Eating all workout calories?

clem7444

I'm a newbie, so patience please
I've seen a few threads about the importance of eating your workout calories to ensure healthy weight loss. I'm wondering about "saving" them. Like, today, I earned 1500 calories working out and I have about 1000 left. I can't eat anymore. But, this weekend, when I go out with friends, it's feasible that I may eat an extra 1000 calories. In terms of weight loss, that will be a wash, right?

beckajw

You are going to get mixed answers. The reality is yes and no. Your body doesn't gain/lose weight in one day. So, if you eat a few extra calories today and a few less tomorrow, it will even out. With that said, I understand that the further you get from the workout the less effeciently your body uses those extra calories. Weight Watchers allows you to save your workout calories, so it does work.

EZGruv

Saving calories to another day makes absolutely zero sense.
Treat every day as a new day, a clean slate. Extra calories do not carry-over.

JustJudy

Go to the forum and see if you can find anything that talks about zig zagging your calories. The gist is you can have high calorie days mixed in with deficit days. Trying to stay one step ahead of that pesky metabolism. Someone had a great write up earlier today but I couldn't find it! :ohwell:

sharoniballoni

I don't think the point is to eat every calorie you burn. The point of eating your exercise calories is so that your body doesn't starve. You need fuel to work out. If you work off 1500 calories (wow!), your net calories is probably very low and your body needs to refuel. Just make sure your net calories don't dip too low. I've seen 1200 calories thrown around as an appropriate minimum. Obviously that's somewhat arbitrary because 1200 calories for me works quite different from 1200 calories for a 6 ft tall man. Anyway, just make sure you're feeding your body.

Onesnap

I agree. Don't try to eat back what you worked off. But do make sure to feed your body what it needs to really get the most out of your workouts and so it does not STORE fat and go into starvation mode. There's some tools on here to figure out what you need for calories just to survive a day (organs working, body working etc.)