Eating Back Your Exercising Calories?

MissMaryMac33

Personally, I don't ever eat my exercise calories and rarely go over my 1200 calorie limit. I am still losing weight, but my metabolism may be different than yours. Maybe try increasing your calories to 1300 and see how you do. Just make sure you get that extra 100 calories from eating something wholesome, as opposed to a "100 calorie pack" or something of that nature.

Yeah this will work great for a couple weeks.... but thats too low for 5'5 and what you need to lose. It will stop.

CarolineSuzanneSmith

I'm short. I'm 5'0'' and weigh 150. I have about 30 lbs to lose (I've already lost 40). The 1200 calorie mark sounds right for my height.

Does anybody have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis/Hypothyroidism? It's very common...but apparently (according to my endocrinologist), it makes weight loss even harder, because my metabolism is SO SLOWWWWW. Anybody experience this while trying to get over a plateau?

handley1234

Don't forget that your body burns calories even if you just sit still and do absolutely nothing all day long. That's where your first calorie deficit comes in, because just say you burn 2,000 calories just sitting around, and you're only eating 1,200, then you have an 800 calorie deficit regardless of whether or not you're working out. So, with that being said, if you work out on top of that and still only eat 1,200 calories, it would be like you're burning 2,000 calories from your normal body functions + say 500 calories from exercise.

So, say you eat 1,200 calories that day and it says -500 for exercise which gives you a net of 700 calories, but you can't forget about the 2,000 that you burn just from basically being alive, so you then have to take that 700 calories - the 2,000 calories that you are burning regardless of activities, giving you -1,300 calories. Now remember, your goal in this example was only to have an 800 calorie a day deficit, but in this case, you would have a 1,300 calorie a day deficit, so you'd be eating too little because it was only necessary for you to have an 800 calorie deficit.

Now, say you eat 1,200 calories that day and it says -500 for exercise which gives you a net of 700 calories, but then you eat back 500 calories, putting you back at 1,200 calories for the day. You know that you burn 2,000 from living and 500 from exercise, so that 2,500 calories burned that day, and a total of 1,700 calories consumed. Even though that's higher than 1,200, if you subtract your calories burned from your calories eaten (1,700 - 2,500) that gives you 800, which was your original deficit goal.

Don't forget that the number of calories you are allowed for a day is ALREADY a deficit. You don't have to go lower than that number, because it's already x amount of calories LOWER than what your body will burn in a day. So if you're exercising on top of that, you're burning more calories, and if you don't eat them back, you run the risk of having a deficit that is much too large.

handley1234

And yes, I also have hypothyroidism. It helped me gain weight, that's for sure (haha), but I don't really seem to have any problems with losing it now. As long as your medications and dosing is accurate, it shouldn't make things too much harder for you.

chickybuns

Like said above, I would focus on net, and having around a 500 calorie deficit.