Stupid Exercise Calories (yeah I said it)

mamaisis09

So I have been working out really hard and burning between 500-800 calories 6 days a week. I alternate between doing a run between 3-5 miles, interval run, P90X, elliptical and play wii. Unfortunately this puts my allowed food calories over 2000! It is SOOOOO hard to get there! And I really want to consistently try to eat all/most of my exercise calories after reading some of the recent threads concerning that topic. Today AFTER dinner and eating a TON throughout the day I had still only eaten 150ish of my exercise calories... So I ate more after dinner (but before 8pm). I just feel full and gross and like I'm eating too much. I've never eaten so much, EVER... even on my bad days (well maybe on my bad days...). But then again, I've never lost weight either... What do you all think? Feel free to look at my diary. Its public.

rai8759

I had my first experience with this today.. could NOT eat all my exercise calories. I went over like 340 yesterday so I think that might be it. So forced myself to eat all except 300ish for my overage yesterday.

Eating without being hungry has always been a problem for me so it seems counter productive to force it down. But! I still want to loose weight so I'd better... wait? what?! :laugh:

thektturner

I feel the same way. And mine is only about 1700 with the exercise cals. I have a hard time eating more than 1500. Not mentally making myself eat it, but physically: my stomach just isn't that big anymore. Unless I ate total crap loaded with fat and sugar, I just can't get that many cals.

Produce just isn't high calorie and most of the things I'm eating aren't either: high fiber soups and cereals and lowfat protein: none of it is very cal-heavy. I end up eating like 2 servings of random snacky things (sesame rice crackers and triscuits, that kind of thing) just to get CLOSE to where it says I should be.

I just ate lunch: a cup of white bean chicken chili, 6 trsicuits and a yellow bell pepper and I feel like I just had Thanksgiving dinner. I'm stuffed. And it was less than 350 cals.

Stewie316

Are you consistently losing weight eating all of your exercise calories?

You don't have to eat all of your exercise calories. It's not the golden rule and doesn't work for everyone. Don't force feed yourself if you're not hungry. Try eating a quarter or half and see how that works.

fit_nyc

The goal isn't necessarily to zero out your net calorie intake, ya know. If I only eat 1200 cals (and my intake goal is 1200) and exercise 300 cals off... then I'm +300 in my net. which is GOOD. You don't want to ADD another 300 cals of food to make sure it all comes out to 0. Being in the positive of net cals is good. Negative is bad. You keep balancing it out, and you won't get anywhere. You won't gain weight, nor will you lose weight. It's like a stalemate.

This dependes on how you configured your weight loss goals. For me, a net of 0 cals equals 940 calorie deficit.

Lyadeia

I consistently lose weight without eating them all back. I eat some of them back but certainly not all. Thinking that eating them back would be counterproductive is not really accurate since MFP puts you at a deficit to begin with and eating them back keeps you at the same calorie deficit (exercise increases your metabolism so you can eat more anyway...and you NEED those extra calories to fuel your body to actually perform the exercise efficiently without breaking down your muscle tissue). But you don't need to eat every last one of them. I burn between 600-800 calories when I workout which makes my goal go up from 1210 to around 1910. But, I normally eat around 1500 or so. After lots of trial and error, this is just what I have found that works for me. I am not stuffing myself when I am not really hungry, and I am also not starving myself either (meaning I have no hunger pains ever, and I don't have the fatigue and moodiness that under-eating dieters have). And I have been losing around 1 pound per week.

eillamarie

Don't FORCE yourself to eat if you are truely stuffed. Try adding in 50 calories here & there (50 cals really feels like nothing so it's totally doable) thru the day & that'll bump you up by a couple hundred calories by the end of the day. Then presto, problem solved!

whyflysouth

MFP is a really helpful site, but we all need to remember our bodies do not actually have a calorie timer on them that resets at midnight every night. It's not as if when you're over on a particularly day it switches into storage mode, and when you're under by a significant amount it switches into starvation mode... these things happen over a larger span of time. You could eat back some of those calories throughout the rest of your week. When I was trying to lose weight I was rarely eating back my calories, but at the same time I never felt fatigue, irritability or misery over what I was eating. Sure I wanted cake, and cookies, and chips if they were sitting out. But I didn't feel hungry all the time without them either.

If you want to eat your calories though - peanut butter is the way to do it.

amysambora

What works for some won't work for others - it's just a matter of trying and testing until you find the balance that works for you. My job is fairly physical so I don't do a lot of extra working out on top of that - I walk a few times a week and try to do some strength training or yoga/pilates maybe twice a week. I only eat back SOME of my exercise calories and that seems to be working for me. For one week, I tried eating all of them and I didn't lose anything.

One thing you could try is having a bigger breakfast? Some of your breakfasts seem kind of small. Eating more in the mornings would take up more calories and you wouldn't feel a need to 'cram them in' at the end of the day

saj9291113

MFP is a really helpful site, but we all need to remember our bodies do not actually have a calorie timer on them that resets at midnight every night. It's not as if when you're over on a particularly day it switches into storage mode, and when you're under by a significant amount it switches into starvation mode... these things happen over a larger span of time. You could eat back some of those calories throughout the rest of your week. When I was trying to lose weight I was rarely eating back my calories, but at the same time I never felt fatigue, irritability or misery over what I was eating. Sure I wanted cake, and cookies, and chips if they were sitting out. But I didn't feel hungry all the time without them either.

If you want to eat your calories though - peanut butter is the way to do it.

Great way to say it. We all(including myself) look at it as a 24 hour period. When in reality it's not. I just started to change to a 350 calories every 3 hours instead of 24 hours total

mamaisis09

Thanks for all of the replies... I will continue this experiment for another week or so, if I still do not lose or gain then I will cut back (when I try to eat all of my exercise calories I am between 1700-1900 normally). I will reply to this in a week with a weigh in update... I will definitely try to eat more in the morning too, it is soooo difficult though. Today was actually a good day for me to get soooo many calories in before dinner. Wish me luck!

By the way I've been doing this for the past week and saw a bit of a gain this morning on the scale (2.2 lbs) but I had way too much sodium yesterday and thought I was retaining water, I reweighed myself about 4 hours after the original weigh in (at 9am) after 70 minutes of working out and those 2.2 lbs were gone again...

BoresEasily

I think for starters you're drastically under-estimating what you should be eating a day with that kind of activity level but I'd need more information like age/weight/height to find out. Also length of time working out and intensity of those workouts to get a better understanding.

martinc1979

Am I approaching this all wrong? I am set a level of 1650 calories a day, then I exercise to burn 500 5 times a week. Should I then be eating the extras I burn? I have been using them as a cushion in case I go a little over my 1650... Also how long is it before I start to see a weight loss? I am going to stick at it, but I wanna see results!!!

Bzbear2

I am always SO surprised to hear that you guys are having trouble eating back your exercise calories. I mean... aren't you HUNGRY?! It almost makes me think that your body isn't sending out accurate signals anymore.

for me there seems to be only one good solution to this:

either eat more OR exercise less. Maybe you're totally freaking out your body by exercising like crazy!? This should be doable!

Also, in looking at your diary - you need to eat breakfast! More than just juice!

But you seemed to have no problem reaching your goals the last few days - in fact you were even over your calories... hmmm confused.

Cytherea

The goal isn't necessarily to zero out your net calorie intake, ya know. If I only eat 1200 cals (and my intake goal is 1200) and exercise 300 cals off... then I'm +300 in my net. which is GOOD. You don't want to ADD another 300 cals of food to make sure it all comes out to 0. Being in the positive of net cals is good. Negative is bad. You keep balancing it out, and you won't get anywhere. You won't gain weight, nor will you lose weight. It's like a stalemate.

No no no. You got it all wrong. You should read some of the information on here in the stickies and such on how this site works. MFP **already** has you losing weight. If you eat 1200 calories a day, and then exercise off another 300, then you haven't eaten enough to fuel your body. 900 calories is not enough. If you do this for a long period of time, you will put your body into starvation mode and you will NOT lose weight. You need to have at minimum 1200 calories per day after exercise, meaning YES you do eat your exercise calories back!

To the OP: are you sure that you are actually burning what you say you are? That would be a good first step. Since I don't have a HRM, I eat back at least half but typically not too much more than half the calories I burned just to be safe. If you don't feel hungry don't force it, but maybe you should try eating some things that are higher in calories and still good for you, like nuts and peanut butter (and other nut butters). A handful nuts or a tablespoon of peanut butter on whole grain bread will definitely give you lots of cals without making you feel over full. And add more protein, too, especially if you are working out that much.

alantin

Am I approaching this all wrong? I am set a level of 1650 calories a day, then I exercise to burn 500 5 times a week. Should I then be eating the extras I burn? I have been using them as a cushion in case I go a little over my 1650... Also how long is it before I start to see a weight loss? I am going to stick at it, but I wanna see results!!!

It's a bad cushion because it almost doubles your weekly deficit (If you've set it to 1 pound a week) and makes you lose fast enough to increase muscle loss. You need to eat those exercise calories to fuel your exercise.

@frostyisisy
I took a look at your diary an for the last week or so, you've been doing fine. If what you logged before that is accurate, you have been VERY low and you might even see some weight gain before your metabolism "resets" and you'll begin seeing the scales move down. If after three weeks or so, you are still stalling, you should check your exercise calories. At least for me, MFP often overestimates them and it seems that the energy that you burn just by existing, isn't subtracted from those numbers, so if I burn about 1800 Kcal a day just by exiting and ran for an hour, I would need to subtract 1800/24=75 Kcal from whatever an HRM or some site estimates give.

I think it was yesterday when you logged 55 minutes of "Judo, Taekwondo, etc". Was that the length of the training session?
When I logged my Taekwondo training using the lenght of the sesssion (usually 90 minutes) I ended up overestimating because, lets face it, your heart rate doesn't stay at 170 all that time..

The exercise calories can be a great bother! You can't live without them but figuring them out requires a lot of guesswork.. Unless you have money to get one of those fancy HRM's that just tell you what you burned..
Fortunately though, everything get's a lot easier when you get them figured out! :flowerforyou:

wtbyerdocmd

How are you estimating your burn?? I wore a bodybugg for months and realized how overestimating I was on calories - don't listen to the machines they over estimate by anywhere from 20-40%!! Especially the wii and the elliptical - you'd have to work out for well over an hour to burn 500 on an elliptical or be very overweight

wittlemunchkinx

If yo're not hungry don't eat. Simple.

SHBoss1673

yeah, I don't agree with the "eat when you're hungry" concept. Not for folks who've been overweight for a while. Our bodies adjust to the food we eat, as do our hormone levels, hunger is a response to hormones, and will adjust if food consumption is lowered for an extended period.

try eating 3300 healthy calories, expensive and difficult, but I manage it every single day (well, except days I don't exercise when it's only 2750), it can be done, you just have to plan ahead, and have a list of foods that are good for you that you can choose from that will help.

ginnyroxx

you can try adding fruits in your mix. drinking some calories (milk). Peanut butter is a good tip. I put avocado on my sandwiches and mix w/ my dinner (chicken burritos...yum!). Also almonds, cashews, etc.

all high cal but good for you. HTH a little.

i was stalled w/ my weight loss until I started eating pretty much all of my exercise calories back; then i started to lose again.

good luck!

monkeymom11

I don't always look at my calorie intake I focuse more on eating at least 3 to 4 healthy meals a day with 2 healthy snacks and get my water intake in. I also make sure that I exercise everyday. As long as you are eating healthy and exercising I wouldn't worry about how it all adds up on the calorie counter. Yes it helps some people but it also can confuse others, so I just focus on the above things and it seems to be working. Good luck!!

Jennplus2

The goal isn't necessarily to zero out your net calorie intake, ya know. If I only eat 1200 cals (and my intake goal is 1200) and exercise 300 cals off... then I'm +300 in my net. which is GOOD. You don't want to ADD another 300 cals of food to make sure it all comes out to 0. Being in the positive of net cals is good. Negative is bad. You keep balancing it out, and you won't get anywhere. You won't gain weight, nor will you lose weight. It's like a stalemate.

No, remember that your 1200 calories is already -500 to lose!

I'll use me as an example:

I need 1700 per day to stay at my same weight
1700-500=1200 (goal per day)
1200-600 burned exercise calories= 600 calories! If I don't eat those 600 back I would only be giving my body 600 calories per day.
Not a good idea. Thin and healthy are not the same thing.


Edit: As I read more I see this was already explained...sorry to be redundant

I think you should add in more snacks and add a little more calories to each meal. Eat peanut butter with apple slices instead of just the apple. Add cheese to broccoli, whole wheat toast and egg for breakfast, shrimp to a salad, avocado to sandwich and or salad, ect. You can also add milk to meals if you need a bit extra. The cheese and other little extras do add up quick!

mamaisis09

Thanks for all of the replies, I have realized a lot of my serving sizes I put in over the past week were wrong... (woops) so I readjusted and realized I was over on my calories 3 days!!!! But yeah, I'll stay comfortable eating withing 300 calories of my allowance including exercise! I really do appreciate it! I'm trying to eat a bigger breakfast too, v8 fusion, granola bar and pineapple this morning... then nutella and ritz crackers for snack... not too terrible. A good amount of calories, not too many carbs and average sodium.

Gogo76

I feel the same way. And mine is only about 1700 with the exercise cals. I have a hard time eating more than 1500. Not mentally making myself eat it, but physically: my stomach just isn't that big anymore. Unless I ate total crap loaded with fat and sugar, I just can't get that many cals.

Produce just isn't high calorie and most of the things I'm eating aren't either: high fiber soups and cereals and lowfat protein: none of it is very cal-heavy. I end up eating like 2 servings of random snacky things (sesame rice crackers and triscuits, that kind of thing) just to get CLOSE to where it says I should be.

I just ate lunch: a cup of white bean chicken chili, 6 trsicuits and a yellow bell pepper and I feel like I just had Thanksgiving dinner. I'm stuffed. And it was less than 350 cals.

You can eat calorie dense foods that are still healthy such as nuts, avocados, etc......You won't be consuming as much food, but more calories.

HTH,
Erin