Should I be posting my workouts?

Iapyxs

This is sort of a strange question to be putting in the Fitness and Exercise board but I wasn't sure where it would go, so forgive me if this is an inappropriate place!

Let me explain: I use both Myfitnesspal and Fitocracy. MFP I use primarily to track my meals, and Fitocracy I use to track my workouts. The reason I stopped posting my exercise routine to MFP was because it would subtract calories based on how much cardio or whatever I'd done that day. My TDEE is 1760 cal, and my BMR is 1280. Should I be eating those calories back? How many? I know people who can't lose weight because they work out and then eat so much that it effectively cancels the workout, so I didn't want to "eat back" the calories only to have myself gain weight!

I try to get to the gym twice a week, but I have a 9-5 job three days a week, and IBS (possible celiacs, but unconfirmed) so a lot of times I'm too exhausted to go to the gym, or I'm having a flare up. When I can't get to the gym, I try to walk at least three miles a day--generally it takes me half an hour to walk around three miles and about an hour to walk around five, but it doesn't feel like these activities are strenuous enough that I would need to eat anything back. I plan to see a personal trainer just to help me get into strength training because I do cardio but I want to develop muscles.

The following info is probably relevant in some way: I'm 18 years old, and a 5'3, 117 pound female who tries to maintain around 1400 calories a day. My main goal is getting stronger and healthier so that I can deal with the symptoms of my disease and live a happier, more active life.

It's probably obvious that I'm really new to this fitness thing! In the past I made a few half-hearted attempts to get healthy but I was always held back by a mixture of apathy, laziness and mental illness (bipolar II, depression, general anxiety disorder) but a few months ago I started getting treated for my mental illness and responded very well to medication, and now that my head feels clean and healthy I want to work on my body too. I've never been overweight, but I ate like crap and felt like crap constantly and probably exacerbated the symptoms of what I had.

Sorry, this is really long and I feel kind of dumb posting it. Help a beginner out?

korgscrew

Most people say you should eat them back, but I generally don't. I like to track my exercise via HRM and endomondo. The problem is how accurate are the calories burned? If I take the dog for a walk, I walk quite fast and can do 3 Miles in around 50 mins. Endomondo says (no HRM) I have expended around 450 cals, with the HRM it says around 700 cals. I usually half the lowest endomondo reading, but I don't log it.

I try to stay a little below my calorie goal, exercise or no exercise.This way I have a little buffer in cased somthing goes wrong. I also don't believe in "Starvation Mode". I think its BS. If it existed, then anorexic people wouldn't be anorexic. Its a platue, you will get out of it. Im in no way advocating anorexia by the way. Its a serious mental illness.

Just eat healthy and move more!

I follow the rule, Burn more than you take in. :-)

sijomial

First thing you need to be aware of is that this is not a TDEE site.
When you use another TDEE site to work out your numbers that calculated TDEE will already include your estimated exercise - so that any calorie deficit remains reasonable.

So if you follow the MFP calorie goal (which doesn't account for exercise) and then exercise you should be logging that workout and eating back those additional calories so that your deficit remains at the rate of loss you have chosen.

With only 7lbs to go your chosen deficit should be small.

There are issues around estimating calorie burns but for things like walking and running online calculators are plenty accurate enough.

Both the "TDEE minus a percentage" and the MyFitnessPal "eat back exercise calories" methods work - just make sure you do one or the other and not mix them up!

If you want to read more this question comes up a lot.....
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/818082-exercise-calories-again-wtf

Iapyxs

Thank you for the links and info! I have been getting information from a number of different sites and I suppose I got confused trying to follow ALL of the advice that those sites gave me! Not a great idea.