Exercise Calories

smithmom531

Hi Everyone!

I am a little confused about the "extra" calories one earns when exercising. Are we supposed to eat back all of our exercise calories? My daily calorie goal is 1200. Today I burned 359 calories exercising and I've eaten 907 calories up to this point. I've heard it's not really beneficial to eat less than 1200 calories a day but does that include exercise calories? According to MFP I've netted 548 calories and would have to eat 652 more calories to get to 1200, that would be a lot more calories. I'm just confused about what to do to see the best results. I feel like what's the point in exercising if I am just going to eat all of those calories back again (except the obvious great reasons for exercising), but that might just be the impatient side of me that wants to see results quickly, lol. Sorry if this post is confusing. Hoping someone can help. Thanks!

mkhousarieh

Hi.
It depends on the type of exercise you done. I'm currently at 81.3 kg at 16.8% body fat, I used to be 114kg anyways I used to just do resistance training and ate at an excess but still lost weight. Turns out muscle is metabolically active. This mean a pound of extra muscle burns around 50 more calories a day at rest! So weight training mixed with intermittent fasting is the best way to lose weight. Id advise intermittent fasting but to answer your question it's complex. If you havent eaten 6-8 hours before working out. Your body uses glycogen as its main energy source (no calories to burn from foods/drinks) when these stores are depleted the body turns to fat stores. Eating a good amount of calories 1200-1800 replace these stores. any more calories you eat that aren't needed are stored as fat. Hope that helps :-)

alw141

I think you need to go with what works for you. I've seen many people post on here that they think it's crazy when people eat back their exercise calories. I've tried it both ways and found that I don't lose as much when I don't eat back at least some of those calories. So, my advice would be to see what works best for you. Sorry that's so vague but I think it's really how your body works.

meggonkgonk

MFP is designed for you to eat these back. That's why they add them in.

Like the above poster said though, experiment. I find that if I eat all back on cardio days, but about 2/3 on strength training days, my body responds best.

sh4690

I don't, but that's personal choice If your hungry. have something to eat.