eating back the calories we burn?

stonel94

so weight loss is a pretty simple equation of calories in calories out, so if you are burning more calories than you are eating you will lose weight. Exercise and what you eat is important for being healthy, but even if you were eating only junk food, if you only ate 1200 calories of it and burned 2000 you would lose weight just not be healthy. So what I don't understand is why does this site tell us to eat back our calories, like when I work out and burn 600 calories, why should I then eat 600 extra calories? won't that just prevent me from losing weight. Or is it that it determines your calorie intake with weight loss in mind already so you can eat the extra calories to have a net deficit still?
please no complicated like equations and stuff, just explain it to me?

meshashesha2012

so weight loss is a pretty simple equation of calories in calories out, so if you are burning more calories than you are eating you will lose weight. Exercise and what you eat is important for being healthy, but even if you were eating only junk food, if you only ate 1200 calories of it and burned 2000 you would lose weight just not be healthy. So what I don't understand is why does this site tell us to eat back our calories, like when I work out and burn 600 calories, why should I then eat 600 extra calories? won't that just prevent me from losing weight. Or is it that it determines your calorie intake with weight loss in mind already so you can eat the extra calories to have a net deficit still?
please no complicated like equations and stuff, just explain it to me?

- because MFP already sets you up to have a deficit
-because you arent accurately setting up your activity level (for instance if you are regularly exercising 3-5 days a week you are NOT sedentary)
- because you arent taking into account the amount of calories you already burn simply by being a live and doing things like writing posts on the internet, brushing your teeth etc

and the equations really arent complicated, it's basic arithmetic using addition and subtraction, things that many 8 year olds can do :laugh:

flechero

The 1200 already puts you at a deficit which will cause you to lose weight- anything you burn beyond that creates more deficit than you want (and will often burn lean mass which is bad). The process of working out and eating back is fueling the workouts to create more muscle (or retain the muscle you already have) which in turn create a body with more lean mass that will burn more calories at rest (and also be a healthier body). If you are at a small deficit you can burn fat- if at a too large deficit you will burn lean mass.

stonel94

Okay thanks, I wasn't sure about that, and I saw a post about this but the only useful reply was some various calcuations for BMR and other things that didn't really answer the question I wanted.

Yogi_Carl

You can be sedentary in your every day life (like you might have a sit-down job all week) and still workout every day of the week because the workouts are calculated as seperate to your daily activity.

So - if you are running every day but the rest of your day is sedentary, you set your daily activity to SEDENTARY and then log your cardio activities in EXERCISE and eat most of those back.