Eating "exercise calories" the following day

TourThePast

I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on this.

At least three times a week I go to the gym and burn, on average, about 350 calories a session. Due to an improving but still dodgy knee I don't want to exercise every day yet. I don't go primarily to burn calories, though that is a nice bonus, the point is to get stronger and fitter and happier and that's coming together pretty nicely.

Trouble is, thanks to those lovely endorphins, I don't feel as hungry on "gym days" and end up with surplus calories - yet struggle on not to go over 1200 calories on non-gym days.

Obviously if I do use them the next day I'll lose weight at a slower rate than if I didn't use those "gym day" calories at all, but will it average itself out? Or is there something I'm not aware of?

Basically, my question is, what are people's thoughts on using the surplus from gym days, to make life easier on non-gym days?

funkyspunky871

Personally, I think it'd average out. It'd be similar to calorie cycling or zig-zagging. The only way to know for sure is to try it out! Taking 1-2 weeks to experiment won't hurt.

kao708

I agree...I would probably make sure the days are in order...not work out monday and eat them all back on saturday...that might be pushing it! LOL

TourThePast

Thanks, I nearly ate some prawns and had a glass of wine yesterday (a non-gym day) but entering them in my food diary and seeing that big red MINUS figure made me put them back in the fridge, and I'm enjoying them tonight instead.

I'm aiming to eat, on average, around half of my exercise calories which seems like a reasonable compromise. funkyspunky871 you're right, I should just "suck it and see" - it's just that at this early stage I'm wary of taking risks and ending up feeling discouraged.