Eating you calories burned: do or do not?

ajnb88

I used to try, but while I could accurately track intake, I found getting an accurate tdee was nigh on impossible, so I stopped. The way I would do it is I'd look at what my hrm or machine said, (say, 600 burned) and take 100 or so off it, as a conservative estimate.

The problem I'd find is that on days when I was hungry, I'd use it as an excuse to binge. Like, oh I burned 500 so this massive pizza is basically a bagel nom nom nom. Since I stopped counting, I find that I can understand my body a little more, so eat to keep myself going rather than to hit figures.

Marianna93637

I was also wondering about this when the scale didn't move for 3 weeks and I thought I was at a plateau. Everyone said different things, like you said in your first post. Nothing made sense 100 %.
Then I figured this (this might not be the best explanation, but this is the most logical to me)
MFP already has you eating at low calories (deficit). For me it's 1300. Let's say I eat that, and then burn 300 calories with cardio. Should I eat it back? If I feel hungry, sure, If not, don't. The 100-300 calories could work to offset any logging inaccuracies, so if I underestimated food and overestimated workouts, I'm still ok.
In my opinion, anything over 300 should be at least partially eaten back. If I take a Zumba class, I burn about 700 calories. Am I overestimating? Maybe, but I know for sure it's at least 500. If I don't eat any of it back, I'm not fueling my body effectively, and end up with 600-800 calories net=not enough.

So overall listen to your body, if you're hungry, eat it back, if not, don't force it.
For example today so far I ate 1124 calories, and cardio took off 145. At 1400 goal, I'm supposed to have 421 left. I don't feel hungry, but I will probably eat 200 calories before I go to sleep, because I'll be up for a while. Which means I'm still on track with everything, even if i was inaccurate with logging.

LAWoman72

I eat back about half, usually. I definitely feel MFP overestimates.

You can try eating them all back and see what happens over the next two to three weeks. If you feel you're not losing after that time, you can start reducing the amount of calories you "eat back" until you find the right amount for you.

TasnimEz

I think it depends.. When I followed the calorie limit set by Mfp (tends to be a bit low for many) I ate my exercise calories back. This time around I calculated my calorie goals myself and eat 1700-1800 a day, I usually only do bodyweight exercises/pilates so I don't eat back the calories unless I'm really hungry..

obscuremusicreference

Necro thread

Debbie_Ferr

LAWoman72 wrote: »

I eat back about half, usually. I definitely feel MFP overestimates.

You can try eating them all back and see what happens over the next two to three weeks. If you feel you're not losing after that time, you can start reducing the amount of calories you "eat back" until you find the right amount for you.

I suggest eating only SOME of them back.
Ask yourself, if you didn't exercise for an hour, what would you be doing instead?
In my case, I'd be sitting, which I burn 40 calories per hour.

178 calories If I walk 3miles / hour
- 40 calories if I sit & watch TV
= 138 calorie Difference

so the max I should eat back is 138, not 178.
otherwise, I'd be better off just sitting and not consuming any additional calories ie
0 calories consumed - burn 40 sititng = NEGATIVE 40


http://www.fitday.com/webfit/burned/calories_burned_Sitting_writing_desk_work.html\

Hily93

DanaDark wrote: »

You can eat the calories back. MFP already has your deficit worked in.

However, the calories determined is usually somewhat high. So, most of us will eat back a percentage of the calories, like half of 3/4 of them.

So, if you run and MFP says your ran burned 100 calories, eat back 50. That way you are fueling the body for the activities as well as accounting for the inaccuracy of determining exactly how many you've burned.

I do this or I don't count those in, it depends. I go after how I feel, can I do without eating them, I count them out, but at most I eat half of the calories or 3/4.

davert123

It depends on what you want from MFP and your body. Dropping weight causes you to get rid of muscle mass if you go too fast. If your feel good factor is a number on a scale then fill your boots, don't eat your calories back and the number will drop - you can even kid yourself that its all fat that is cumming off if you want to :-) If you want to get healthy, have a toned look to your body and get fit the optimum way of doing this is to keep a relatively small deficit. This means eating back your calories and MFP to do what it is designed to do :-)

TimothyFish

I exercise to give me more calories, but I don't eat all of them, for two reasons. One, MFP includes both the exercise calories and BMR. Two, I'm not sure mapmyride is giving me the right calorie count, or MFP for that matter. Yesterday, I road 32 miles and it said I burned over 2000 calories. Supposedly, I could have eaten 3600 calories yesterday. I ate 2500 instead.

baxterroxy

I set my profile to sedentary (even though I am lightly active) then I eat all my exercise calories back using a heart rate monitor. I had it set to lightly active and eating all calories back and weight loss stalled.

Liftng4Lis

2012 Thread, they ate them already!

Yasmine91

I can't, I don't lose weight if I do. I think what you should do is a little trial and error, see how your body reacts to it x

Carbsmakefat

Calories are a very strange little thing. I've been researching how they are measured and am finding the whole counting calories at all very pointless. I exercise for the general Heath benifts, not to fool myself into thinking I can eat more.

callsitlikeiseeit

i dont deliberately eat them back, no. If I'm hungry I'll eat, or if I had a crazy high calorie meal, i might exercise a little more to help compensate and count that, but as far as day to day habits go, not really.

Francl27

I'm guessing most nutritionists just assume that you're not logging properly (a lot of people don't), so eating exercise calories might undo any deficit you have. But technically, you're supposed to, or it makes the deficit too large.

It depends also on your deficit anyway... If you're set at 1 pound a week but have a lot to lose, it's not a huge deal if you don't. It gets more of a problem when you don't have much to lose, have a big deficit, and don't eat your calories back (like a lot of the people who eat 1200 calories when they have 10 pounds to lose) - then it's unhealthy and you're more likely to lose muscle.

lemurcat12

Francl27 wrote: »

I'm guessing most nutritionists just assume that you're not logging properly (a lot of people don't), so eating exercise calories might undo any deficit you have. But technically, you're supposed to, or it makes the deficit too large.

It depends also on your deficit anyway... If you're set at 1 pound a week but have a lot to lose, it's not a huge deal if you don't. It gets more of a problem when you don't have much to lose, have a big deficit, and don't eat your calories back (like a lot of the people who eat 1200 calories when they have 10 pounds to lose) - then it's unhealthy and you're more likely to lose muscle.

Exactly this.

I understand why nutritionists may feel like they should err on the side of assuming people will log badly, but as someone who has mostly logged very carefully (and thus gotten the results predicted while eating exercise calories) that assumption seems rather insulting and condescending to me. This is related to why I'd never want to go to a nutritionist anyway, though, as I think it's kind of ridiculous to think that you need help with a basic human function like what to eat unless you do have a medical condition that requires a specific diet.

I think it's sensible to try to reduce calories to lose a lb a week and increase exercise for a second lb (if you have lots to lose), and MFP doesn't really let you approach it that way, so I think a good way to get around that is ask for a lb/week goal and don't eat back exercise. But that doesn't mean that you should eat 1200 (which is where a really high percentage of women end up with the MFP method if they ask for 2 lbs/week or even 1.5 lbs/week) and then exercise on top of that without eating more. If you log right, that's too aggressive. If you don't log right, I think it's better to fix your logging than have a screwed up idea of what your maintenance calories are.