Do you eat your burned calories?

MrsT9217

I'm new to this.. and have heard many debates on if you should eat your burned calories or not.
(with a lot of talk about BMR and BMI and every other letter in the alphabet ....)

What do you do?

carld256

I eat the calories MFP recommends, but don't eat back my exercise calories. I figure my exercise calories are probably less than I think, and my food calories are more than I think, so my deficit isn't as large as MFP shows.

I will eat a bit more if I've exercised a lot and my net calories is really low.

riadastfu

Nope.

Since I'm not convinced that the figures shown are 100% accurate, I err on the side of caution.

trimom10

I have my activity setting at sedentary, since I have a desk job. That being said, I do workout every day and almost always eat back my exercise calories. I've lost consistently anywhere from 1 to 2 pounds per week.

HeidiHoMom

I eat my exercise calories. I have lost weight almost every week.

runnercheryl

Just posted this on another thread, but may as well copy it over:

I aim to eat back my exercise calories. However, just this week I've started running 5ks, and that's messed things up a little.

I burn too many calories on a run, now, to comfortably eat back.

The first time, I couldn't eat all those calories but was starving the next day (lack of calories caught up), so I just ate them back the day after. Yesterday, I was under again - today, I've not been any more hungry than usual so they're now lost calories as far as I'm concerned. I still have a nice, high intake so I'm not too bothered, but I'm buying some new things on my grocery shop next week in the hope that I can start eating back to where I'm supposed to be again.

jfaure23

I have manually over-ridden the MFP calorie goal to be based on my being lightly active (set at 1750 cals). So I eat the same calories every day unless I do extra exercises on top of the ones considered in my lightly active assessment. If I do extra exercises, I log those in MFP and eat back some exercise cals, sometimes I eat all of them, other times I don`t eat them all (where I am away from my calorie goal by 50 to 150 cals). But these are only exercises that burn 300 cals... if I were to burn 700-1000 cals in exercise, I would log them but certainly would not eat all of those back.

I am currently losing consistently 1 - 2lbs per week (5`7``, 168lbs, goal weight of 148lbs)

susannamarie

I do. I enter a somewhat low number (usually 30-60 minutes for a 2-hour class) based on perceived intensity and fraction of the class spent working. I figure that for the exercise I do (martial arts) it's based on someone going flat-out for the full time period. Then I eat *those* back.

So far it's working well, I've been losing 5-6 lbs a month and unless I computed the body comp totally wrong most of it's fat.

renwicker

Thats why I exercise! hahaha

But seriously, you are supposed to eat back what you burn off and try and be at what your cal intake for the day is supposed to be at. Being too far under is just as bad as being too far over. If you think MFP is not calculating your food/exercise (ie: what MFP says for 30 mins running and what your treadmill or HRM might say for cals burned) then maybe use your best judgement or meet in the middle somewhere on that. I think with food I can always find something that is pretty darn close to what I ate. Also eating right after you exercise is the best time to do it because your body needs the a lot of nutrients that you just sweated out. AAAAAnd...your metabolism is in turbo mode and will break your food down like you were 14 years old again. Another plus!