Please Explain Eating Back The Exercise Calories?

gpstrucker

I am new to all of this. I am trying to eat better, more fruits and veggies, a lot less fried foods, salt, sugar, etc. I am doing my best to try and stay at or below the alloted net calories for the day/week.

I have seen mentioned several times on the forums about eating back your exercise calories. What exactly does that mean and why is it so important? Sorry if this is a stupid question but, as I said, this whole fitness thing is totally new to me.

megsmom2

Its pretty simple. MFP takes the numbers you give it and figures out how many calories you should eat to lose what you told it you want to. That means a calories deficit is already built in. If you exercise....now you've doubled your deficit. Okay...but now you may be at unhealthy calories levels. If you go too low, you risk damaging your metabolism, and make losing even harder. What to do? Eat back what you burned off. You're still at a deficit, still losing weight at a safer and sustainable rate. Does that help?

gpstrucker

Its pretty simple. MFP takes the numbers you give it and figures out how many calories you should eat to lose what you told it you want to. That means a calories deficit is already built in. If you exercise....now you've doubled your deficit. Okay...but now you may be at unhealthy calories levels. If you go too low, you risk damaging your metabolism, and make losing even harder. What to do? Eat back what you burned off. You're still at a deficit, still losing weight at a safer and sustainable rate. Does that help?

Thanks, that does help.