Eating back your calories rant.

Eating back your calories doesn't mean go eat a big mac after you burn your 800 calories at the gym people. It means incorporate some extra calories THROUGHOUT your day to ensure that your body is not starving, you are not depriving yourself, and you have enough fuel for your workout. If someone is only going to the gym and getting on the treadmill for 15 minutes and they think they should eat those back, that's a different story altogether. If you're an avid gym goer or live an active lifestyle, and you already have a deficit logged into MFP, you need to have more of a balance between calories burned and calories consumed. stop already with the starvation technique. It's a short term solution!

Who mentioned eating a Big Mac? Seriously! Ive just read through the whole comments and no-one mentioned eating a Big Mac only you, I guess your feeling hungry or something.


Nope, not hungry. Because I make sure I EAT enough to fuel my body. Alot of people think by eating your exercise calories back it's a free ticket to eat what you want. If you don't want anyone's opinion, why even post a question. I didn't say you did eat McDonald's, it was just a figurative of speech. And my OPINION. Which is what everyone gives when they comment on a post.

Please don't assume that because I was eating all of my calories back I was stuffing my face with McDonalds, far from it. My body has never been starving thanks very much, in fact the past two months its been in overdrive due to miss-informed information given. I really don't think a bit of starvation will do me in any harm anyways considering how much I have to lose. Until you walk a day in someone' shoes don't judge them

This might come off as rude but....

If you weigh over 300 pounds, you should lose weight whether you eat 1500 calories or 2500 calories (by overeating exercise calories). I am guessing you are not tracking properly.

Have you had your thyroid levels checked? The thought just came to me. I have thyroid problems and insulin resistance, which caused me to gain a great deal of weight before I started being treated for it.

You're supposed to "eat back" your exercise calories. The fact that your exercise was being over estimated by the application is unfortunate but not all that uncommon. Two people with the same weight but different body composition (think one muscular and lean, the other not so much) will burn different amounts of calories in a given exercise. MFP wouldn't be able to give you an accurate measurement of calories burned without a lot of additional information.

So, if your caloric deficit is set to 500 kcal/day and your exercise was overestimated by 500 kcal, then you would be at maintenance level and lose no weight (although your body composition should still be changing from the exercise).

So yes if you're not losing any weight then you need to look at your intake and realize it's being overestimated somewhere (usually in the exercise column). Or it could be that you're not accurately logging your intake, but that doesn't appear to be your problem.

Also, I know it's tempting to tell people "this worked for me so you should do it to" but isn't that how you got into trouble in the first place?

And seriously... people are freakin' rude on MFP. Everyone thinks they're god's gift to calorie counting.

Lastly, to people who said "you should still be losing weight at 2500 cal per day," go look up a BMR calculator and realize that you're wrong (and rude as f**k).