Silly Question

betsy329

I am a little confused. Lets say your calorie consumption is set at 1200 per day, and you eat your 1200 calories. Lets also say that you just worked out that evening, burning 300 calories. On MFP, it will say you have a net of 300 calories (the ones you just burned off). Are you supposed to eat those calories back? I keep seeing you must eat your minimum calories everyday. Is that before or after you work out? If you are supposed to eat back those calories, what is the point of working out if you are just going to eat back what you worked off?

yarwell

You'll see your food intake goal go up by the 300 calories of exercise, yes. It'll say "you earned 300 calories extra today by exercising".

The idea is to set the weight loss goal calorie deficit in the base intake (1200 in this case). Exercising and eating back your calories is energy neutral, it doesn't add to your calorie deficit to increase weight loss.

You may choose to "eat back" a proportion of the exercise, rather than all of it. Especially if you aren't sure the reported exercise isn't an accurate increase over what you would have used anyway.

Pebble321

Not a silly question but a common question.
Check out: www.shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com