Guilty for eating exercise calories back

ohlookabear

Hey.. so yesterday I posted and said I run alot in a day.. and burn like 1000-1300 calories a day (over 100 mins running).. problem is.. I ate like 65% of those calories back but I am feeling REALLY guilty about it.. problem is that I am scared that MFP may said that I burn that much but I may not ? .... I have 950 net calories but I ate like 2800... (goal 1200)..and as I said I run over 100 minutes a day.. (semi marathon soon)

Greenrun99

What did I just read...

Eat your exercise calories.. scale goes up.. you overestimated.. scale goes down you underestimated.

kshadows

If you're super worried about how much you're burning, I'd invest in a HRM to get a more accurate picture. There's no need to think you should eat back ALL of your exercise calories but at the end of the day, you should be netting at LEAST your BMR. If your intake is lower than your BMR, you are risking compromising major body functions (like metabolism). As a runner you likely need to eat WAY more than 1200 calories a day

ohlookabear

If you're super worried about how much you're burning, I'd invest in a HRM to get a more accurate picture. There's no need to think you should eat back ALL of your exercise calories but at the end of the day, you should be netting at LEAST your BMR. If your intake is lower than your BMR, you are risking compromising major body functions (like metabolism). As a runner you likely need to eat WAY more than 1200 calories a day

Well are treadmill's sensors good ?

kshadows

If you're super worried about how much you're burning, I'd invest in a HRM to get a more accurate picture. There's no need to think you should eat back ALL of your exercise calories but at the end of the day, you should be netting at LEAST your BMR. If your intake is lower than your BMR, you are risking compromising major body functions (like metabolism). As a runner you likely need to eat WAY more than 1200 calories a day

Well are treadmill's sensors good ?

Are you wearing a chest strap? Those are more accurate than a pulse detector but yes, you can assume it's fairly accurate.

kshadows

I just saw your other post and you are setting yourself up for either failure or medical problems. 1200 calories a day is too few for a man who is sedentary, and you're obviously extremely active. PLUS your post said you're only trying to lose 7 pounds! You need to reset MFP to lose .5 pounds a week and eat as it says.

Yes, it's hard to wrap your head around it but you need to eat MORE to get your body working properly. I run 3 times a week for 30ish minutes and my calorie limit is 1,525 and I eat back at least 1/2 my exercise calories and weight is coming off great.

deksgrl

MFP calculates your needed calories to lose weight NOT INCLUDING EXERCISE. So, you would lose weight eating that amount it tells you, if you were to never exercise. Now when you exercise, you need to add fuel for that. You are still maintaining the same calorie deficit, even when you eat back exercise calories.

Example:

2000 (number of calories you need to maintain not including exercise)
-1500 (number of calories MFP says to eat to lose 1 pound per week)
500 (this is your calorie deficit)

1500 (number of calories you eat)
-500 (amount you burned in exercise)
+500 (more food you eat for exercise calories)
=1500 (this is still a 500 calorie deficit to lose weight)

editing to add: the numbers above are just examples for ease of explaining, probably not close to your real numbers.

As others have mentioned, the number of calories you actually burned can be inaccurate, unless you use a heart rate monitor.

To avoid having to try to accurately track the exercise, you could calculate your TDEE and take a % cut, this calculation would include exercise so you would not have to track it and "eat more" for exercise.

ohlookabear

okay thank you guys so much for answering. You guys are all helpful

deksgrl

1800 is the minimum amount of calories a man should eat. For an active young man such as yourself, you probably need much more than that.