Do you eat your calories earned by exercising?

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  • dixiewhiskey
    dixiewhiskey Posts: 3,333 Member
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    Yes but very slightly.. I aim to meet my calorie/macro goals first and usually end up eating a little above the caloric goal.
  • csheltra26
    csheltra26 Posts: 272 Member
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    Yes. I tend to leave a few extra every day so I can have a treat or 2 on the weekends.
  • angboww4
    angboww4 Posts: 4
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    I never eat the extra for me I see no point if I eat them,then to me it's like what was point in exercising that day, I usually have very high numbers of extra calories from the amount of extra exercise I do,an there's no way with all the weight I need to lose I'll eat them extra calories,but each to there own do what works for you.
  • orapronobis
    orapronobis Posts: 460 Member
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    I set my activity level to "sedentary" to eliminate that variable. I eat back most or all of my exercise calories. I track more on a weekly than a daily basis. So, I might have 300 exercise calories left one day and go over 150 on two other days, but each week, I'm on track. This works perfectly for me. I've lost every week except one. I can plan ahead for dinner out by banking exercise calories earlier in the week.
  • scjl132
    scjl132 Posts: 85 Member
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    Yup, I eat at least half of them back. Depends on the day and the hunger level if I decide to eat more than half of them. I usually burn 800-1000 calories in exercise which does give me room for some fun stuff.
  • llkilgore
    llkilgore Posts: 1,169 Member
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    Nope. I know the numbers are higher than I burn, but, I have fun recording them anyways (I sometimes try to "net" negative calories).
    But, I personally work out as much as I do to increase my fitness levels to burn extra calories, not to eat more. That's my goals, I'm happy with the outcome for far.

    How much strength training do you do? Sacrificing your lean body mass to a lot of uncompensated cardio will cause you to burn fewer calories, not more.
  • shannonalgren
    shannonalgren Posts: 28
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    nope.....not yet anyway:smile:
  • llkilgore
    llkilgore Posts: 1,169 Member
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    I eat back a portion of them. Not only to account for inaccuracy of the number burned, but because I only want to eat back my NET calories burned. MFP takes into account how many calories you burn in a given day without exercise. For me, it works out to about 75 calories per hour just sitting on my butt. So if I work out for an hour and burn 500 calories, I only eat back 400 - because that is how many EXTRA calories I burned, and then 25 is the wiggle room. I hear virtually no one talk about this on MFP, which is surprising.

    My guess would be that not a lot of people know about it.

    It comes up in the forums from time to time. This is one of the few calculator sites I've found that deals with the issue:
    http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/

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