What if I'm not hungry?: Eating too few calories

anberlingasm

I recently got a Fitbit to help me track my activity throughout the day, so it updates myfitnesspal automatically with extra 'exercise' calories depending how active I've been. This is great, since I work on my feet all day (around 9 hrs per day) and I want to make sure I'm eating well.

What's the deal with eating back exercise calories? Some people say yes, eat them all, some people say half, some say don't eat them back at all. All I know is I've got 900 cals left today (even after some evening snacks) and I'm wondering whether or not it's a good thing to have so many spare. I'm only netting 800 cals today and I've always thought that sort of net was low. What if I'm not hungry, though? Should I still be making the effort to eat those back? Should I be eating more throughout the day to avoid having a huge deficit later?

My diary should be open if anyone has any ideas. I'm stuck!

nxd10

You do eat a lot of processed food. Do you have time to do more cooking for yourself? It would lower your salt and almost definitely up your nutrition. It is also a lot cheaper. Same calories, but much healthier.

I didn't see your nutritional output - but read it carefully. Are you getting all your nutrients? That's what keeps you healthy. I know that when I started watching my calories, I found that my iron was much lower than I thought it was and also that I was getting light headed. I took an iron pill and it went away.

It is nutrients that keep you healthy, not calories. Calories give you energy to move, think, exercise, and function. You can tell you are eating too few calories than is good for you if you don't have energy, if you feel weak, of if you're getting snappy when you feel hungry.

---

In terms of eating back calories . . . you do use a lot of calories doing heavy exercise. For myself, I find that the extra calories they add for easy exercises like walking is probably more than I use to do it. I often don't eat those back unless I feel hungry. I am a professor and I spend a lot of my day running up and down stairs and walking in front of a classroom. But I put myself down as sedentary because that's pretty much a normal, healthy sedentary job and I'm older and my metabolism isn't what it was when I was 20. This seems to work well for me and I don't get hungry.

However, if I am doing heavier work like carpentry or heavy yard work or if I'm running, I do get hungry if I don't use those calories and I often eat some of them up. If I'm hungry and I've got the calories in my net calorie budget, I eat them. If I'm not hungry I stop. I often notice that if I do extra work one day I will be hungry the next day. I eat the calories if I have them.

Remember - all of these recommendations are for average people - and we, as individuals, probably aren't average.

Tourney3p0

It's mental. You didn't gain weight by eating 800 calories a day. You could do it before, and you can do it now. Eat.

LNCOTA

I just posted a similar question...i feel like i am being asked to eat too much and i am nervous it will have the opposite affect! especially the cals burned from execise if you eat them, then what is the point in working out?

mcarter99

All I looked at was your calorie goals/intake for the last 3 days. 2600-2800 is a LOT of calories. Why is your goal so high? From all the Fitbit adjustments? I wouldn't eat that much, especially if I wasn't hungry.

NoChub4Me

I agree with the others. Curious as to how you came up with your calorie goal. Seems pretty high.

niknak2308

Personally I'd eat them back if you're hungry but don't overly worry if not. I aim to net 1000 a day to allow for 200cals leeway from over logging exercise or under logging food. If I'm hungry I'll eat, if I'm not I'll "bank them" for later in the week.

Longterm I wouldn't recommend eating under 1000 constantly, but I don't see the harm short term. Whenever I need to get through a plateau I'll net lower for a week to kickstart the losses and then eat normally again the following weeks.

verapamil

Glad you posted this. I recently got a fitbit and feel like I am eating wayyy to much just to try to meet my net goal. I'm interested to see what everyone responds.

anberlingasm

My goal is high from my adjustments from Fitbit. I lift boxes (of a reasonable weight), climb ladders and walk all day. I take a half hour for lunch, so I spend around 9 hours working and don't sit down. I did 9,500 steps at work alone today on a busy Saturday.

I then do a walk after work that lasts around an hour, every day. This isn't just a stroll in the park, it's around 4 miles and very uphill for at least half of the way. This is why my adjustments are so big.

You do eat a lot of processed food. Do you have time to do more cooking for yourself? It would lower your salt and almost definitely up your nutrition. It is also a lot cheaper. Same calories, but much healthier.

When I quick-add, it's not processed. It's because my wife cooks a healthy, made-from-scratch meal that I can't be bothered to log the individual nutritional analysis of. I don't overly eat processed food on the whole, actually. There's a few days this week where I've had a tin of soup at work for lunch but it beats going to the bakery for a sandwich. It's all relative. We can't all go from eating whatever we want to cooking everything from scratch and eating a perfect nutritional balance. The balance of my food and processed vs. non-processed is nothing to do with the question I asked. I want to know if I'm doing myself a disservice or damaging my chances of good, healthy weight loss by having 'too many' calories left at the end of the day.

It's mental. You didn't gain weight by eating 800 calories a day. You could do it before, and you can do it now. Eat.

I'm not EATING only 800 calories, that's what I'm NETTING.

Thanks some of you for the reasonable responses!

mcarter99

What I would do (and what I do do!) is look at your total burn levels on Fitbit. There is a 30-day average graph under "profile as seen by you". Subtract 500-1000 calories from your average burn and aim to eat that much. Don't go under 1200 calories (of food, not 'net') per day. No netting, no Fitbit adjustment, no MFP goal. Good luck!

anberlingasm

What I would do (and what I do do!) is look at your total burn levels on Fitbit. There is a 30-day average graph under "profile as seen by you". Subtract 500-1000 calories from your average burn and aim to eat that much. Don't go under 1200 calories (of food, not 'net') per day. No netting, no Fitbit adjustment, no MFP goal. Good luck!

Thanks! It sounds like I'm about right (I'm averaging a 3000 burn, and eating about 2000-2400) so I'm hoping for a decent loss this week.

nxd10

[

The balance of my food and processed vs. non-processed is nothing to do with the question I asked. I want to know if I'm doing myself a disservice or damaging my chances of good, healthy weight loss by having 'too many' calories left at the end of the day.

Well, my apologies for not giving you the answer you wanted.

The reason I asked about your nutrition and asked - politely I thought - about what you were eating was because you asked if it was healthy to not eat your calories.

The answer depends upon the nutritional content of what you are eating and whether you can maintain adequate nutrition given the hard labor you are doing. You're working hard. You need a lot of nutrients. If you read my post, that's what the rest of it says.

As I also said, if you don't feel hungry and you are not a) weak b) dizzy or c) grumpy - all signs of low blood sugar - you are probably not hurting yourself by not eating back all of those calories. Those are the cues a healthy body uses to tell you when you need to eat more.

Specific calorie requirements depend on how much easily metabolizable fat you've got on your body and how efficient it is. If you've dieted a lot before your body holds onto calories more dearly than if you never have.

If this is not addressing your question, again, I apologize and please ignore my answer.