Do you use your excercise calories?

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Replies

  • wibutterflymagic
    wibutterflymagic Posts: 788 Member
    Yes. Atleast enough to keep you within a couple hundred calories of your daily calorie goal. You're body needs fuel to function. If you are exercising to the point that you are consuming below1000-1200/day then you should eat back calories. You want to lose weight in a healthy sustainable way and if your daily calorie intake is too low you are doing more harm then good.
  • weird_me2
    weird_me2 Posts: 716 Member
    I work out every morning ussualy burning 300-500 calories. to this point i have only been eating my original calories aloted to me by MFP. Should I be eating all the calories I have?
    I eat my exercise calories back no matter what.
    Why?
    Because if our calorie deficit is too great, we can easily suffer from
    loss of muscle mass (slows down your metabolism) and impaired general progress.
    You have to find what is right for you but you also need to remember that your body
    is a machine and without the right type and amount of fuel there could be problems
    either with loss of muscle, loss of energy, less weight loss/plateaus, etc.
    Check out this topic:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/238282-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing-redux?hl=700+calories

    I try to just stick with the MFP recommendations.
    Good Luck To You
    When you have a lot of weight to lose, losing muscle mass is the least of ones concerns.

    Pretty sure that it shouldn't be if it is. If you don't try to maintain muscle mass while you are losing, you are probably going to have a harder time maintaining. If you lose a lot of muscle mass, your BMR & TDEE will be lower and your body fat % will be higher. This means that if 2 people start at the same height, weight & body fat lose 50 lbs each but one maintains muscle mass while the other doesn't , the one who has maintained their muscle mass will be able to eat more calories because they will burn more calories, plus they will generally be healthier because they will have a lower body fat %.
  • Bobby__Clerici
    Bobby__Clerici Posts: 741 Member
    I work out every morning ussualy burning 300-500 calories. to this point i have only been eating my original calories aloted to me by MFP. Should I be eating all the calories I have?
    I eat my exercise calories back no matter what.
    Why?
    Because if our calorie deficit is too great, we can easily suffer from
    loss of muscle mass (slows down your metabolism) and impaired general progress.
    You have to find what is right for you but you also need to remember that your body
    is a machine and without the right type and amount of fuel there could be problems
    either with loss of muscle, loss of energy, less weight loss/plateaus, etc.
    Check out this topic:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/238282-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing-redux?hl=700+calories

    I try to just stick with the MFP recommendations.
    Good Luck To You
    When you have a lot of weight to lose, losing muscle mass is the least of ones concerns.
    Why go from fat to skinny fat?
    I guess I just wanted more for myself.
    To each his own.
  • ChangingAmanda
    ChangingAmanda Posts: 486 Member
    It depends on how you set your activity level when you started with MFP. If you included your exercise already, then no, you do not want to eat them back because they're already calculated into your daily goal. If you did not include your exercise, i.e. sedentary, then you do want to eat them back. How much you eat back depends on how you calculated the calorie burn. In my experience, my heart rate monitor is about half what MFP says when I use MFP to calculate my calorie burn. I set up MFP with a sedentary activity level and eat back the calories my HRM says I burned. That's me, as you can already tell, everyone has an opinion.
  • justal313
    justal313 Posts: 1,375 Member
    Most of, but not all of them. I leave a little "on the table" to have a buffer against estimation errors, incorrect nutritional information and the like.

    I am trying to come within 100 without going over. Some days I don't quite get there, oh well.
  • WhoIsAmber
    WhoIsAmber Posts: 161 Member
    Sometimes I eat them, if I feel low on energy, but most of the time, I try NOT to.
  • glubben
    glubben Posts: 45 Member
    Thanks for the responses everyone! I think ill try to eat the majority of them form here on out.
  • smittybuilt19
    smittybuilt19 Posts: 955 Member
    I would eat back almost all of my exercise calories, when I was actually exercising lol. Why not? They're there for your consumption. I wouldn't tell myself "I earned them" just because I didn't want to reward myself for something I should be doing already, but hey, I did put in the work!
  • FutureSkinnyMama03
    FutureSkinnyMama03 Posts: 250 Member
    I eat back 50-100% of them if I feel hungry. Which is probably 90% of the time. I also raised my calorie minimum from 1200 to 1300 this week & plan to do another raise in 2-4 weeks because I'm pretty sure my BMR is closer to the 1500 range. After I eat exercise calories, I'm usually hitting 1500-1600 calories. Some days more. So far I am losing slow & steady just like I hoped for. Although this week is looking like I might have a higher loss than my normal weeks. We'll see come Monday. :) If so, raising my calorie level may pay off more than I thought!
  • Iceman420
    Iceman420 Posts: 195
    I never use my excercise calories because I have to much weight to lose. I plan my meals out before adding any excercise in.
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,149 Member
    Don't and won't eat them back.

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