Eating Back Calories

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fairykelly13
fairykelly13 Posts: 79 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Ok, I know that people ask about this ALL THE TIME, but apparently I need it said straight to me for it to sink in... How important is it to eat back your exercise calories? After years of struggling to lose weight I finally have done it and am happy with how I look and feel - but I have never eaten back my calories. I had never even heard of doing that until I joined MFP...

I lost 60+ pounds and I am now really just looking to maintain. I can see the need more now that I am not really trying to lose any more weight (maybe a couple more pounds...). I obviously have to increase my intake just to not continue losing... And that is already hard enough to get myself to do because of YEARS of being overweight and fear of going back there...

I just can't see being able to add another 400+ calories on top of the increased amount above where I have been eating that MFP is telling me to have and not gaining...

Any advice would be appreciated...

Who would have thought that the idea of getting to eat more would be so stressful? haha

Replies

  • kfesta52
    kfesta52 Posts: 98 Member
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    I'm working on switching over to maintenance right now too. It's definitely a little uncomfortable! It feels strange to purposely eat more. I just keep reminding myself that if I keep eating less I'm going to keep losing, and I will probably lose more muscle than fat at this point, which is not what I'm trying to accomplish. I want to build muscle now, which that means eating more and also means eating back exercise calories so I'm not always at a deficit. The numbers seem so much higher than I'm used to though! I'm just going to be watching the scale and the tape measure over the next few weeks and see what happens.
  • AbsoluteNG
    AbsoluteNG Posts: 1,079 Member
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    Eating your exercise calories back is a MFP myth created by the 1200 number that people see when they join. I have never ran across one single research paper that said you have to eat your exercise calories back or any research paper that says the participants ate their exercise calories back. If there is such a paper out there then I'd gladly say I am wrong but I have yet to see one.
  • brevislux
    brevislux Posts: 1,093 Member
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    What I think is you've got to listen to your body. If you feel hungry then eat them! If not, there's no reason to get stuffed just to reach that goal. At least, that's my system.
  • tonkabella
    tonkabella Posts: 24 Member
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    MFP is not the only organisation that says you must eat your calories back...SW and WW also advocate it. The way I work it for maintenance is to add100 calories each day for a week and see how it goes... if still loosing add another 100 etc till you level out within a pound or so. It's not easy ( if it was I would not be on here .. again !! lol ) however using my maintenance method I kept at goal weight for 4 yrs. Hope you get this sorted quickly... and congrats on loosing so much. :0)

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