To eat your exercise calories or not... that is the ??

Orient_Charm

Bump....

BamaGirl_Tricia

You don't want to slow your metabolism down either by not eating back any exercise cals. It doesn't negate the work that you've done. You are conditioning your body and you want your metabolism to be effective all day. If you don't eat back the exercise calories, then to me, what's the point in exercising? You won't be giving your body what it needs to build muscle and stamina and keeping that metabolism going all day.

I agree! Just look at your net calories and see what they are. It is very dangerous to go below 1200 calories a day for a woman.

mjterp

Biochemically...your body goes for the energy in your blood first (blood sugar from eating) then if there is no food calories to burn it will go to burn fat. But only IF it doesn't need HUGE amounts of energy. IF it needs HUGE amounts of energy, it will burn the muscle because muscle is higher in stored energy than fat is (presuming it NEEDS that input.) That is why marathon runners and athletes "carb up" BEFORE their big energy expenditures. (so the energy is readily available to transport from the bloodstream into the muscle.)

Long story longer, any time those (blood sugar) calories are NOT used, they get stored as fat to be used later. So in my case, I was very similar to a Sumo wrester...eating everything one meal a day typically) before I went to bed at night...so burning muscle for my body to get through the day, then eating calories that just went into fat storage at night.

Ideally, you give your body the energy it needs shortly before it needs it. So larger meals earlier in the day...or a steady stream of incoming calories to pull from and then the body can pull from fat when the food calories aren't enough. The "be careful" warning comes in when you don't eat enough and then put your muscles into HIGH calorie demand by exercising. The body says pulling from fat is like trying to put out a house fire by pulling your water through a straw when what you need is a firehose! The firehose in this instance being the high energy cells called muscle. We want to burn the FAT *not* the muscle. So...keeping those calories MOSTLY available through food when we need them so the fat can be pulled to compensate for any shortage because that's all the extra we need. (putting out a match instead of an inferno.)

NOW that I am eating throughout the day, my body is no longer in starvation mode. It is burning what I eat plus some fat. IT IS WORKING. It is a new lifestyle I am building. SOOOO worth it. Cravings are reducing (thank heavens!) and I have noticed an increase in my energy.

So that is the mini biochemical side of it. hope it helps.

JustJennie1

The majority of the people who want you to eat them back see no other option as okay or decent (and they tend to show this with anger). Asking this question is like opening a can of worms. If I exercise off 700 calories I'll eat like 1300-1400 that day instead of 1200. It doesn't matter to me...I just eat when I'm hungry. I don't try to eat them back or not (but I never eat all of them). There is a lot of conflicting advice (and it's not because we who don't eat them back don't get math). What works for me may not work for you and what works for Jane may not work for John. Experiment around and see what helps you the best. Just be careful not to overestimate burned and underestimate consumed. Also, know that MFP over calculates calories burned.

All I'm going to say is that inches are coming off like butter and the scale is dropping with me not eating them back. And to the haters, I'm not only losing muscle and I'm not a sack of fat and bones. I am more toned than ever from my exercises and diet.

Yup.

There are days where I eat back most of my exercise calories and not on purpose it's because I was hungrier that day. Then there are the days where I don't and I'm at a fairly large net calorie deficit but I'm also not hungry.

I eat when I'm hungry. If I eat back my exercise calories one day and not the next big deal. I don't force myself to eat just so that I'm not at a deficit. This works for me and I have become very lean from it.

myfitnessnmhoy

Different bodies react differently.

In my case, I eat back my exercise calories if I can. This weekend, I went for a 40-mile bike ride and I simply could not eat them all, but I ate 2/3 of them and felt like I had stuffed myself silly (and I still left almost 1000 calories "on the table").

If I don't eat pretty close to them, I have the following problems:

1. I feel really hungry all the time. I don't like feeling hungry. I tend to eat unhealthy things when I'm really hungry. I can't make rational decisions about food.
2. I feel tired. I don't like feeling tired. My exercise intensity suffers.
3. I feel distracted and depressed. I'm less likely to work out, and I feel like crap.
4. I get colds and other illnesses more readily. Then I drop my exercise and increase my food to get over the cold, and I've just suffered a setback.
5. My weight loss tends to slow down, or at least go at the same rate.

I'm OK with losing 2 pounds a week, which is what I've been doing pretty regularly. A 1,000-a-day calorie deficit seems to work well for me so far. I'm rarely super hungry, I feel energetic and clearheaded. I'm not in some huge hurry to lose weight - I'm trying to set myself up with reasonable eating habits that I will maintain for a lifetime.

I lost my first 30 pounds by eating very little and exercising very much. I was hungry. I got sick all the time. I was tired. Workouts were a chore. I was rude and difficult to the people around me. And the 30 pounds took about a year.

My next 20 pounds were done by upping my exercise, focusing on a balanced and healthy diet, but never depriving myself of food I really felt my body was asking for. It took me three months, and I felt pretty good during that time.

So, obviously, I found what worked for me and what didn't, through experimentation and honest (if belated) evaluation of what worked and what did not.

For me, it's become more about being able to CONTROL the pace of my weight loss than trying to rush it as fast as possible. I try to run as close as possible to my 1,000 calorie deficit every single day. If I burn off 500 calories, I add them to my intake. As I approach my goal, my weight loss will slow down naturally, and I will increase my calories to try and sustain a 1-pound-a-week loss. When I reach my goal, I will increase my calories gradually and set up an eating plan that will allow me to sustain my weight. The closer I get to my ideal weight, the less this becomes "weight loss" and the more it becomes "my lifestyle".

But YOU gotta try different things and do what works for YOU. If you feel healthy and energetic at a 2,000 calorie daily deficit, and you're losing weight, who am I to judge?

Whether you are losing weight or not, if you feel tired and hungry all the time, I can only say that doing your weight loss without all the misery sets you up in a better place to sustain healthy eating habits for life, and will reduce the chance that you'll want to binge-eat or give up losing weight altogether. I'd urge you to try it for a few weeks and see if it works out for you. You might find that the path to your ideal weight is a lot more comfortable than you think.

But I ain't your doctor and I ain't your mom. However you choose to approach weight loss, congratulations on your decision to do it, and I wish you the very best results regardless of your chosen approach. There are a LOT of ways to lose weight.

cathyL11

Sometimes I eat mine back and sometimes not. It all depends on how hungry I am. Occasionally I have days where I eat way more calories than I am supposed to so on the whole I prefer to be at least a little bit on the deficit side to absorb those binge days. Aside from that I never really know how many calories I expend on exercise --- it's pretty much an estimate so for that reason I prefer to be in at least a slight calorie deficit.

pixiechick8321

I think it needs to be stated here...

Unless you know FOR SURE (ie, chest heart rate monitor), you should not eat back everything the machine said you burned. They aren't that accurate and it's an estimate. That said, if you use a specific, for you method of tracking, then you can eat back more.

I try to stay around 50% of what I "earned" since I don't have a heart rate monitor and thus it's an estimate and I don't want to go over when I don't know for sure.

Also, I agree with what some people are saying - for women, you should eat at least 1200 calories per day AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE - so let's say your treadmill says you burned 300 calories - that means you get an extra 150 and you should eat that for a total of 1350 for the day - going up to 1500 is unnecessary since probably the treadmill isn't that accurate.

Finally, as a few people have said - don't stuff yourself just because you "Can" - if you aren't hungry, stop eating!

MogwaisGrandma

I came looking for this thread as I have just upped my calorie burn, but I know I am going to struggle to eat back my calories for the day.

After reading the replies on here I have decided that I am going to eat back a maximum of 75% ( I will have approx 400 left today so I will be eating 60% back) to leave me with a cushion for the burn on here/machine being incorrect. Saying that the machine and mfp were nearly identical the other day when I cross trained for an hour.

Good luck, however it works for you.

1nsanity

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing

eat your calories back. you will gain weight the first couple weeks but it will come right back off. mfp already builds in the deficit to lose weight. if your net calories on mfp is set at 2000, then your bmr is around 2500. if you eat 2000 calories a day with no exercise, that i 1 pound lost per week.

if you exercise and burn 500 calories one day, and dont eat the calories back, that is a 1000 calories deficit for that day. do this over a sustained amount of time and your metabolism will start to lower itself because your body thinks it is going into starvation mode.

the links provided will be a much better explanation, but this is the gist of it. i think eating back at least half of the exercise calories would be good enough

marylovehellokitty

Listen to Fat2Fit radio, they do a great job of explaining why super restrictive calorie "diets" are not good for your body.

You lost tons of weight & that's the only advice you can give lol. congrats btw!

yarwell

it will burn the muscle because muscle is higher in stored energy than fat is

Err, wrong.

a) Fat has 9 calories per gram, protein (muscle) has 4

b) fat reserves might be 50 kg, lean muscle is a lot less.

Bodies store fat, they don't store muscle. There's a reason for that.

amzelrulz

I hardly ever eat mine back, I try not to. In my opinion you're not supposed to. but i dn't know if that's right...

beckers80

bump

Lynvincible26

Go to 'Goals' section. You'll see that even if you DO eat your excercise calories back, you still have a daily calorie deficit as calculated by MFP, so you are still burning calories on a daily basis so long as you stay within the limits on your daily food/excercise log. You can eat the number of calories that it shows there, regardless, and still lose weight without even realising that you're depriving yourself of yummy calories.

That's why I LOVE MFP! :bigsmile: