Adding extra calories for exercise.

fitforlife34

Hi. I'm new to fitnesspal. I was on food diary for a couple years, and what I noticed was similar was that if you exercise, say burn 400 calories, you get to eat 400 calories more. Your carbs/fat/and protein also goes up. I noticed that when I was eating back the calories, as they call it, I never lost any weight.

Can someone explain to me how this works? thanks.

lizardbreath06

I personally cut my own exercise calories in half. I like to know how many I'm burning so I still enter the full amount, but then I don't allow myself to eat all of them. I pretty much only eat half of them and it has worked well for me! Good luck!

mandag9008

im confused on this as well. i burn around 1 to 5 hundred depending on the workout. so i dk if i eat those back or not.

rockerbabyy

Here is how it works, in a simplified manner:

You tell MFP: I want to lose 1lb per week.

MFP says: Okay, you need to eat X calories per day in order to lose 1lb/week, without exercise.

You do what MFP says, but then you decide to exercise and you burn an additional 400 calories. MFP then says "Hey, I told you to eat X per day to lose 1lb/week without exercise. You exercised, now you're going to lose it too fast and that's not ideal. Now I want you to eat X+400".

are you getting your calorie burns from a HRM or fitness equipment or just using MFP numbers? i eat pretty much all my exercise calories and have been losing just fine. i also use a HRM for my calories so its a bit more accurate .how long did you eat your exercise calories back without losing weight? sometimes it takes your body a few weeks to get used to having enough food..

krystonite

I make an attempt to eat half back. If I'm still hungry, I'll eat more. If I'm not hungry then I'm not going to bother. Listen to your body and it will tell you what it wants.

Rae6503

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Rachel6503/view/exercise-calories-166276

MFP assigns you a calorie deficit1 based on your weekly goal2. So if you burn 2000 calories a day and you want to lose a pound a week, MFP tells you to eat 1500. When you exercise you burn more than your 2000 calories a day. Say you burn 500. Suddenly you are burning 2500 calories a day. If you do not eat your exercise calories your deficit becomes 1000 calories. If you do eat your exercise calories your deficit remains at 500 calories.

Having "too large" of a calorie deficit can create problems. However, "too large" is subjective and varies from person to person. The more weight you have to lose however, the bigger calorie deficit you can handle. First, and most simply, it makes things harder, makes you hungry, gives you little energy, makes it harder to stick with your diet in the long run. Second, it might slow your metobolism (although this takes times) and slow your weight loss. Third, it makes the transition to maintenance difficult. Lastly, large calorie deficits can start to effect your health if you sustain them too long. Your hair can fall out, your nails crack, your period can stop (if you are female obviously). Your brain stops working at optimal levels, and other things.

Some people say they aren't hungry enough to eat their exercise calories. We need to realize that sometimes our hunger signals aren't the best thing to trust. If they were no one would be over or under weight.

The End.

1. Deficit = calories you eat - calories you burn all day

2. One pound (of fat) = 3500 calories. If you want to lose a pound a week (2lbs a week is possible but hard) you need to eat at a 500 calorie deficit because 3500/7 = 500.

kykydiva

the amount of calories they let you have is the healty limit for you weight and age and when you excercise it doesnt change the fact that you still need a certain amount of calories so they add it back in so your healthy

fitforlife34

Wow, there's some good information here! Does anyone else feel like they want to eat more when they dont' exercise? Like today I have about 721 calories left to eat because of my 50 minutes cardio, and I don't feel like eating much for the rest of the day.

I agree with the couple of girls who said to eat back half of the exercise calories. As I said before, on foodieary.com when I ate back all the calories I burned, so I was eating 2000 instead of 1500 (if I burned 500 calories let's say) I NEVER lost weight.

kykydiva

i personally dont eat back the calories unless it involves my thrid meal but if your hungry then maybe make a bolied egg or a fruit to fill you up not too much but if not then when you complete your entry it will tell you if your eating too few calories and if it says that just eat more and if not then dont worry about it