OK to eat exercise calories the next day?

cekeys

So I'm doing my MFP routine & I know I'm supposed to eat my exercise calories--I made that mistake my first week, but there's a problem. I exercise after work, so I'm at the gym until 7 or 8 and the last thing I need is to eat 1400 calories for dinner. (600 left over + 800 from exercising).

The simplist answer is to eat a heavy lunch the days I plan on going to the gym, but it seems that life happens sometimes and I can't make it to the gym on my regularly planned days, so the last thing I would want is to eat a extra 800 calories one day and then not exercise.

Is there any problem with eating the calories the next day, such as having a heavy lunch? I have to believe the body takes it all in stride and doesn't care about when the sun rises & sets when it's converting calories.

LabRat529

Your body doesn't really think in 'days' when it comes to long term weight loss. There's the whole circadian rhythm thing, i.e. the sleep/wake cycle... but anyhow... my point is, you will lose weight if you maintain a chronic calorie deficit. The day-to-day doesn't matter so much as long as you're eating less than you burn over the long run.

So... it's really up to you whether you eat your exercise calories the next day. It's not going to make you stop losing weight as long as you're running a deficit, though it MIGHT make you gain some water weight temporarily. You'd only notice the temporary weight gain if you weighed in every single day. If you weigh in once a week or once a month, I'd bet money you're not going to notice a difference between eating your exercise calories on the day you burn them or eating them the next day.

Rae6503

Yeah, I work with weekly averages instead of daily totals.

Also you can eat them BEFORE you exercise. More motivation to actually do it...