success not eating back exercise calories

kaotik26

The higher my defecit the closer I am to burning off another 3500 calorie pound. If I'm hungry, like starving, I eat it back, otherwise it doesn't make sense to me to do so.

renkatrun

I guess I find it strange - biggest loser people dont eat theirs back, and also people on very low calories diets are also under the daily 1200 a day anyway, how come their metabolisms keep going?

http://fwd4.me/16RH

Looks like nearly everyone has gained a fraction of their weight back...

avasano

bump

_SaraBelle_

I try not to eat back my calories gained..I figure thats more lost than if I replace it back...But theirs days I feel the need to eat so I do.

marycmeadows

The way I look at it is, you are given say minimum 1400 calories to eat each day, which if you dont exercise, you will lose weight anyway because you are already running at a deficit (500 built in). If you exercised and burnt 500 calories you are now running at 900 calories giving yourself a 1000 calorie deficit. Far too much.

So because you have burned 500 and your deficit built in is already 500 there is 1000. You need to replace the 500 you burnt or close to it so that you will still lose the weight you have input into MFP. If you dont your metabolism will slow down and you wont burn as well as you had hoped and you wont lose like you want.

Does that make sense?

this is pretty much it.

mellabyte

I'm on 1200 (though considering upping to 1300) a day and I don't usually eat all my exercise calories back. Sometimes I'm under my 1200 net, well usually - but I'm usually close like...1175 or something. (I know there are very passionate camps about netting under 1200. It's all good.) And I've been losing steadily anywhere from 1.5 to .5lbs a week since upping my exercise in June. It is slowing down now more like around .5lbs - but I'm getting close to my goal. I expected this with the last 10lbs.

On the days where I burn 500+ calories exercising, I eat most of them back for sure - because my body definitely tells me that it's ravenous and needs to be refueled. But even then, more often than not, I feel great after consuming 1/2 or 3/4 of those cals back. On the days I burn less than that, I eat about 1/2 or less back - depending on how hungry I feel.

General rule, if I'm hungry (and not binge-hungry - which hasn't happen to me in years now), I'll eat. Otherwise, if I'm not at a dangerously low net (<900 in my mind - definitions will vary whether professional or preconceived), I don't force myself.

My skin looks great, hair is healthy; I don't feel lethargic, weak, lacking in energy, exhausted or any other various symptoms that would indicate I am starving my body. -So for now, it works for me.-

(Now I will note, hopefully without jacking this thread, that recently I've been suffering from low bp, my only symptom being occasional difficulty taking deep breaths on any given random day - but, oddly, not when exercising. o_O So this may be affecting oxygen levels carried through my bloodstream. But I spoke to a friend of mine who is a RN and she said I may be anemic and to check my iron levels at my next appt. This is highly possible because I'm pescetarian. So I don't eat red meat and I _have_ been lacking in iron-rich replacements.)

runnerdad

I think part of it depends on how much you have to lose, and how intense your exercise calorie burn is. Before MFP, I worked with a personal trainer who did not believe in eating exercise calories back. After a few months, I had lost a lot of weight, including lean muscle mass, felt like crap, and had a significant drop in number of pushups, dips, etc that I was capable of doing. Not exactly desirable results. I do not consider a hour of household chores worthy of logging exercise calories, so I don't eat that back, but when I go out for a 10-20 mile run, you had better believe, if you are not keeping up with eating your exercise calories, you will crash and burn.

rachylouise87

40lb loss here in 7 months from not eating exercise cals back i am 5ft and now 151lbs

mcrowe1016

Yesterday I didn't eat my exercise calories back, and I lost a pound, so that says something!

All that says is that you think you had a deficit of 3500 calories in one day.