Ate exercise cal's back....and gained....am NOT sold!

tlnurse

Sooooo....I kept reading you should "eat your exercise calories back....which I had never heard of until this site....so the past 2 weeks, I tried it . Week # 1, lost 0.8 (much less than previous)...week #2, gained back the 0.8.....ugh!....and I worked out EVERYDAY!

Soooo.....am rethinking that advice. I think I wil eat only 1/2 of my exercise calories back in the next 2 weeks and see what happens.....what are your thoughts on that?

tlnurse

bump

carld256

I only eat back half my exercise calories too, and that seems to work for me. I figure all the numbers are estimates anyway, so it's better to err on the low side.

peachyxoxoxo

How did you set up your calorie goal on my fitness pal? Does it factor in your activity level or not?

tlnurse

My settings are for lightly active (I am a nurse and that was listed as an example there)...with goal of 1.5-2 lbs lost per week and 4 times weekly minimum of work-out.

peachyxoxoxo

Unless you have it set to sedentary, MFP automatically builds in some calories to account for those settings.

Jenni268

A lot of times the problem is that your exercise calories could be overestimated. I think eating back half is a good idea. That way, you have a cushion for error but you are also eating more to ensure your body is getting the fuel that it needs.

enewsome2

I am in no way a fan of eating exercise calories back. Use the calculator on either fat 2 fit radio or freedieting and put in your activity level. (how many times a week you work out and how vigorous) and use that number. I feel like there's a lot of "iffy"-ness surrounding how much any given exercise burns.

naughtyfushsia_wechnaged

My settings are for lightly active (I am a nurse and that was listed as an example there)...with goal of 1.5-2 lbs lost per week and 4 times weekly minimum of work-out.

personally if youre the type of nurse that works in hospital and on your feet all day, i would change your settings to more active, and see if it makes any change???

best of luck to you x

ooh btw, i stick to my cals and try to keep under by 100 just incase i over guesstermate something that aint in the food log, and i dont eat back my cals either hth x

WildcatMom82

Not everyone eats back their workout cals, as long as your net is over 1200 I wouldn't stress about it. I do find when I increase my calories I usually gain a small amount the first week, then start losing again after my body adjusts. The only reason this site has you eat back workout calories is because it's designed to help you lose weight through eating alone, meaning your daily intake goal alone would cause you to lose 1.5 to 2 lbs a week. If you workout a lot you could end up not eating enough because it's not factoring in that extra calorie defecit. If that makes sense.

WaterBunnie

How did you calculate your exercise calories? With a HRM or through the database here? Some find the estimates here a little high so you may wish to corroborate with other burn calculators and enter an average. I find walking to be fairly accurate but swimming would add about 40% to my true burn so I calculate that through FitBit's site and add it in here at that rate.

sweetchildomine

Listen to your body. If you are hungry...eat. If you aren't hungry, don't force yourself to eat all those calories back just to reach some number that might not even be correct. It's simple really.

meeka472

I have never been a fan of eating back all of your exercise calories back. I see exercise calories as being more of a buffer which allows you to go over your daily goal by a few calories. But if you are eating back all of your exercise calories I think you are on a slippery slope unless you have a lot of weight to lose and your caloric target is high to start off with.

Hezzietiger1

I don't. I lose.

Eifersucht

I eat most of my exercise calories. My settings are for light activity and a goal of 1 pound per week for weight loss. That allows me 1400 calories per day, which just wasn't enough for me. I found myself feeling hungry all day long. So now I work out more. Sixty minutes every day. My weight loss has slowed down a bit but I don't feel like I'm constantly starving anymore. For me, it's worth it.

marycmeadows

calories were overestimated on burn most likely. And 2 weeks of doing something is not enough time. period. I eat back at least half my exercise calories (sometimes all of them) and it has steadily worked for me for over a year and a half...... I currently average 1800-1900 calories on non exercise days.

AReasor

Really, you are stressing a .8lbs. gain? Body weight fluctuates so much. I gain 3lbs. of water weight alone during my TOM.

If your goal is fitness, you should put the scale away and focus on a healthy lifestyle.

amrithav

here is what i did. set my activity level to sedentary, number of workouts to zero and picked stay at the same weight option. That gives you your baseline for calories.

to that i add what i work out (might be a good idea to invest in a heart rate monitor but thats just my opinion). and make sure that there is at least 500 extra calories remaining per day. (essentially for every 3500 calories saved/worked you lose a pound). This way the whole process is transparent to me. It is a little convoluted but makes more sense to me.

Also, it might be a good idea to be more realistic in terms of your goals too - start at 1 pound a week rather than 1.5-2. But again, that is just my opinion. Hope this helps.

Amritha.

Savemyshannon

I eat back about half of my exercise calories back and I've been doing pretty well so far, a solid 1.5-2.5 lbs loss a week (then again I'm much heavier and have more to lose). I will say though that MFP isn't the first program I've used that implements the "extra calories" earned by exercising. I know that WW has something like it, and my Fitbit also adjusts my daily calorie intake based on how active I was for the day. Some days Fitbit gives me 1400 cals to eat but on others it can be as high as 3000 (I never actually ate them all!) based on my activity and how hard I worked out.

I do second the above poster who questioned if you used MFP database. I found that when using MFP, it almost always overshot my "calories burnt" versus using an HRM. Maybe MFP was giving you too much credit and by eating the exercise cals back, you ended up overeating.

Eating half of them back sounds like a good plan, though!

Amryfal

if it doesn't work for you, don't do it

i've eaten mine back consistently, and i've lost 42 lbs. but i don't always use MFP's numbers. i don't have a heart rate monitor, but i try to use calculators that include varying activity levels and weight. i have MFP set to sedentary, because i'm a writer and grad student, so a huge portion of my day is spent stationary, in front of a computer.

that said, i also don't log things like housecleaning, walking (from parking spots, at the store, etc. - if i go to the mall and walk for two hours, i log it) or anything that's part of my daily routine, unless it's excessive. if i rearrange the furniture, i log it

there's a lot of talk here about how MFP's estimates of calories burned aren't right for everyone, and there's also the fact that unless you're weighing/measuring every bite, your calories could be wrong as well...i try to set my calories high enough that i'm not starving all the time, and low enough that there's some margin for error.

i also have a lot more to lose, too, so it could be that once i approach my goal i'll have to get more vigilant.

there really is no fine science to this - it's a matter of finding what works for you. as long as you're getting enough to eat, it shouldn't matter if you eat your exercise calories back or not. the reason people freak out over it is because there seems to be a high number of people who are eating 1200 calories and not eating back hours of calories burned off at the gym - but if you aren't being unhealthy, why worry either way?

SamanthaAnnM

I think MFP really overestimates the amount of calories, as do most exercise machines. That's why I'm wary of eating back exercise calories!

Dahllywood

Listen to your body. If you are hungry...eat. If you aren't hungry, don't force yourself to eat all those calories back just to reach some number that might not even be correct. It's simple really.

This ^. People make it so damn complicated

onyxgirl17

I don't really eat my exercise calories back. If anything I eat more on my off days from exercise.... but my body tells me I'm hungry those days.

peachyxoxoxo

The bottom line is this:

If you have calculated your calorie needs based on a sedentary level of activity and then you log your exercises, you can eat back those calories.

If you have calculated your calorie needs factoring in a higher level of activity, don't log those exercises, and don't eat back the calories. Your allotted intake will automatically be higher.

whitefang66

i use a heart rate monitor to calculate my cal burn, and so far, i've eaten my exercise back most days, give or take a few calories and i lost... mfp's calculations for cal burns are grossly overestimated

wftiger

Were you using a HRM to get calories burned? That might be part of it. Don't trust the exercise numbers here, my experience is that they are way off on certain exercises. Also, most sites recommend only eating back half.

I am an advocate of eating back none unless you are hungry and need them. If you eat back some for that reason, only eat more protein and non-starchy veggies and not carbs.

cbevan1229

I eat some of them back - about half, I'd guess. I try to leave myself about 100 calories under my goal most days (although on hungry days, I'll eat them all) to account for errors in the numbers. I've had good success so far - 13lbs in 8 weeks, which has been comfortable and encouraging.

whitefang66

i use a heart rate monitor to calculate my cal burn, and so far, i've eaten my exercise back most days, give or take a few calories and i lost... mfp's calculations for cal burns are grossly overestimated

IronSmasher

Either you've proven wrong everything science has ever found to be true in the known universe, or you've miscounted.

meerkat70

I think MFP really overestimates the amount of calories, as do most exercise machines. That's why I'm wary of eating back exercise calories!

Or ... get a heart rate monitor. Not perfect, but better than guestimates and self-starving?

breezedm

If you can eat the amount of calories before exercise and not be hungry, do that. That is what I do. If you are hungry all the time when not eating exercise calories, get a HRM or fitbit to have a more accurate calorie count and eat half or all.