To eat or not to eat calories earned from exercise

mdebonee

Here's an interesting question though, sometimes i go for long walks (3-5 miles) late at night, and i get home around 9:30pm or so. If i've earned 800 calories, how can I justify eating 400-800 calories that late at night? usually i'm not even hungry but i will have a greek yogurt or banana. One walk i burned 1200 calories (according to multiple sources including my Jawbone UP), but thats almost a whole day's worth of calories. I cant eat that much late at night.

Hornsby

Here's an interesting question though, sometimes i go for long walks (3-5 miles) late at night, and i get home around 9:30pm or so. If i've earned 800 calories, how can I justify eating 400-800 calories that late at night? usually i'm not even hungry but i will have a greek yogurt or banana.

Just know that your eating times have 0 influence on weight loss and that should help you get through the mental anguish of eating that late. Or if you know you are going to burn those calories, plan ahead and eat prior, or add some snacks throughout the day.

kirkor

Here's an interesting question though, sometimes i go for long walks (3-5 miles) late at night, and i get home around 9:30pm or so. If i've earned 800 calories, how can I justify eating 400-800 calories that late at night? usually i'm not even hungry but i will have a greek yogurt or banana.

If you're going to eat back those calories why go for a walk in the first place?

RachelSteeners

Oddly enough, since changing my diet to more nutrient dense foods, I find I don't need to stuff my face as often so I'm full for longer on less calories.

Agreed! I eat much less now, but what I eat is much better for me, so I'm never hungry

mdebonee

Here's an interesting question though, sometimes i go for long walks (3-5 miles) late at night, and i get home around 9:30pm or so. If i've earned 800 calories, how can I justify eating 400-800 calories that late at night? usually i'm not even hungry but i will have a greek yogurt or banana.

If you're going to eat back those calories why go for a walk in the first place?

That's kinda the whole topic of this entire post, no?

47Jacqueline

You're supposed to eat back your exercise calories, but I usually don't get to it. I am working on that. Also on doing less cardio and more strength training, which doesn't add calories to MFP's daily goal. I understand that if you do strength training instead of cardio, you can still eat more, but it will show that you should eat less calories than you were used to when doing more cardio

It seems to me that it makes it harder to calculate my requirements than doing a lot of cardio. It shows that I have a lower calorie goal for the day, but I think I would be exerting more effort. With strength training you need more protein. So I think I'm going to go over my goal for the day, but it won't matter.

I'm still trying to get up to my daily goal at the moment, than to worry about extra exercise calories, but I'll be interested to see what happens when I lower my cardio.

It's confusing.