If you lose a lot of cals, how much should you eat back?

I went on a hike today for about three hours followed by a visit to the gym. Before you get concerned, I didn't work too hard at the gym, I just felt like I needed to go today because I've been going everyday. Anyway! Food wise, today I ate about 2,200 (and I'm done), but my allowance (1,500) + exercise put me at almost 3,000. How much should a person normally eat back on a day like this? Thanks! :)

Replies

  • MoreBean13
    MoreBean13 Posts: 8,701 Member
    If you're fairly confident your calorie burn estimate is reasonably correct, 80-100% should be eaten back, and you can spread out over a couple days if you don't want to stuff your face tonight.

    If it's more of a guesstimate burn, probably 75%
  • Flyer69
    Flyer69 Posts: 100 Member
    Depends if you want to loose a good amount of weight or not, I eat only about 40% of my exercise cals back! mainly because I doubt how accurate they are.! then you could live on 1200 calories, so in this case I would eat 1200+40% of 1500 =1200+600=1800 till 1500+600=2100, so yes your 2200 would be good.
    Don't eat ALLexercise calories back. :-)
    Other people might disagree but it works for me