Hello, and what is with bonus exercise calories?

emergencytennis

I have only been on here a week and have been poking at this thread and that. I see that I am supposed to be eating my bonus exercise calories, when I have been trying not to, and I was wondering why?

From what I understand my food calories are sufficient to provide all my nutritional needs. If my goal is to eat less and exercise more, why should I eat my exercise calories if I am not hungry?

PS I am happy to drink them

spyro88

Basically your body has a minimum requirement for energy. Say you are trying to eat 1400 calories per day to lose weight (may be less or more for you). Your body might need 1800 calories a day just to function before exercise (example again). So by eating 1400 per day you are already 400 calories short.

If you then burn 400 calories exercising, you would be 800 calories short for the day (400 + the 400 you're not eating).

That leaves 1000 calories to actually be used by your body, which is just not really enough - by doing that you're risking your body clinging onto everything you eat for a while, which will actually sabotage your weight loss in the short term.

It's called starvation mode, it's not a permanent state (obviously if you had 1000 calories a day for a year or something you would lose weight cos there wouldn't be enough), but people get disheartened by it because they are working hard and not losing.

(It doesn't matter if you eat or drink them btw, and some people will only eat back half of their exercise calories. Just play around and see what works)

roseymacdoo

There is soooo much info on here about why eating your exercise calories is important!!

Links to the relevant threads are on here

http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/

(click the 'how about now?' link)

russelljclarke

Your food calories DO provide for your nutritional needs, but if you exercise, you need more, simple as that. The 1200 (or whatever MFP set you) is a net figure. I pondered over this too when I first signed up, and read the theory on various blogs, and am now running an experiment to test the theory. It's drawing to its conclusion now, and I'm told makes interesting reading. The link is below

R

emergencytennis

Thank you, spyro, but I'm not sure I am with you.

The fitness pal says to eat x calories, so I eat x (ish), and then I exercise y. Isn't y the weight-loss part?

spyro88

Thank you, spyro, but I'm not sure I am with you.

The fitness pal says to eat x calories, so I eat x (ish), and then I exercise y. Isn't y the weight-loss part?

No, because My Fitness Pal tells you to eat less calories than you need in the first place. If it's telling you to eat x calories per day, it has worked out that you actually need x + 400 calories (example) to MAINTAIN your current weight.

So there is ALREADY a deficit in what it tells you to have - it's already taken off a certain number of calories from your daily requirement and that is your weight loss part. In theory you don't have to exercise at all to lose weight this way, because you're eating less than you need.

By exercising and not eating back the calories you are increasing that deficit to a point where you put your body into starvation mode.

You may then ask what is the point of exercising if I am just eating the calories back - the point is that it will aid your weight loss even if you DO eat back most/ all of the calories you burn. I know this from my own experience.

emergencytennis

Oh. Oh!

I didn't know that. So, the target food calories is already set artificially low and if, at the end of the day, everything works out to that target one is STILL losing weight, even after the exercise calories have been accounted for.

Thank you very much for the clarification.

emergencytennis

One last thing. I have been reading and sending some personal messages, but now I can't work out how to access them. Could someone tell me how to do this?

emergencytennis

Anyone bump?

tracy116

Thanks for the explanation it all makes sense now... I am new to this only been on here for a wk finding it very informative



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