Do you eat exercise cals. does it work for you?

leslturn8

Hi, i have been stuck at 75 kilos/ 165lb.
I read we have to eat them to refuel our bodies.
I regained my lost kilo this past fortnight and have been stuck at 75.1kilos. Anyways i havnt been able to be extremely physical this past week and yesterday after having a ball on a jetski i woke with muscle aches i didnt think possible...i thought i had swallen glandes but its just my neck muscles! I have the flu and therefore my energy is limited and life is exhausting!
Everyday i weigh in at 75.1 and today when i weighed myself i was 74.4
I have been eating my exercise calories and i feel that maybe i shouldn't be.
Looking at my weigh in chart.....i can see a pattern....i have been eating my exercise cals for a few months.
At the start of july i was 75 exactly. 1 week in i was 74.9 and down a 100 grams each week....you can see i was working out...then i decided i wasnt getting enough cals so i upped my level to mildly active instead of stationary....that was stupid im always moving....
So i jumped up to 75.0 again because i had to stop working out again, so i fluxed between 75-75.4. Then i gymed again and dropped to 74.5 and i thought yay i can see that by having the addional calories from the level was actually doing me good i was steady at 74.0-74.8 for a fortnight and im thinking by me eating my workout cals i am only maintaining my weight!
I started a workout for a few days and ate back my cals and gained water retention i am thinking and this fortnight i havnt gone gym or done any dvd's only mildly active, yesterday i was active due to water sports and man it was great!
So to the point i am seeing that i am maintaiing by eating my exercise cals....do i stop eating them...?
It was last night when i added my food and exercise and i had eaten 20 of my exercise cals and i still had 500 to go and usually the note will say your eating too few calories.....it didnt and that made me think...i am not seeing the results because maybe i am sustaining my body for maintence.? What do you think?

taso42_DELETED

This was hard to follow.

Generally speaking, find your maintenance calorie level (sometimes requires trial and error). To lose weight, subtract a calorie deficit. To gain weight, add a calorie surplus. To maintain leave them be. MFP does that all for you when you tell it whether you are losing, gaining, or maintaining. Then eat back the calories your burn to keep your surplus or deficit constant.

McKayMachina

Yes and yes.

Also, try the SEARCH function.

russelljclarke

I asked myself the very same question, and as the advice on here is often at odds, I decided to run my own experiment. The daily journal is here ( http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/russelljclarke ), and so will be the eventual conclusions (2-4 weeks)

Do bookmark the page/befriend me if you wish to follow my progress and have the theory proved/disproved

R

porffor

I'm having this trouble.. I don't eat them all as not sure this site is totally accurate on the amount of cals burned, but have noticed a very very slow loss and an occasional half lb increase.

so.. for me I'm going back to not eating them. The personal experiment the PP suggested sounds good as we're all individual after all.

Good luck and well done with your weight loss!

slippymcgee

I don't eat all of my exercise calories. I do listen to my body though, and if I am hungry, I will eat a healthy snack usually between 100 and 200 calories depending on how many exercise calories I have. I do try to keep my caloric intake consistent every day.

RichardCh

I personally don't eat my exercise calories but for me it a mental thing of thinking im wasting my time if I do

futurefitgirl88

I do not eat my exercise calories unless I'm hungry! and I still don't lose weight ugh so hard sometimes!

withchaco

This was hard to follow.

Generally speaking, find your maintenance calorie level (sometimes requires trial and error). To lose weight, subtract a calorie deficit. To gain weight, add a calorie surplus. To maintain leave them be. MFP does that all for you when you tell it whether you are losing, gaining, or maintaining. Then eat back the calories your burn to keep your surplus or deficit constant.

This.

It's not a question of whether you "eat them back"... It's about finding out your maintenance net calories. The way I see it, those who are successful without eating them back simply have lower maintenance calories. If your maintenance calories are about the same as MFP's estimate, then yes, you should eat them back

I'm not sure what my level is exactly, but I assume it's reasonably similar to the estimate, as I maintain a certain number of net calories (i.e. I eat most of my burnt calories) and have been losing weight consistently. Experiment and find out the amount of net calories that works for you. Some people actually have to eat more net calories than MFP's estimate.

EDIT: yes, the "certain number of net calories" I maintain is close to MFP's recommendation.

taso42_DELETED

@withchaco thank you. i think you just prevented me from sticking a fork in my eye to ease the pain of reading forum replies.

kanonxbou47

TL;DR, but just replying to the title, I don't, and that works.
Since I'm not technically overweight, I read that I had to eat them ALL back, just to make sure my body knows that it's okay to burn fat, but it was incredibly hard to do without eating junk food, and I felt like I was stuffing my face all the time.
Plus, my weight just maintained.
I need there to be about 200 calories left so that I lose at all.
BUT it's important to get all the nutrients you need, so make sure your net calories is NEVER at a negative, or anything crazy low like that.

Not everybody's body is the same, and this website is just an estimate.
So, try out what works for you, because nobody can really tell you.

leslturn8

This was hard to follow.

Generally speaking, find your maintenance calorie level (sometimes requires trial and error). To lose weight, subtract a calorie deficit. To gain weight, add a calorie surplus. To maintain leave them be. MFP does that all for you when you tell it whether you are losing, gaining, or maintaining. Then eat back the calories your burn to keep your surplus or deficit constant.

Hi this was hard to read also, i am sick and i ramble, i gave the information how ever confusing it is. Thankyou for your reply.

leslturn8

Yes and yes.

Also, try the SEARCH function.

Hi, i actually did the search function before i posted and its confusing hence why i asked with my situation, thank you for your reply.

leslturn8

thankyou everyone for your time and replies! it was hard to write! Its all very confusing and i think i will trial the no eating my exercise calories unless i am hungry after my allocated amount. I will also never go into the red, because i dont want my body to go into the starvation mode!
Thankyou all!

keiraev

Absolutely yes- I have never even thought about not eating them to be honest.

I genuinely believe after losing 18lb that you need to fuel your metabolism, and eating under 1200 Net is not a good idea. The weeks where I lost more was when I ate more, and eating them back never made me gain weight in the almost 4 months I've been on here.

Scoobies87

Nope I do not eat them. Tried it when I first joined and didn't lose. Also tried eating more and gained.

If eating exercise calories works for some people then great. Everyone is different though and you have to find what works for you

melaniecheeks

I think if you're ill and not exercising as much as usual then THAT might be having an impact on your weight loss!

My take on exercise calories (note I am not a qualified dietician or nutritionist so this is just my personal point of view):

I need good quality fuel before and after a workout.
I know that measuring the calories in what I eat and what I burn is just an estimate, so I don't get too hung up on the actual maths.
I make sure I eat at least 1200 calories a day.
Its usually a bit more when I workout, but I dont think of it as eating back exercise calories.

graysmom2005

thankyou everyone for your time and replies! it was hard to write! Its all very confusing and i think i will trial the no eating my exercise calories unless i am hungry after my allocated amount. I will also never go into the red, because i dont want my body to go into the starvation mode!
Thankyou all!

It depends how close you are to your goal weight. I was able to have a pretty big deficit at first, but the closer I got to my goal weight I had to start eating them because I plateaued for well over a year. Didn't know why...I wasn't eating enough. You have to fiddle with it...but I finally started seeing a difference when I started eating mine back.