Eating your exercise calories

boophil

I find that everyone is different. I've tried both ways, and what ended up working best for me is when I eat back 1/2 of my exercise calories! Good luck to you!

delazouche

<1600 calories a day is a deficit for all but the tiniest of stunted shorty short short malnourished sedentary-iest people. And nobody gains fat on a deficit. Period.

If you're gaining noticeably on <1600 calories a day, it's because of some combination of the following:

1) Overestimating how many calories your exercise burns. The burns that come up in the database are crazy high for most activities. Cut those estimates by at least half if you're using them to figure out how many exercise calories to eat back. Same goes for fitbit activity calories, in my experience.

2) Underestimating how much you eat. SO EASY to do this, even with the best of intentions. You THINK you know how big a glass of milk is 8 oz. You THINK you know how many ounces that chicken breast was. Chances are, you're 40% underestimating if you're not weighing those things and you're gaining weight. At a target of 1600 calories that could be 640 calories excess you'd be eating.

3) Ingesting a ton of salt more than you usually do. This too, is actually really easy to do when you suddenly change your diet. A lot of lower-calorie choices and diet mainstays are super high in sodium. (I had to give up pickles to lower my sodium, and now I has a sad). Sudden increase in sodium => sudden increase in water weight retained. No big deal in the long run, but it will make it look like you're not losing weight if the scale is your only measure.

4) You are pooping less. Also not unusual on a diet, and your body can actually retain extra mass (plus water weight) in the gut if you've upped your fiber intake. This should sort itself out over the long term, but that can take a few months for your body to find the right equilibrium.

Just wanted to let you know how super helpful all this info was to me! I added a ton more fiber to my diet recently, trying to counteract the whole no-#2-for-a-week thing my prescription diet pills have seemed to cause. I dropped the pills last week and there's been some improvement, but my stomach is bloated like WOAH, and I keep dancing between going up and down 3 pounds, even though visibly I can see much more of my bone structure...so I figure/hope I'm still losing *something*. I only have 4 lbs left to go and wanted to bump my calorie intake up a bit, but I'm so nervous to go over 1300 (I've been at 1100 for months), even though nearly every source I seek out tells me more is ok. I hope you're right and the fiber bloating sorts itself out soon, so I can feel confident I'm not overeating!

psuLemon

Thank you everyone for your honest support and fantastic advice!! What a great community load with so much info.

I use the calorie displayed on my treadmill and elliptical machines (both Precor) but then I subtract about 50 calories from that an input it into the cardiovascular section of tracking.

The food I find is the toughest...I try my BEST even putting in recipes and calculating the amounts per serving.

Maybe like a member had suggested on cardio days stay within the 1200 and on weight days (which I usually do some cardio afterwards anyways) I will eat back some of the calories provided.

I will even try on cardio days if I've earned say 500 more calories (like I did yesterday) if I find myself hungry I will eat only half of them back.

Why is it that when you try and track the same 3oz or TBSP of food have different information? Which one to choose?

Also being a vegan is tough trying to get in enough protein and not too many carbs.

There really is no need to be at 1200 calories on either cardio or weight training. All you are doing is setting yourself up to lose muscle if you aren't fueling your body. Also, if you struggle with protein, pick up some vegan protein powder.