Eating exercise calories back

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  • mair123
    mair123 Posts: 50 Member
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    Just be weary that MFP tends to over-estimate calories burned, so either use a HRM for a more accurate estimate (if you're not already), or only eat a percentage of what MFP says you've burned.

    My experience has been the opposite of this. I use mapmyrun to track my miles. There is always a discrepency between the two and MFP is always lower. According to yesterday's stats with mapmyrun, I burned 340 calories for my 5K. MFP said I burned 292 calories. I logged the lower calorie amount to prevent overindulging.
  • 714rah714
    714rah714 Posts: 759 Member
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    It all averages out
  • jrompola
    jrompola Posts: 153 Member
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    Thanks for your insight Mair! I also wonder if I'm underestimating what I eat and thus overeating. In the past 6 weeks I have lost one pound and gained it back so something is not working. :)

    Do you have a food scale and measuring cups? I know before I had those I thought I was eating 6-8oz of chicken when in reality it was 3-4oz. I thought I was eating a cup of blueberries when it was 1/4cup. How many calories a day are you eating? I wouldn't eat back calories you burn while working out. You want to setup to eat enough calories to begin with and not try to eat your calories back depending on how many you burn that day.
  • MinnieInMaine
    MinnieInMaine Posts: 6,400 Member
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    The body doesn't do a reset at midnight... It's perfectly fine to let them roll over and use them at some point in the next few days. Like someone else said, I'm not always hungry the day I do a run (or something else strenuous) but I'm almost always starving the next day so sometimes it's best to bank those calories for when you need them.

    When I did Weight Watchers, that's how they did it and it always worked very well for me. I banked exercise points and any I didn't use within a day to use at some point later that same week. Their only rule was not to let them roll over to the next week.

    P.S. As far as your one pound lost and gained, that could very well be water weight. Track your sodium if you're not already - a day or two of high sodium (especially without enough water) intake and you're going to retain. Also, not sure if you know this but when you exercise and are sore, your muscles are retaining water as part of the healing process. All of these can lead to fluctuations on the scale. With the small amount of weight you have to lose, body measurements will probably be the better way to go to show successes. Also, pay attention to how your clothes are fitting. I've been up and down on the scales for the last two months but my pants are getting loose so I know I'm stil doing something right!
  • llkilgore
    llkilgore Posts: 1,169 Member
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    Just be weary that MFP tends to over-estimate calories burned, so either use a HRM for a more accurate estimate (if you're not already), or only eat a percentage of what MFP says you've burned.

    My experience has been the opposite of this. I use mapmyrun to track my miles. There is always a discrepency between the two and MFP is always lower. According to yesterday's stats with mapmyrun, I burned 340 calories for my 5K. MFP said I burned 292 calories. I logged the lower calorie amount to prevent overindulging.

    Mapmyrun reported lower burns than MFP and worked really well for me until they changed their algorithm several months ago. Now they're way WAY too high. I've switched to the calculator below and then take the second step of converting gross calories burned to net. For example, shapesense gives me 256 gross calories or 228 net calories (what I log) for a 3 mile run at 6mp. MFP and mapmyrun give me 279 calories and 319 calories, respectively, for the same run.

    http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/activity-based-calorie-burn-calculator.aspx

    To the OP - For the last 20 months I've routinely spread exercise calories out over at least 2 days, 3 if it's a big burn. It hasn't caused any problems at all with either losing weight or maintaining the loss.
  • RunHardBeStrong
    RunHardBeStrong Posts: 33,069 Member
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    I understand where you are coming from but I think it is best to take it one day at a time and storing "exercise calories" for later use IMHO is a bad habit. You are doing great but I would try to stick close to my goal calories tomorrow.

    Nothing wrong with banking calories at all. I lost 70 pounds doing that.

    Yep. I have lost 107 lbs in total by going by my weekly average, not just daily.

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