do you have to eat the calories i just burned off

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babadee
babadee Posts: 22 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I have been going thru a weight loss struggle thru my whole life. I have been slowly dropping weight over the last year when I realized I didn't want to be fat all my life. recently I got laid off and now I have been hitting the gym 5 days a week for 2 hours a day. doing cardio and strength training. Now my question is because I have been burning 600 or more calories a day do or should I be eating the calories back? I feel like I have been losing more weight. ie pants looser but the scale stays the same. I am not concerned with this because I know I am gaining muscles. I just don't want to ruin my hard work by not eating right and doing the right things.

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  • adopt4
    adopt4 Posts: 970 Member
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    It totally depends on your body, some people are successful at not eating their exercise calories, others are not. If you are seeing yourself firming up, even though the scale is not losing, I would leave it alone for now. Depending on how much weight you have to lose also seems to have an effect on whether or not you need your exercise cals too. Your body will adjust to your new amount of exercise, and you'll burn more calories in a day doing nothing because you're building muscles, and then you'll stop seeing results and it would be time to eat your exercise calories, adding 100 per day for a week or two before adding any more, and see what that magic number is for you.
  • Hermit4Hire
    Hermit4Hire Posts: 197
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    Here's a link to some light reading on the subject then decide for yourself.


    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo
  • bryannakay
    bryannakay Posts: 198 Member
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    GREAT LINK HERMIT!! I just pulled out one of the most important parts of the article for those who won't read the whole thing or are too lazy to go to the link :laugh:

    READ THE FOLLOWING!!

    ~If you enter exercise into your daily plan, the site automatically adjusts your total caloric needs to stay within that normal range (in other words, just put your exercise in, don't worry about doing any additional calculations). Not eating exercise calories can bring you outside that range and (if done over an extended period of days or weeks) will gradually send your body into survival mode, making it harder (but not impossible) to continue to lose weight.~

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