EATING BACK THE CALORIES YOU'VE BURNED

Rahsgirl1099

Hi all,

So I was talking with a co-worker of mine who's super fit and was telling her about MFP. I was explaining how you are on a calorie restricted diet and that when you enter the calories burned, that adds into your calorie allowance for the day. She advised me that its not a good idea to do so, that I should watch what I put in my body and restrict my calories with a good workout routine. Any suggestions to make me feel better about losing weight if I am eating back my calories that I am losing during excercise?

Thanks~

marypatmccue

MFP builds in a deficit already... eat your workout calories, or at least some of them... your friend is silly

Rahsgirl1099

LOL :O) How do they count in a deficit?

jacksonpt

Hi all,

So I was talking with a co-worker of mine who's super fit and was telling her about MFP. I was explaining how you are on a calorie restricted diet and that when you enter the calories burned, that adds into your calorie allowance for the day. She advised me that its not a good idea to do so, that I should watch what I put in my body and restrict my calories with a good workout routine. Any suggestions to make me feel better about losing weight if I am eating back my calories that I am losing during excercise?

Thanks~

You're both saying the same thing, just going about it differently.

You want to restrict cals based on what your body needs on a rest day. When you exercise, you ask your body to do more than "normal" so it needs extra cals. Your friend is saying to base the restriction on the assumption that you'll work out every day (or at least most days), in which case you don't need to eat them back.

To be fair, eating back exercise cals doesn't seem to be a common approach by most people outside of MFP.

willdob3

Your friend does not understand how calories are figured on MFP. Marypatmccue is correct.

If you go by MFP calories you need to eat back the calories. The calories you start with for the day assume you are not working out & there is a deficit figured in. When you add exercise it gives you extra calories that you need based on that. You will still have the same deficit when you eat the calories. If you don't eat them your deficit will be too big for a healthy loss.

If you determine your calories for TDEE and customize MFP with those you would not want to eat back exercise calories because they have already been figured in.

HotrodsGirl0107

You have to fully explain how the site is set up... If you are using mfp's set up and not TDEE it already creates a deficit for you from the info you enter but doesn't include exercise. When you eat back calories burned you are still eating back up to your original deficit pre set by mfp. If you choose not to eat calories back you increase you deficit which can be a problem if you increase it too much and your body isn't getting adequete nutrition.

Francl27

What they said. What your friend probably doesn't realize is that the deficit that MFP gives is pretty big, so once you factor in exercise calories, you're eating closer to what you should be eating anyway.

cidalia73

Definitely eat them back since, as everyone mentioned, MFP has already calculated your daily caloric intake on a deficit if you pretty much do nothing. I have mine set up to add those calories back to what I can eat for the day. The only time I don't eat them all back is if I'm really, really not hungry. I think it balances out, because other days, I go a bit over because I'm hungrier.

Basically, if you need 1200 calories just to live and breathe, and you burned 200 one day and didn't eat them back, you only gave your body 1000 just to survive. This is where you risk losing muscle and having your metabolism slow down to compensate for you starving your body.

Rahsgirl1099

K, thanks for all the good advice :O) I now understand hehe

krhn

What everyone else said... as long as your calorie in < calorie out then your sorted for 90% of your journey! :smokin:

mrsjobba2

MFP builds in a deficit already... eat your workout calories, or at least some of them... your friend is silly

Hi I never realised that. I've been thinking if I don't eat the exercise calories I'd get a bigger weight loss.
Thank you