“eat you calories back” related question

mrk34

Some (most?) people struggle so much to lose weight. They suffer from stress and hunger to create calorie deficit, and when they managed to achieve a little-bit bigger calorie deficit they are told “eat your calories back”. Why? Because the deficit is supposedly too big.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. I can't understand why you would eat more, when you're trying to lose weight.

The theory of “eating calories back” is confusing and counter-productive.

As long as your body gets required nutrients and energy it needs, it is OK to create calorie deficit, because it is the nature of weight loss. The bigger the deficit, the bigger the weight loss. I assume that we eat healthy, high nutrient foods, not an unhealthy crap here

OnMyWay2STay

I want to understand this too!

tigersword

To lose weight safely, and healthily, you shouldn't generally have a calorie deficit of more than 1,000 calories a day (which equals a loss of 2 pounds a week.) The thing is, the body needs so much fuel a day in order to function properly. If you eat too little, your body isn't getting the fuel it needs, and starts to hoard anything it can, as it recognizes that it isn't getting the proper amount of calories. So then the body stops burning fat, and actually tries to store any fat it can, so that it can use those stores when needed. This causes weight loss to slow down and stall out.

As far as eating back your exercise calories, it's all about how you count the calories. This particular website creates a calorie deficit for you automatically, so that if you don't exercise, you should still lose weight just based on what you eat. To offset that, when you do exercise, you need to add those calories back in, in order to maintain the safe deficit. Look at it mathematically.

Say you burn 2500 calories a day, and you want to lose 2 pounds a week. You can either, eat 1,500 calories a day and not exercise (for a 1,000 calorie deficit) or you can eat 2,500 calories a day and burn 1,000 through exercise (also creating a 1,000 calorie deficit.) If you attempt to do both (eat 1,500 and burn 1,000 through exercise) then as far as your body is concerned, you only ate 500 calories, which is well below the minimum necessary for basic function. This causes your body to shut down non-essential functions (maybe a kidney, maybe the gall bladder, any non-essential organ that you could survive without may get shutdown to conserve energy) and hold on to every last gram of fat in order to have energy to properly function. Your body, will burn only the fat necessary to maintain current function, whereas if you eat more and maintain a lower, safer deficit, your body will burn off the excess fat due to a fully functioning metabolism.

Now the survival mode scenario doesn't happen overnight, it happens over a period of time. The real scary part is once the body makes the decision to shut down a non-essential organ, it will also start breaking that organ down to convert it to energy. Definitely not something I want to chance.

alisa1973

bump

mrk34

Thank you Tigersword.

I don’t know what this website algorithm is to calculate food based calorie deficit for everybody who requests calculation.

Let’s assume that it is 500 calories.

If you add exercise and manage to burn let’s say 200 calories more then it’s wonderful.

“Eating it back” would be a waste of effort and missed opportunity for weigh loss.

It would simply kill the success already achieved.

I don’t think people complain that they are losing too much weight.

They are unhappy because they can’t lose enough.

In my comment I didn’t refer to super extreme situation you described.

chevy88grl

If not eating your exercise calories works for you - great.

If you're trying to lose weight, not eating them back and not losing - then it is time to switch things up. Try new things. As a rule, once you start consuming MORE calories - you will see a loss on the scale. As Tigersword explained, you HAVE to feed your body for it to be comfortable enough to burn fat. You can't starve it to death and expect it to function correctly. It just isn't going to happen.

I want to burn fat and build muscle. NOT store fat and burn muscle.

If you choose to not do it -great. I personally KNOW that I have to eat them back, so I do.

It is ALL about figuring out what works for YOU. Everyone's body and metabolism are different - so everyone's calories requirements are different.

As you can see by the other poster, when you don't eat enough you CAN gain weight and hold onto that weight. It's a funny thing, but eating to lose DOES work. I'm proof as is the other poster and a lot of other people. Starvation is NOT the way you want to go to try and lose weight.

mrk34

Thank you Chevy88grl.

You are absolutely right that it is all about figuring out what works for us, and that everyone's body and metabolism are different. I would add that no single approach, formula, or plan for weight loss can work perfectly for every person.

I am not advocating starvation. The only two participants of our thought provoking exchange who mention starving to death are you and Tigersword.

My previous post states that I assume that we eat healthy, high nutrient foods that provide out body with energy it needs.

Totally disagree with “As a rule, once you start consuming MORE calories - you will see a loss on the scale.”

Lanfear

Some (most?) people struggle so much to lose weight. They suffer from stress and hunger to create calorie deficit, and when they managed to achieve a little-bit bigger calorie deficit they are told “eat your calories back”. Why? Because the deficit is supposedly too big.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. I can't understand why you would eat more, when you're trying to lose weight.

The theory of “eating calories back” is confusing and counter-productive.

As long as your body gets required nutrients and energy it needs, it is OK to create calorie deficit, because it is the nature of weight loss. The bigger the deficit, the bigger the weight loss. I assume that we eat healthy, high nutrient foods, not an unhealthy crap here

As we're on a site where people's weight ranges from 100-400lbs, hopefully no-one will be offended by this.

I've been talking about this to a lady in our office who is qualified and does know what she's talking about (don't ask me what she used to do LOL cause I can't remember, but I know she taught lots of classes such as spinning etc etc and has a solid background in weight management and nutrition...). It's the larger people (those who are considered obese or morbidly obese) who should not eat their exercise calories back.

The larger you are the more easily you can maintain a larger calorie deficit. Those people who are obese or morbidly obese will benefit from the extra calorie burn and a higher calorie deficit - this is why people who have a lot of weight to lose can generally drop the extra pounds very quickly, whereas those who have a lot less to lose take a lot longer.

The people who should primarily be looking to eat their exercise calories back are those who are within reach of their goal as this is when you will start to burn muscle instead of fat if you don't put enough back into your body, and it will hold onto every little calorie it can get hold of in case it doesn't get any more! But, as previously stated on this (and about 1 million other threads) everyone is different and what works for me might not work for you. Everyone has to find their own way but we can all help with our own personal experiences.

Also personally I think that your assumption that "we eat healthy, high nutrient foods" is likely to be at least partially wrong - people may be working to lose weight and get healthy 99% of the time, but they'll still be drinking wine and eating chocolate - it might just be they're consuming a lot less of it than they did previously.

MissMaggie3

Well said, Lanfear!

12by311

Thank you Tigersword.

I don’t know what this website algorithm is to calculate food based calorie deficit for everybody who requests calculation.

Let’s assume that it is 500 calories.

If you add exercise and manage to burn let’s say 200 calories more then it’s wonderful.

“Eating it back” would be a waste of effort and missed opportunity for weigh loss.

It would simply kill the success already achieved.

I don’t think people complain that they are losing too much weight.

They are unhappy because they can’t lose enough.

In my comment I didn’t refer to super extreme situation you described.

I usually don't jump in on the "eating back your exercise calories" debates on here because it seems like most people have their own opinions no matter what others say. But I thought, "Hey...it's Monday...why not..."

My suggestion to you is do a search on the forum and read as much as you can. Then...I suggest you take note of those that have been most successful and have been around the longest (not yo-yoing with their weight, steadily maintaining after losing it).

I will say that if you have more to lose you can afford a greater deficit. When you get closer to goal if you create too large of a deficit for a long period of time what ends up happening is that if you are typically hoovering around 700 or so net a day, it's NOT starvation but it's just enough to signal to your body, "whoa........slooooowwwww down metabolism. Let's not burn too much at one time, we need to ration this fuel."

Also, once you get to a certain point, if you are working out and not fueling your body, you will feel like trash. Plain and simple. I can't imagine trying to lift weights then run 5 miles and then not refuel my body.

And to be honest, I would rather be fit and able to exercise hard than deprive my body of fuel and have no energy to do anything. I just don't really like that look. I don't find it attractive. Plus my life is way too busy to try to survive every day feeling like butt.

darthjen

I can't eat over 1500 calories and lose weight; and I do exercise as well as am on my feet all day for work. I make good food choices for the most part, watching my sugar and sodium intake and making sure I get enough protein. Maybe if I was an athlete I could eat more and still losing weight or gain muscle weight?

MarcoRod

MRK34 - I don't know if you are using a HRM to measure your calories burned during workout. This has been essential for me to take as much of the estimating and guessing out of my calculations. You say you run around the block and then do calisthenics but you don't say how long and a what pace. I can't assess if you are eating enough or too much without knowing more accurately how many calories you burn.

My experience is that the calories deficit thing worked to lose my first 20-30 lbs. However, as my body got more efficient at doing cardio I was not making as much progress. I increased my NET caloric intake from 1200 to 1400 then saw continued improvement. One month later I increased my NET to 1600 and managed to maintain my weight. Now, my goal is NO LONGER weight loss. I have very little weight to lose. Instead, I measure my body fat %, neck, waist, thighs, chest, hips and biceps to check my progress. These are better indicators of my progress.

kapeluza

"still see many people that are confused or "question" the idea of eating your exercise calories. I wanted to try (as futile as this may turn out to be) to explain the concept in no uncertain terms. I'll save the question of "eating your exercise calories" for the end because I want people to understand WHY we say to do this.

NOTE: I'm not going to use a lot of citation in this, but I don't want people thinking this is my opinion, I have put much careful research into it, most of which is very complicated and took a long time for me to sift through and summarize, and thanks to my chemical engineering backgroud I have the tools to read clinical studies and translate them (somewhat) into more human terms. Some of this information comes from sources I can't forward because they are from pay sites (like New England Journal of Medicine), so you can ask for anything, but I may or may not be able to readilly provide it for you (I can always tell you where to go if you want to though).

I'll break it down into 3 sections.
Section 1 will be our metabolic lifecycle or what happens when we eat and how our body burns fuel.
Section 2 will be what happens when we receive too much, too little, or the wrong kind of fuel.
Section 3 will be the steps needed to bring the body to a healthy state and how the body "thinks" on a sympathetic level (the automatic things our body does like digestion, and energy distribution).

Section 1:
Metabolism, in "layman's" terms, is the process of taking in food, breaking it down into it's components, using the food as fuel and building blocks, and the disposal of the poisons and waste that we ingest as part of it. Metabolism has three overall factors, genetics, nutrition, and environment. So who we are, what we eat, and how we live all contribute to how our metabolism works. You can control 2 of these 3 factors (nutrition, environment).
When you eat food, it is broken down into it's component parts. Protein, vitamins and minerals are transported to the cells that need them to build new cells or repair existing cells. Fats(fatty acid molecules) and carbohydrates are processed (by 2 different means) and either immediately burned or stored for energy. Because the body doesn't store food in a pre-digested state, if you eat more carbs and fat then you need immediately, the body will save them for later in human fat cells (adipose tissue). This is important to realize because even if you eat the correct number of calories in a 24 hour period, if you eat in large quantities infrequently (more then you can burn during the digestion process), your body will still store the extra as fat and eliminate some of the nutrients. (Side note: this is why simple or processed carbs are worse for you compared with complex carbs)

Section 2:
The human body has a set metabolic rate (based on the criteria stated above), this rate can be changed by overall nutritional intake over a period of time, or by increasing activity levels also over a period of time (the exact amount of time for sustained increase in metabolic rates is the subject of some debate, but all studies agree that any increase in activity level will increse the metabolism).
It is important to note that obesity does not drasticly change the level of metabolic process, that means that if you become obese, you don't burn a higher fat percentage just because you have more to burn.
The balance of incomming fuel vs the amount of fuel the body uses is called maintenance calories, or the amount of calories it takes to run your body during a normal day (not including exercise or an extremely lethargic day). The metabolism is a sympathetic process, this means it will utilize lower brain function to control it's level, it also means it can actively "learn" how a body is fitness wise, and knows approximately how much energy it needs to function correctly. It also means automatic reactions will happen when too much or too little fuel is taken in. Too much fuel triggers fat storage, adipose tissue expands and fat is deposited, also free "fat" cells (triglycerides) will circulate in the blood stream (HDL and LDL cholesterol). Too little fuel (again, over an extended period) triggers a survival mode instinct, where the body recognizes the lack of fuel comming in and attempts to minimize body function (slowing down of non-essential organ function) and the maximization of fat storage. It's important to note that this isn't a "switch", the body does this as an ongoing analysis and will adjust the levels of this as needed (there is no "line" between normal and survival mode.).
When you're activity level increases, the human body will perform multiple functions, first, readily available carbohydrates and fats are broken down into fuel, oxydized, and sent directly to the areas that need fuel, next adipose (body) fat is retreived, oxydized, and transported to the areas it is needed for additional fuel, 3rd (and this is important), if fat stores are not easilly reachable (as in people with a healthy BMI where adipose fat is much more scarce), muscle is broken down and used for energy. What people must realize is that the metabolism is an efficiency engine, it will take the best available source of energy, if fat stores are too far away from the systems that need them or too dense to break down quickly, then it won't wait for the slower transfer, it will start breaking down muscle (while still breaking down some of that dense fat as well).

Section 3:
The wonderful part of the human metabolic system is it's ability to adapt and change. Just because your body has entered a certain state, doesn't mean it will stay that way. The downfall to this is that if organs go unused over a long period, they can lose functionality and can take years to fully recover(and sometimes never).
As long as there is no permenant damage to organ function, most people can "re-train" their metabolism to be more efficient by essentially showing it (with the intake of the proper levels and nutritional elements) that it will always have the right amount and types of fuel. This is also known as a healthy nutritional intake.
Going to the extreme one way or the other with fuel consumption will cause the metabolism to react, the more drastic the swing, the more drastic the metabolism reacts to this (for example, a diet that limits fat or cabohydrate intake to very low levels). In general terms, the metabolism will react with predictable results if fuel levels remain in a range it associates with normal fuel levels. If you raise these fuel levels it will react by storing more fat, if you lower these fuel levels, it will react by shutting down processes and storing fat for the "upcomming" famine levels. The most prominent immediate issues (in no particular order) with caloric levels below normal are reduced muscle function, reduction of muscle size and density, liver and kidney failures, increase in LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and gallstones .


Now onto the question of "Eating your exercise calories"

As I have hinted to throughout this summary of metabolic process, the body has a "range" in which it feels it is receiving the right amount of fuel. The range (as most doctors and research scientists agree) is somewhere between 500 calories above your maintenance calories and 1000 calories below your maintenance calories. This means that the metabolism won't drastically change it's functionality in this range, with that said, this is not exact, it is a range based on averages, you may have a larger or smaller range based on the 3 factors of metabolism stated at the top.
On our website (MyFitnessPal), when you enter your goals, there is a prebuilt deficit designed to keep you in the "normal" metabolic functionality while still burning more calories then you take in. This goal DOES NOT INCLUDE exercise until you enter it. If you enter exercise into your daily plan, the site automatically adjusts your total caloric needs to stay within that normal range (in other words, just put your exercise in, don't worry about doing any additional calculations). Not eating exercise calories can bring you outside that range and (if done over an extended period of days or weeks) will gradually send your body into survival mode, making it harder (but not impossible) to continue to lose weight. The important thing to understand is (and this is REALLY important) the closer you are to your overall healthy weight (again, your metabolism views this a a range, not a specific number) the more prominant the survival mode becomes (remember, we talked about efficiency). This is because as fat becomes scarce, muscle is easier to break down and transport. And thus, the reason why it's harder to lose that "Last 10 pounds".

I really hope this puts a lot of questions to bed. I know people struggle with this issue and I want to make sure they have the straight facts of why we all harp on eating your exercise calories.

-Regards,

Banks
"

mrk34

Thank you 12by311 for your suggestion to read archived posts.

Successes of people who you described as “those that have been most successful and have been around the longest (not yo-yoing with their weight, steadily maintaining after losing it” inspire me. They are living proof that losing weight and keeping it off is possible.

I started this thread by seeking understanding how the theory of “eating your calories back” would apply to my morning situations.

I wanted to know what the theory logic would be in that specific situation. I thought that by applying the theory to my real situation I presented, smart people would be able to show me what I failed to see or understand.

The choice that you presented in the last paragraph of your post does not apply to the conversation we are having here. The choice that I see is: “fit and able to exercise people” who want to eat calories back and who see the sense of doing so, and “fit and able to exercise people” who do not want to lose the results of their weight loss efforts by eating calories back.

mrk34

MRK34 - I don't know if you are using a HRM to measure your calories burned during workout. This has been essential for me to take as much of the estimating and guessing out of my calculations. You say you run around the block and then do calisthenics but you don't say how long and a what pace. I can't assess if you are eating enough or too much without knowing more accurately how many calories you burn.

My experience is that the calories deficit thing worked to lose my first 20-30 lbs. However, as my body got more efficient at doing cardio I was not making as much progress. I increased my NET caloric intake from 1200 to 1400 then saw continued improvement. One month later I increased my NET to 1600 and managed to maintain my weight. Now, my goal is NO LONGER weight loss. I have very little weight to lose. Instead, I measure my body fat %, neck, waist, thighs, chest, hips and biceps to check my progress. These are better indicators of my progress.

I don’t use an HRM.

I jog for approximately 15 minutes. Total distance is about 1 mile.

mrk34

Hi Banks/Kapeluza:

I do not advocate “going to the extreme (…) with fuel consumption.”

Therefore

“The most prominent immediate issues (in no particular order) with caloric levels below normal are reduced muscle function, reduction of muscle size and density, liver and kidney failures, increase in LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and gallstones”.
does not apply to the situation I presented in my post.

Some brave people posted on this website that they did not eat the calories back. They did not experience any symptoms that you described.

MissMaggie3

For what it's worth, the 'eat your calories' philosophy has been great for me.

I have been on severe diets in the past, albeit many years ago, where I've felt AWFUL! Hungry, tired etc. Don't think I looked too good at the end of them either. I've been using this site for a few months, and put my trust in the approach. I lost some weight, then got stuck on a plateau (it seemed to be water retention), but have now started losing slowly but surely. I don't have much to lose, and I am exercising quite a lot, which means I am also eating a lot too. I have also increased my proportional intake of protein. I can say with hand on heart that shape-wise I look better than I ever have done before (and that's saying a lot - I'm 53), but I also feel great. I don't get too hungry, I am sleeping well, I generally feel strong and energetic.

For me the clue is in the name - myFITNESSpal, not myWEIGHTLOSSONLYpal.

chevy88grl

Thank you Chevy88grl.

You are absolutely right that it is all about figuring out what works for us, and that everyone's body and metabolism are different. I would add that no single approach, formula, or plan for weight loss can work perfectly for every person.

I am not advocating starvation. The only two participants of our thought provoking exchange who mention starving to death are you and Tigersword.

My previous post states that I assume that we eat healthy, high nutrient foods that provide out body with energy it needs.

Totally disagree with “As a rule, once you start consuming MORE calories - you will see a loss on the scale.”

If you are eating too few calories and up your calories - you will likely see a loss. Plain and simple. Ask the hundreds of people who try it ALL the time and it works for them too.

It may not work for YOU - but that doesn't mean it doesn't work.

I really get the impression that arguing is what you're looking to do here. I'm telling you my own personal experience and I get from your responses that there is an element of distrust behind your words. If you don't believe me - you can take a look at my before and after pic on my profile. Yep. Both are me. I've taken the time and energy to learn what works for me and while YOU may not agree with it -- *I* know it works and so do many other people.

Do what works for you. I will do what works for me. Don't tell me I'm wrong and I won't tell you you're wrong.