weight. That's more than 1600 calories a day, I can guarantee, unless you are very short and very sedentary.

So there are two possibilities:

(1) You really are eating under 1600 calories a day, while exercising hard for 1-2 hours a day (I'm a 165-lb. male and to burn 600 calories in an hour, I need to be working pretty hard), but you've changed the kind of foods you eat, so you feel full on many fewer calories than you used to need to feel full. In this case, you're likely to overtrain on insufficient nutrition, burn out, and find yourself listless and lethargic because you're not getting enough food to sustain your body's basic needs.

(2) You are eating more than you think, burning less than you think, or both. These links are helpful:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/872212-you-re-probably-eating-more-than-you-think
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/818082-exercise-calories-again-wtf

But really, does it matter? If you are making reasonable progress toward your goal by doing what you're doing now, then why change anything? If you stall (early losses are often mostly water weight), then take a look at those links. But if you continue to lose weight at a reasonable level, then even if your numbers are off, you're doing things right.

Good luck!

exercise2day2

I do agree with eating back your exercise calories, but would caution you that the MFP calories burned are just estimates. I regularly go to a Zumba class and observe people of varying fitness levels working out. The instructor is probably the only one who burns the number of calories per hour that MFP calculates. Some people work pretty hard, but I definitely see other who are doing a more modified lower impact version, which impact the number of calories burned. I still think it is wise to eat at least some back, but again, be careful that you are not overestimating your burn. The great news is that you are exercising

IvoryParchment

If you're not hungry and you're feeling energetic, you're not eating too little. You could well be calculating with inaccurate numbers, though. Trust your body on this one.

sarahg148

I think it also depends upon what you have your weight loss/goals set at. I have mine to lose 1/2lb/wk just because I cannot eat less than 1900 cal/day or else I will end up bingeing once or so a week undoing everything anyway. So I end up maybe eating only 1/4 of my exercise calories. I go to the gym and play tennis a lot...not as much lately as it's a bit chilly out! I can burn anywhere from 200 cal/day up to 2,500 cal/day if I do 4 hours or so of tennis mixed with doubles and singles. I figured I got this way by eating too much, so not eating all of the calories back should be fine. Like I said, I eat about 1900 cal/day anyway. I guess you really have to see what works for you. Unfortunately it does take a bit of trial and error. Good luck!!! :happy:

OH...and I do wear a HRM with the chest strap...but still don't 100% trust the outcome, so I will never eat back more than half.