Exercise Calories

SAANGLIN

Is it necessary to use the exercise calories that you earn? For example, I am using around 1200 calories per day. I ran/walked for an hour and earned 400+ calories. That gives me 1600 for the day. I don't want to stall my weight loss, but I don't want to be hungry either. Your thoughts?

kk_140

If that 400 calories is coming from the estimate MFP gives you, eat back half of it. MFP and other sites that do exercise calorie calculations are generally waaay over. You could get an HRM to get a more accurate reading.

Personally I don't eat back calories, but that is just me.

4legsRbetterthan2

If you are following MFP methods then you are supposed to be eating your exercise calories back. You deficit to reach your goals is already built into your calorie goal for the day, eating way below that will speed up your loss but at the risk of your burning out. If you do not want to eat all of you exercise calories back that is fine, expecially if you do not have an accurate way of measuring your burns (in your case a HRM). MFP does tend to overestimate exercise calories by quite a bit, so if you are not sure alot of people recowmend eating back 50-75% of what your burned.

akaMrsmojo

I always eat them back or bank them. It has never stalled my weight loss. Of course I eat my BMR too, because I am not a fan of the skinny fat look. If you earn 400, eat 400. If you run, you will be hungry.

KarenJanine

For future ref. you might want to try the search function as there have been hundreds of threads on exercise calories.

Read the following for a detailed explanation, but in short, yes, you are meant to eat them. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/818082-exercise-calories-again-wtf

sijomial

If that 400 calories is coming from the estimate MFP gives you, eat back half of it. MFP and other sites that do exercise calorie calculations are generally waaay over. You could get an HRM to get a more accurate reading.

Personally I don't eat back calories, but that is just me.

Just a thought - how do you know with certainty they are generally way over?
Walking and running estimates should really be pretty accurate, maybe more accurate than a HRM.

(Would agree that some MFP calorie estimates for some activities seem a little fanciful.)

buffywhitney

Eat back all, eat back none or eat back 1/2 is what you will hear and it's all so confusing! We all get different results from different methods. The answer is, try one way and stick to it for a week or two and see if you get the results you are looking for.

Andaisy1

I will eat some of the calories back if I'm hungry, which is probably 50% of the time. I use an HRM when I exercise to get a better estimate of how much I burn.

segovm

Personally I find if I eat a reasonable amount so I'm not hungry, 1700-1900 calories a day for me, I can burn 1000-3000 calories a day and still feel dandy. It's a personal preference sort of thing. If you aren't feeding your body properly you'll feel pretty bad pretty quick.

cwolfman13

Have you read the stickies that explain how this tool works and how to use it properly? Because your question is easily answered by reading the stickies that you said you would read when you signed up...they're kind of like the instructions and stuff...