extra calories 'gained' from exercising

muffintopsandsausagelegs

So I have a daily calorie limit set onto 1050, but when I go running I burn about 600cal, which logically would allow me to eat extra food worth of that same amount of calories, but does it really work like that, or is it a bit more tricky? I know exercise also generally boosts up your metabolism, but I want to make sure I'm not overeating.

snazzyjazzy21

Your calorie limit is too low, the minimum for a female is 1200. And yes, you should be eating back your calories burned.

PinkyFett

I agree it's too low at 1050. A lot of people usually eat back half to all their burned calories, especially those that are set low like 1200.

amwbox

She's not asking for opinions on where she chooses to set her limit.

To answer the question, I'd be cautious about trusting the calorie burn estimates from exercise this site used. They seem extremely generous to me.

The reason you are seeing extra calories available for eating is because weight loss is a matter of caloric deficit, whether the calories are avoided by not eating them, or burned by exercising them off. Just remember that your total deficit is the amount you eat minus the amount you exercise.

If you eat 1050 and exercise 150, that leaves you at 900 calories. Subtract that from whatever your baseline is to get your total deficit.

tryclyn

These may be more helpful.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/975025-in-place-of-a-road-map-short-n-sweet
http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/07/21/meet-staci-your-new-powerlifting-super-hero
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/840082-a-sad-realization?hl=sad

And a group to check out, read the stickies.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/10118-eat-train-progress

MB_Positif

It really works like that. I lost 50 pounds that way.

muffintopsandsausagelegs

Thank you, it's nice to have someone actually responding to a question instead of questioning my choices. And I've noticed it too, that the site seems to generate quite an excessive amount of calories, but i use nike run app, and I feel it's more accurate.

brower47

She's not asking for opinions on where she chooses to set her limit.

To answer the question, I'd be cautious about trusting the calorie burn estimates from exercise this site used. They seem extremely generous to me.

The reason you are seeing extra calories available for eating is because weight loss is a matter of caloric deficit, whether the calories are avoided by not eating them, or burned by exercising them off. Just remember that your total deficit is the amount you eat minus the amount you exercise.

If you eat 1050 and exercise 150, that leaves you at 900 calories. Subtract that from whatever your baseline is to get your total deficit.

Good job, fella. You just reinforced her unhealthy eating choices. She now thinks it's okay since it only takes one person to agree with her disordered eating in order for her to feel justified in following her unhealthy path.

OP, eat more. I hope you seek medical attention or someone that loves you forces you to seek medical attention for your disordered eating.

muffintopsandsausagelegs

She's not asking for opinions on where she chooses to set her limit.

To answer the question, I'd be cautious about trusting the calorie burn estimates from exercise this site used. They seem extremely generous to me.

The reason you are seeing extra calories available for eating is because weight loss is a matter of caloric deficit, whether the calories are avoided by not eating them, or burned by exercising them off. Just remember that your total deficit is the amount you eat minus the amount you exercise.

If you eat 1050 and exercise 150, that leaves you at 900 calories. Subtract that from whatever your baseline is to get your total deficit.

Good job, fella. You just reinforced her unhealthy eating choices. She now thinks it's okay since it only takes one person to agree with her disordered eating in order for her to feel justified in following her unhealthy path.

OP, eat more. I hope you seek medical attention or someone that loves you forces you to seek medical attention for your disordered eating.

Thank you for your concern, however I'm an adult, who makes personal choices, while being aware of all the consequences. I'm not on my way to eating disorder. There is a lot of diets that require you to consume much less calories daily (ABC diet, 1468 diet are just more common examples). To address all of your concerns I don't plan on making this into a permanent lifestyle, this is a rather short-term way to lose extra pounds, and I simply use this site to track my daily intake, so I can keep it under control. I'm very much a healthy person, who simply wanted to make sure, I;m using the app right, and who now realizes that providing specific data was unnecessary. I do however appreciate that people try to raise awareness of unhealthy habits and help those who pursue such choices. And even though calling out a person on having an eating disorder, might not be the best way to approach it, I value everyone's opinions. So thanks.

PinkyFett

Thank you, it's nice to have someone actually responding to a question instead of questioning my choices. And I've noticed it too, that the site seems to generate quite an excessive amount of calories, but i use nike run app, and I feel it's more accurate.

I wasn't questioning your choices, I was trying to help. 1050 will set up for failure in the long run, but if that's what you want to do, go for it.

brianpperkins

She's not asking for opinions on where she chooses to set her limit.

To answer the question, I'd be cautious about trusting the calorie burn estimates from exercise this site used. They seem extremely generous to me.

The reason you are seeing extra calories available for eating is because weight loss is a matter of caloric deficit, whether the calories are avoided by not eating them, or burned by exercising them off. Just remember that your total deficit is the amount you eat minus the amount you exercise.

If you eat 1050 and exercise 150, that leaves you at 900 calories. Subtract that from whatever your baseline is to get your total deficit.

Good job, fella. You just reinforced her unhealthy eating choices. She now thinks it's okay since it only takes one person to agree with her disordered eating in order for her to feel justified in following her unhealthy path.

OP, eat more. I hope you seek medical attention or someone that loves you forces you to seek medical attention for your disordered eating.

Thank you for your concern, however I'm an adult, who makes personal choices, while being aware of all the consequences. I'm not on my way to eating disorder. There is a lot of diets that require you to consume much less calories daily (ABC diet, 1468 diet are just more common examples). To address all of your concerns I don't plan on making this into a permanent lifestyle, this is a rather short-term way to lose extra pounds, and I simply use this site to track my daily intake, so I can keep it under control. I'm very much a healthy person, who simply wanted to make sure, I;m using the app right, and who now realizes that providing specific data was unnecessary. I do however appreciate that people try to raise awareness of unhealthy habits and help those who pursue such choices. And even though calling out a person on having an eating disorder, might not be the best way to approach it, I value everyone's opinions. So thanks.

If you're using the app for short term, low calorie diets then you are not using it as intended ... so you're therefore not using it "right". By age you might be an adult but your apparent thought patterns are shortsighted and show a willingness to put your long term success and health at risk .. not the most mature, reasoned, logical approach. Your inclusion of the ABC Diet as justification for your current intake is troubling as it is a pro-ana plan.

1050-600 = 450 net calories = unhealthy and well below what one could expect to see for a medically supervised VLC diet. Considering that MFP includes a caloric deficit in the provided goal based upon planned weekly weight loss (which for some reason I suspect you set at the max amount to get the lowest possible intake recommendation) means that your approach is creating an unsustainable deficit for HEALTHY weight loss.

geebusuk

The vast majority of people here do/have had an eating disorder - that's why they're here.
(Appreciated that some come purely to help with fitness goals).

I lost 40lb in 20 weeks earlier this year eating back ALL my exercise calories - which were generally calculated with a GPS-HRM and so on.

This is site is an excellent TOOL and you can make use of it as you wish.

I would worry that having to ask the question rather suggests you need to do a bit more research into the plan you are working on - I'd hope someone planning to eat at low calories would understand the answer already.
And it should be noted that I think the "1200 minimum" stuff is stupid - it's an arbitrary number picked out of the air.

I do however agree that going to such low calories can cause problems and that you need a good bit of research behind it - again, the existence of this thread suggests that you haven't got the basic knowledge covered.

A lot of 'diets' are based on very bad principals that can easily set people up for long term failure.

corgicake

Either OP is a little person or that daily base figure is unrealistic. If they are a little person, I will immediately shut up about how tiny the number sounds because for them it may make perfect sense. The exercise figures are based on statistics. For smaller amounts of exercise, there's no reason not to use the numbers given unless there's known reason for them to be off for a given person. The posted calorie tally for a side of fries at some fast food chain during dinner rush is probably further off than the exercise figures. It's only when you start multiplying the exercise figures by large numbers that it will become obvious whether they need to be higher or lower. If you stop losing or start bonking and everything else has been ruled out, you'll know what needs to be done.

SingingSingleTracker

So I have a daily calorie limit set onto 1050, but when I go running I burn about 600cal, which logically would allow me to eat extra food worth of that same amount of calories, but does it really work like that, or is it a bit more tricky? I know exercise also generally boosts up your metabolism, but I want to make sure I'm not overeating.

You have to balance out the amount of calories you eat back to still maintain a deficit for weight loss. So I wouldn't automatically eat back all 600 calories from the run you suggest.

Here are my NET calories for the past 90 days with my daily limit set to 1670 (I'm 6'4"), and all my endurance training (cyclist)...

2014 Net Calories

You can sees that on plenty of days, I was way below the 1670 mark (even with the exercise and additional eating), In fact, quite a few days my NET is even lower than your 1050.

Here are the calories burned in the past 90 days via exercise...(the big spike was a 66 mile bike race)

2014 Calories Burned in Exercise

And here is the weight loss over the past 90 days that corresponds to the deficit (lost a total of 20 pounds since January 6th at about a pound a week average)...

2014 Weight Loss

PunkyDucky

She's not asking for opinions on where she chooses to set her limit.

To answer the question, I'd be cautious about trusting the calorie burn estimates from exercise this site used. They seem extremely generous to me.

The reason you are seeing extra calories available for eating is because weight loss is a matter of caloric deficit, whether the calories are avoided by not eating them, or burned by exercising them off. Just remember that your total deficit is the amount you eat minus the amount you exercise.

If you eat 1050 and exercise 150, that leaves you at 900 calories. Subtract that from whatever your baseline is to get your total deficit.

Good job, fella. You just reinforced her unhealthy eating choices. She now thinks it's okay since it only takes one person to agree with her disordered eating in order for her to feel justified in following her unhealthy path.

OP, eat more. I hope you seek medical attention or someone that loves you forces you to seek medical attention for your disordered eating.

Thank you for your concern, however I'm an adult, who makes personal choices, while being aware of all the consequences. I'm not on my way to eating disorder. There is a lot of diets that require you to consume much less calories daily (ABC diet, 1468 diet are just more common examples). To address all of your concerns I don't plan on making this into a permanent lifestyle, this is a rather short-term way to lose extra pounds, and I simply use this site to track my daily intake, so I can keep it under control. I'm very much a healthy person, who simply wanted to make sure, I;m using the app right, and who now realizes that providing specific data was unnecessary. I do however appreciate that people try to raise awareness of unhealthy habits and help those who pursue such choices. And even though calling out a person on having an eating disorder, might not be the best way to approach it, I value everyone's opinions. So thanks.

So you're only doing this temporarily,:huh: you do realize that you'll gain the weight back once you start eating normally?

You'll just end up in a vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting. Why not just eat at a reasonable amount of calories in deficit, exercise and keep the extra pounds off for good?
Good luck!

geebusuk

So you're only doing this temporarily,:huh: you do realize that you'll gain the weight back once you start eating normally?

A very high proportion of people do. That doesn't mean EVERYONE will.

The 2lbs a week I did recently was certainly a lot higher deficit that most here recommend. I'm currently having to up my calories even more to get in to my desired slow-bulk as a month and a half down the line, averaging 3250 calories a day I'm still maintaining rather than gaining.