Eating your exercise calories

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jarredondo
jarredondo Posts: 297 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I know, I know, there are about a gazillion post about whether to eat your exercise calories or not. This is just a word of warning who take the numbers too literally. Be careful of the numbers you choose as your exercise burn. Today, for example, I was on the elliptical for 36 minutes. The machine calculate calorie burn was over 600 calories!! Whoo Hooo, right? Except generally those machines calculate for a Man, not a woman, so I know it was no where near that. I go back to my computer and enter it into MFP. That calculates to a 387 calorie burn. Still not bad but my heart rate monitor (Which takes into account my HR, age, gender and weight) tells me I only burned 261. I just wanted to throw this out there for people, especially new people, to be careful of the numbers that you choose.
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Replies

  • JoolieW68
    JoolieW68 Posts: 1,879 Member
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    And that is exactly why I never eat back ALL of my calories.
  • acg1305
    acg1305 Posts: 224 Member
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    I know about allllll the posts saying to eat them back, but I dont. I eat a good dinner a couple of hours before I hit the gym and if I'm hungry after a grab a snack of fruit or popcorn, no way would I have a 400 cal loaded meal, the equivalent of what I would usually burn.
  • DeanneLea
    DeanneLea Posts: 261
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    I agree. I usually eat about half of them back just to be on the safe side. I am in total agreement on eating back exercise calories but so many times, they are exaggerated.
  • CrazyLazyStylist
    CrazyLazyStylist Posts: 65 Member
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    Im with you, my gazelle trainer usually gives me 3x as many calories as my pedometer.
  • acg1305
    acg1305 Posts: 224 Member
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    oh and never go by fitnesspal's default calories burned. IMO they are way too generous.
  • misskerouac
    misskerouac Posts: 2,242 Member
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    That's why I invested in a HRM.
  • livestar
    livestar Posts: 140 Member
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    bump
  • kazzari
    kazzari Posts: 473 Member
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    Yep! Machines pretty much always over estimate calorie burn. I wouldn't believe any machine that told me I burned over 300 calories, maybe 400 for a 1 hour treadmill run. And since we're only talking about a few hundred calories for our workout, while you may still get results eating back your exercise calories, it is certainly not going to do you any harm if you do not.
  • ncthomas09
    ncthomas09 Posts: 322 Member
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    my thought is that if you are supposed to burn calories to lose weight im not sure why you would want to eat all of them back anyway! i try to stay in my daily allowance and not eat any of my exercise calories back but they are nice to have there in case I go over my daily count a little bit
  • stephabef
    stephabef Posts: 936 Member
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    That's why I invested in a HRM.

    This.
  • Darkskinned88
    Darkskinned88 Posts: 1,177 Member
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    i typically take off 4-500 off of my burns (mfp gives maybe TOO much credit for certain exercises) and i try to only log actual exercise and chalk the rest up to a bonus. That way i dont get duped into eating too much back
  • kristi_asco
    kristi_asco Posts: 183
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    That's why I invested in a HRM.

    me too! :tongue:
  • Jersey_Devil
    Jersey_Devil Posts: 4,142 Member
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    when i was losing weight i ate back 3/4 of them...now i eat as much of them as i feel like cause I'm trying to gain muscle.
  • nickyrobinson
    nickyrobinson Posts: 161 Member
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    I only log 2/3 of my exercise TIME and eat back ALL the calories. Keeps me from having to do as much on-the-fly math. :-)
  • BobbieLee1959
    BobbieLee1959 Posts: 605 Member
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    oh and never go by fitnesspal's default calories burned. IMO they are way too generous.

    I agree with this...according to MFP I burned 700+ calories for a moderate work out of 45 minutes and the machines I was on were not even close to this...eating back 1/2 is what I did, just because I was hungry...listening to your body is the most accurate measure I believe!
  • BobbieLee1959
    BobbieLee1959 Posts: 605 Member
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    That's why I invested in a HRM.

    me too! :tongue:

    ordered my FITBIT today...hope it is more accurate than the machines or MFP
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
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    Yep! Machines pretty much always over estimate calorie burn. I wouldn't believe any machine that told me I burned over 300 calories, maybe 400 for a 1 hour treadmill run. And since we're only talking about a few hundred calories for our workout, while you may still get results eating back your exercise calories, it is certainly not going to do you any harm if you do not.
    For me? 400 an hour for a treadmill run would be underestimating or just getting it right. It all depends on you and your body. I wear a HRM and tend to burn about 100 calories a mile.
  • hanniejong
    hanniejong Posts: 556 Member
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    I also do not eat back all the calories most of the time.
  • CyberEd312
    CyberEd312 Posts: 3,536 Member
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    I invested in a Polar FT60 HRM and eat back 85-90% of my calories burned leaving 10-15% for error...... My bmr is 2300 with my 1 lb. Deficit built in and I am eating 3200 calories day with my exercise calories.... and still adding a pound lost to my ticker every week. Got to fuel those workouts.....
  • mrshoneybear1014
    mrshoneybear1014 Posts: 275 Member
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    Same thing happened to me yesterday. I did the elliptical for an hour and the machine said 750, MFP said 1100, and my HRM said 356. WAYYYYYYY different.

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