Eating back calories

jcbgrange

Someone please explain... Am I supposed to 'eat back' the calories I burn so that it gets to 1200 if I'm on a 1200 cal day or do I just need to consume 1200 and can burn off whatever?
Does that make sense? I don't know if I am supposed to stay at 1200 or if it's ok to eat 1200 then burn 600 without eating another 600. ?

randomnennie

I personally mix it up.

If it was a super light exercise day, then I don't eat them back. But if we do one of our 20+ mile bike rides or hikes (anything strenuous) then I eat SOME (about half) of the burned calories back.

ladyraven68

Someone please explain... Am I supposed to 'eat back' the calories I burn so that it gets to 1200 if I'm on a 1200 cal day or do I just need to consume 1200 and can burn off whatever?
Does that make sense? I don't know if I am supposed to stay at 1200 or if it's ok to eat 1200 then burn 600 without eating another 600. ?

if you are following MFP as it is designed to work, you eat until your remaining is zero, providing you are sure your calories burned are accurate.

the 1200 already has a defict built in so you can lose weight without exercise. If you burn a further 600, you are making that defict larger, so you eat back the 600 to get the deficit back to what you selected.

KANNMR

curious as well

jcbgrange

So I always want to keep that number at zero? At the end of the day, when all my food is consumed and all workouts done, it has to be at zero or does it have to be below to be losing weight?

ladyraven68

So I always want to keep that number at zero? At the end of the day, when all my food is consumed and all workouts done, it has to be at zero or does it have to be below to be losing weight?

Zero is fine - if you put it below zero, it actually means you are over your calories, not under.

a "remaining" of -200 means you ate 200 too much.

Have a read of some of the stickied threads at the top of this forum,

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/6556-the-answers-to-the-questions

charlena48

I usually mix it up also. I usually eat most of them back - I have done best doing this.

mustgetmuscles1

It really depends on how you set up your calories goals in the beginning. If you are using MFP calculator it has a deficit built into to your daily calorie goal. Meaning if you dont do any exercise you will still lose weight. Now if you add exercise on top of that you have made your calorie deficit even larger. That is not always a good thing.

Say a person needs 1800 calories per day just to maintain current weight. They told MFP they want to lose 2 lbs per week (despite the site recommending only 1 per week). -2 lbs per week would be a 1000 calorie deficit everyday. MFP will not let your daily calorie goals fall below 1200 (probably for legal liability reasons). Soo they need 1800 to maintain and their daily goal is 600 less than that. Which should equal out to just over 1 pound per week of loss.

That is without any exercise at all. Now say that person works out for and hour and burns 400 cals. That would increase the deficit to 1000. That would equal 2 pounds per week of weight loss. In a normal overweight person this can be very unhealthy and unsustainable for very long. In an extremely obese person it might be less of an issue because the fact that they are so overweight is actually more of a danger than a 1000 calorie deficit.

Too large of a deficit can lead to muscle loss in the short term. This can result in a person reaching their weight loss goal and then being very unsatisfied with the results of all their hard work. Sure the scale was moving but all that weight loss was not just the fat the were tryign to lose.

A large deficit maintained for a long period of time can lead to a slower metabolism, bone loss, organ damage, hormone imbalances, and loss of brain function.