exercise/calories

WorshipHim

Can somebody answer something? I don't get why we have to eat back our exercise calories..If we wanna lose weight, don't we exercise for a reason to get rid of the calories we have eaten? I just don't know how it works...thanks!

ladybug1620

MFP already calculates a deficit for you. The calorie goal they give you to eat every day should make you lose weight if you do NO exercise. If you add exercise, that decreases from your daily calories. Therefore, you should eat them back to avoid going into starvation mode. There is lots of debate on whether or not starvation mode exists, but the closer you are to your goal (i.e. the less weight you have to lose), the more you should be eating.

Charlottekd

You want to focus on your 'net calories' rather than total. From what i can gather anyways.
If you aim for the day is 1200 and you burn 500, but dont eat them back your net only comes to 700, which is way too low an amount to be eating in a day.

erickirb

Can somebody answer something? I don't get why we have to eat back our exercise calories..If we wanna lose weight, don't we exercise for a reason to get rid of the calories we have eaten? I just don't know how it works...thanks!

Your daily calories goal already gives you a deficit to lose your goal amount of weight. When you exercise your deficit becomes larger than your goal, so MFP adds them back to ensure you lose your goal amount of weight.
Your body also requires fuel for the exercises or you won't have enough left for regular daily activity if you don't eat them back.

TrainingWithTonya

Basically, the body has several different ways that it burns calories each day. First would be the basal metabolic rate which is what it takes calories wise for the body to perform life maintaining functions like breathing and brain function. In addition to that, you then have ADL (Activities of Daily Living) calories (I often refer to these simply as activity calories). These are the calories you burn from the added strain on the body of moving and doing your normal routine. Additional planned exercise is not included in activity calories. Activity calories are like walking to and from your car as you go to work, chasing your kids to get them in the bath, standing or moving all day at work, etc. Because you do these activities regularly, the body is pretty efficient at fueling them so they don't burn as many calories as if you did them for the first time. As you get more and more fit, the body will become more efficient at exercise too, and will burn fewer calories doing it too, that is why we recommend doing different kinds of exercise so that your body is less likely to become accustomed to the activity and burn fewer calories from exercise. There are also calories burned from the thermic effect of food. Those are basically the calories used to digest the food we consume. These TEF calories are generally already accounted for in the fact that we use multipliers of 4 and 9 calories per gram for carbs, protein, and fat, when they are generally slightly higher then that, so when figuring calorie needs, we don't usually account for them.

So, basically, in figuring calorie needs by the body we take the BMR and multiply it by an activity factor to get the estimated energy expenditure. This is the number MFP uses for "maintenance" and subtracts a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day per pound of weight loss goal per week. If you add in exercise, you're suppose to eat your exercise calories because the calorie deficit is already built in to the amount so you don't have to burn more calories through exercise to lose that goal. This is a very simplified way of estimating calories, that is why a lot of websites and even some dietitians and nutritionists use that method. When looking at the body, however, it's not as simple as that unfortunately, especially when you factor in the fuel supplies for exercise. If the body gets too few calories, then it goes into a sort of survival mode where it tries to reduce what it uses so that it doesn't go too far out of energy balance. Thats why from a sports nutrition standpoint, we're taught to go no less then 80% of total energy expenditure which includes exercise. So, if I were giving you a nutrition plan, I'd take your maintenance calories and add your exercise calories and multiply them by 80% to get the minimum calories you need to consume.