To Eat, or Not To Eat....

cjones0992

Hi everyone!

Okay, I have been reading conflicting things on the whole eat your exercise calories or not to thing. My thing is, if we’re meant to eat our calories that we’ve burned off, what is the point of burning them off in the first place?

So, where I stand on it - don’t eat your exercise calories.

Where do you stand?

MFP calculates our total daily calorie intake WITHOUT exercise to lose 1 pound or so per week.
And after we log exercises, our daily calorie limit increases.
Why?
Because MFP telling us to eat our exercise calories.
Large deficits are unhealthy, because while you will lose weight, what's the quality of the weight loss?
In many cases you'll lose lean body mass - MUSCLE - which LOWERS your metabolic rate, making weight loss harder.
These crash diets work well for a season -- and sure enough, the pounds melt away. But when you eat so
few calories, you train your metabolism to slow down. Once the diet is over, you have a body that burns calories more slowly -- and you gain weight.
Be smart.
Exercise well both cardio and resistance, and eat back the calories.
The exercise will RAISE your metabolism and burn more fat at rest.

This^
I made the mistake of netting less than 1200 calories. Sure I would eat around 1200-1300 calories (didn't think to worry about my BMR of 1516) and then exercise to burn 400 calories, leaving me at only 800 or so calories net. Worked great for the first 10 lbs! And now, I haven't lost any weight the last couple weeks. Plateau :frown: So now I've upped my NET calories to 1400 (roughly) at all times. More exercise=more food for me!