stop eating back burned calories?

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  • bajoyba
    bajoyba Posts: 1,153 Member
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    I agree that you are most likely overestimating your calorie burns from exercise. What exercises are you doing, and for how long?

    I'd have a hard time burning more than 500 calories in an hour of non-stop circuit training. A burn of closer to 1400 calories in a day seems like a lot to me. I actually had a stall in my weight loss last August because I was doing a lot of bike riding, and MFP was way too generous in calculating my calorie burns for that activity. I think it gave me upwards of 600 calories for an hour of biking, and although it was a good workout with a fair amount of hills, there was also a lot of down time, and I simply wasn't burning that much. For awhile, I ate back all of those calories, but the scale didn't budge. Once I figured out that I probably wasn't burning as many calories as I thought I was and started eating just a portion of those calories back, things started moving again.

    You may benefit from reading the sexypants link, calculating your TDEE, and including regular exercise as part of your normal daily activity rather than eating those exercise calories back as you burn them.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
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    Whether or not you 'should' eat back your exercise calories depends on your calorie strategy. If you do TDEE you should not eat back your calories, if you do a net calorie approach (MFP default) you should eat back you exercise calories.

    I found this list to work well for me:

    aPHiCng.png

    Huh, cool way to break it down but call me skeptical. Also pretty hard to estimate intensity in a way.

    The most cardio-intense workout I do is a plyometrics workout. It is 58 minutes long but includes about 10 min of warm-up and cool down. My HRM says I burn 950 cals during it but I sincerly doubt that as well so I usually log it as 600 calories.

    If I just take the ~45 where my heart rate is way high (intense) then that chart has me burning about 900 which...I admit...is close to what my HRM says.

    Perhaps I am underestimating then and am in the eat 50% of your burn back group but man, hard to believe I could burn close to 1000 calories in 1 hour.
  • aliakynes
    aliakynes Posts: 352 Member
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    I'm all for kickboxing, but 45 minutes will not burn 629 calories when you only have 18 lbs to lose. Hubby can burn that much running for 45 minutes but he weighs 220 lbs and is a man.

    Wherever you're getting your burn numbers, it's very inflated as suggested above. So I think TDEE will be a better fit for you.

    Add up the exercise hours of your average week and enter your stats here: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

    Then set your calorie goal to that number and eat that much every day (no adding exercise calories as they already estimated it for you). That's it, attempt to meet your exercise goal each week. As long as you stay in the range you should start losing.

    I would also recommend a kitchen scale to make sure your food logging is accurate.
  • DerekVTX
    DerekVTX Posts: 287 Member
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    I ensure accurate logging and do try to eat back my cardio calories burned. I do not log my weight training though (Upper Body one day, Core the next day.....and cardio everyday. The math seems to work for me and with a 7000 calorie deficit each week I have been consistantly losing 2lbs per week. for the past 17 weeks.
  • rileyleigh
    rileyleigh Posts: 106 Member
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    I tend to assume that my food diary is not 100% accurate, even though I do weigh everything. In that assumption, i also assume that any calories burned during exercise should cancel out any underestimates of food calorie I eat. So i log my exercise, but i don't eat back my calories. Everything then balances out in the end that way.

    That being said, if i go over my calorie goal but stay under my calorie goal + exercise calories burn, i don't really feel guilty about that either. Its really just about paying attention to what your body is telling you based on your results.
  • 4daluvof_candice
    4daluvof_candice Posts: 483 Member
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    I try to log FOOD as accurately as possible becasue my over consumption of FOOD has made me obese not working out. :blushing:

    I use a HRM majority of the time to log workout burns(which is still an estimate). I try to at least leave 200-300 calories(burned) left for overestimates and have lost so... but there are days where I may have burned more than I thought or ate less than I logged becasue my body tells me with that HUNGRY :grumble: feeling.

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