Need to settle this once and for all!

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  • ryanwood935
    ryanwood935 Posts: 245 Member
    OP here's my POV. If your goal is to strictly lose weight, don't eat the calories back. Now, if your goal is to look great and be more toned overall, eat them back. The reason being that the further into a deficit you go , the more LBM you will be losing along with fat. Take it slow and you will thank yourself in the long run.
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,603 Member
    There is so much money and time spent here by people trying to fine tune their estimates, and so much trust in the estimates and concern about them. The reason so many diet plans don't use food scales and BMR calculators and HRMs is because in the end, it's all always an estimate, and a rough estimate is ok as long as you're fairly consistent in your error direction and magnitude, which I think we tend to be.

    E.g., maybe the calculators + HRM say I burn 2200 calories on average and my food scale and log said I ate 1700 average. If I'm not losing a pound a week on average (over time, not 1-2 weeks), I don't need to know which value is mis-estimated, I just need to aim for less food or more activity. As long as what I think is 1700 is fairly stable over time, I can aim for 1500 and be pretty sure of being under my former 1700 level. Or aim for 200 calories more of exercise per day. And watch those results.

    I think most people here could ignore their burn levels and just eat somewhere in the 1200 (smaller women) to 1800 (larger people) range and just tweak based on their results. It's the 'eat back' thing that makes people go down the rabbit hole with the numbers, and the starvation mode message, if you ask me.

    It's a preference and mentality issue. For me , the whole process is pointless if I don't get to see and record my cardio burn numbers. And yes, eat them back. Like seriously. Would jump off a cliff if the concept disappeared

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