Bonus Calories

nfpeacock

Hi Everyone!!

So we all have our daily calorie intake, and then if we work out and burn some we get bonus calories. I was just wondering how this works exactly? Approx my daily calorie intake is 1300 but when I do cardio at the gym I usually burn around 1000. So then my calorie intake jumps to 2300. Surely though I can't just eat another 1000 calories - wouldn't that defeat the point of the exercise?
BUT THEN my fitness pal tells me I'm eating too few calories for what i'm burning. Is there a way of knowing how much I should be eating to maintain balance and weightloss? Hopefully this isn't confusing haha

tacticalhippie

MFP has the deficit built into your calories already.
You have to eat to get back to the determined deficit.

hill8570

For little burns (300-ish range), I generally don't try to eat the calories back -- they're my buffer against underestimating my calorie intake.

For big burns (such as the 1000 you mention), I try to eat back around half, because if I don't the next day I'm walking into walls because my blood sugar is too low...my stored reserves just aren't enough to make up the difference.

It's sort of a "listen to your body" thing -- if you don't feel physically bad when not eating back the calories, you'll just lose weight faster. But if you're getting major cravings, you're really run down or grumpy as crap you really need to eat some of those calories back.

Jruzer

Just a word of caution: how are you getting your 1000 calories burned number? It's certainly possible, but that's a fairly large number. I'd suspect you'd need two hours or more of continuous high-level exertion to get there.