Eating back exercise calories?

slavetothehoof

Do you eat them back or not?

I try and eat back at least half of them but a few people say they you shouldn't and others say you should.

gemmaleigh1989

i do. I aim to net at 1200 calories a day and seeming you should never go below that, why wouldn't I eat them back??

Erica_theRedhead

I do. I lift weights, box, run, and spin and my body needs the replenished calories to repair itself. I usually have eggs, greek yogurt/fruit, or a shake/smoothie with protein.

CharityGC

I'm working out to get healthy so I do prefer to eat them. I'm not trying to starve myself and I don't like feeling hungry.

haaaleyx

I always do. Knowing I'll be able to eat a little more the harder I work out gives me more motivation to work out, haha.

slavetothehoof

I don't do conventional exercise, I muck out stables and ride horses and that can sometimes mean I've burnt between 1000 and 2000 calories in a day which for me in impossible to eat back unless I go to mcdonalds.

SlinkyAndHerAmazingBunsOfSteel

I just try to eat 1550cals (my BMR) a day, regardless of what I've burned.

michelle7673

I do. Usually not quite all of them, although if I'm hungry I will do that.

I've seen some posts lately talking about "this weird MFP thing of eating back exercise calories....why would you do it and eat them back?" And as I'm pretty new, I did some thinking about that, and here's what I think it means:

The more typical "figure out your TDEE/maintenance calories and subtract from that" is based on a pretty broad characterization of your activity level. There's a pretty big difference between "moderate exercise 3 times a week" and "hard exercise 6 times a week"....and that's leaving aside the risk of being 'overly optimistic' about your level of activity. You could call yourself a "lightly active" person, and for various reasons, not get exercise for days at a time. So if you are working from a number that has your activity level "cooked in", you might be off by quite a bit.

What the MFP method does is account for activity on a day-to-day basis, so it's harder to get it wrong. That's all. It starts from a sedentary baseline, and accounts for intentional exercise on a real time basis. Now, don't get me wrong, there are probably measuring errors with that too. I've seen people indicate that some "calorie counts seem high". Some might be, but keep in mind that your weight impacts how much you burn. And I can see that it might lead to an "earn and burn" mentality that isn't sustainable. But I think that's the purpose of the methodology.

The main reason that I don't eat all of my calories back is that I'm on the "lose 1 pound a week" setting. I would rather over-perform my targets, and lose faster, than to make the setting more aggressive and then stress about being close to the line. That's a psychological thing I suppose.