Should be eating back my burned calories?

Battabing1129

Hello I'm trying to lose weight and tone up. But I keep hearing different things can you please help.

cidalia73

I hear conflicting info all the time too. I think the answer varies with the scenario. This is how I see it:

It depends on how you've set your daily caloric intake. If it's set to what you need to maintain your weight, DON'T eat them back. You need to create a caloric deficit to lose weight. And exercise does that.

If, on the other hand, it's set so that even if you do nothing, you still lose 1 to 2 pounds per week (basically already set to a deficit as most people's here on MFP are), you can eat some of them back IF you're hungry, or not eat them back if you're not hungry. I go by how my body feels on any given day, so it varies.

Also, people who are just maintaining, can eat those calories back to balance things out.

Generally, when you calculate your caloric needs on MFP, it gave you what you need to eat at your fitness level to lose weight. So, technically, you could keep your usual fitness level, even if that's pretty much nothing, and still lose weight. If you add exercise, it will increase how much you lose (if you don't eat those calories back), but eating some of them back will still result in some weight loss if you stick to your daily calorie limit. I think these things needs re-evaluating from time to time as well. Not eating them back could result in faster weight loss at first, but if you hit a plateau, and the scale doesn't budge at some point, it could be your body signalling that it needs more energy, and at that point, you would eat those darn calories back.

In my case, I'm at 1200 calories. If I sit on my butt all day, I will lose 1 to 2 pounds at 1200 calories. That's a decent weight loss. So, if I want to, I can eat them back. If I don't eat them back, I could lose more. As long as my body doesn't think it's starving. 1200 calories is my sedentary caloric intake. Technically, if I'm active, I should be able to eat about 1400-1500 calories.

I hope that made some sense.

cidalia73

BTW...Ignore my "0 pounds lost" ticker. I re-joined after realizing my weight had gone back up from what it was when I first joined MFP. I've actually lost 2 pounds in the last week.