Exercise cals, why its different for everyone.

Megan2Project

You can't cover everyone with a blanket statement saying "You have to eat all your exercise calories back, or else _____".

Everyone here has their daily calorie intake set up differently. Some classify themselves as with different activity levels, giving them more or less calories for their BMR per day. ALSO everyone has different goals: gain, maintain, lose .5, lose 1, lose 1.5, lose 2. These all give people different deficits per week.

EX Person one:
Goal: Lose .5lbs per week
Daily Deficit 250cal
Workout Cals 750

Person two
Goal Lose 2lbs per week
Daily deficit 1000 cal
Workout Cals 0

If person one chooses NOT to eat their exercise calories, they are basically creating the same deficit at person number two. AND person number one gets to eat more food than person number two.

Exercise does not erase food eaten, so although it lowers your "net calories", all its really doing is increase your deficit.

The rules of exercise calories change depending on where you are in your journey, your genetics, and your goals. If you are trying to maintain, or gain weight then obviously EAT YOUR EXERCISE CALORIES. If you are getting closer to your goal, you may need to eat a few execise calories, do some zigzagging, play with your macro-nutrients and so forth to find what works with YOUR body.

For many people exercise calories are a luxury. They can choose to use them if they like, its nice to know that the exercise calories are there and they can still lose weight, but they don't HAVE to eat them yet. Psychologically if you choose to eat them back, you may stay on the plan longer because you will feel less deprived.

Basically, everyone if different, and one thing will not work exactly the same way for everyone.

AZKristi

Definitely an individual decision!

Also keep in mind that it depends on your settings. For example, I told MFP that I am sedentary and I log all my activity as exercise. This allows me to eat back some exercise calories. If I had told MFP that I was active and continued to log all of my activities as exercise AND eat those calories back, I probably wouldn't be losing much weight.

skinnygirl49

I agree. So do you EAT your exercise calories or what ??????

deathstarclock

Just remember the dangers of having too much of a deficit.

koosdel

:huh:

Gigi_licious

I understand your post....so should I eat my exercise calories or not?

Contrarian

Thanks! This is a big help!:flowerforyou:

Megan2Project

I agree. So do you EAT your exercise calories or what ??????

I have them as a luxury. Some days, if I feel like it, then abso-freakin-lutely. Other days, if I'm not hungry and I just don't feel like it, then I don't. I like that I can have them and know that I should still in theory be losing my goal. I have a lot to lose, and right now its working for me. I totally realize that the closer I get to my goal weight, the more I may have to adapt my diet which may include eating more exercise calories back every day. I'm going to "play it by ear"

Qarol

but I don't like the taste of water!

wait, what?

yummy♥

Basically, everyone if different, and one thing will not work exactly the same way for everyone.

oh good, that's what i'm doing, too.

wolfchild59

I definitely agree that not everyone should eat their exercise calories back. Much like anything with weight loss and personal fitness, nothing works as a blanket truth for everybody out there.  I often suspect that a lot of people underestimate their daily activity and have their levels set too low here.  So when they do start eating back some of their “exercise calories” they are actually just eating what they should be and that’s what triggers their body’s energy levels and losses.  When I first joined, I set my activity level to sedentary because I have a desk job and got the, seemingly standard for MFP, 1200 calorie base.  After a number of months of continual weight loss, I plateaued.  So I Googled ways to break through it, and that was actually when I found these boards for the first time. (I had only used the app until that point, had never been to the website).
 
That’s where I found everyone telling everyone to eat their exercise calories over and over.  So I started eating back the bulk of mine.  And I started gaining, then kept gaining and still kept gaining.  I couldn’t understand it, wasn’t I doing what everyone here was saying to do the website was designed to do?  Then I got a little deeper into my personal data.  I did a lot of manual calculations using all the different formulas out there for BMR, TDEE and all those other combos of letters that basically tell you what you really burn at rest, with your normal daily activity,  with average exercise worked in, etc.  I also got a BodyMedia Fit that gave me even more personalized numbers for all of that data.
 
I took all the different results for each formula and got the average of each one.  Turns out that based on how MFP calculates things, despite having a desk job, I need to have my activity level set to lightly active to give me the right number of calories I should be eating each day based on how much I burn just walking around at work, cooking, doing household chores, running errands, etc.  And that in order to have the proper caloric deficit each day for a continual loss, I need to only eat that given number of calories and *not* my exercise calories.  By doing that I match up properly to the average of all of the equations on what I should be eating each day based on what I burn each day.  This keeps me at just the right caloric deficit on workout days and a slightly lower, but still on a losing trend, caloric deficit on non-workout days. 
 
Since I basically started ignoring my exercise calories in MFP (I only enter them to track my workouts) and just going off of what all the personalized info I calculated gives me, I finally started losing again.  Sadly, right now I’m just losing the weight that I gained from eating my exercise calories, but now I’m much more educated on how to recalculate my needs as my weight and BF % drop to make adjustments to continue eating for loss until I hit my goal.