Using calories from Excersise

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gable39
gable39 Posts: 9 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi all-
I am interested to hear your stories or experience. As we know MFP includes any workout calories in your daily food totals. I have been (trying) to ignore those and stay at 1200 calories per day, I average about 1400 calories with maybe 100-200 left over from exercise?
I am nervous about counting calories as it seems the amount burned it pretty high on this site. I have checked other sites and try to find an average.
Anyway, what advice or experience do you have in eating your workout calories?

Thanks!
Darcy

Replies

  • cordianet
    cordianet Posts: 534 Member
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    You don't have to eat them back if you're not hungry, but sometimes personally I feel like I really need to eat them back just to fuel the workouts. If you're worried about the calorie burns on MFP, which I agree seem elevated, invest in a Heart Rate Monitor. Those tend to be more accurate than the MFP numbers because there is a close correlation between heart rate and calories burned. It's not a perfect correlation, but it's generally good enough for what we do here.

    With that, you should be able to eat back at least part of those calories without unduly effecting your loss.
  • AngieRich811
    AngieRich811 Posts: 17
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    Ideally, as I'm seeing it, we should be able to lose weight by eating the calories allotted to us on our profiles. If we earn more through exercise, we should STILL be able to eat those, too, and lose. Is that right?
  • jaz050465
    jaz050465 Posts: 3,508 Member
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    In similar posts, lots of people say they eat half back.
  • cordianet
    cordianet Posts: 534 Member
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    Ideally, as I'm seeing it, we should be able to lose weight by eating the calories allotted to us on our profiles. If we earn more through exercise, we should STILL be able to eat those, too, and lose. Is that right?

    Yes, if everything was 100% accurate, you could eat every last calorie back and still lose right on schedule. There's 2 issues here, though. One, your body is not a machine that only considers calories in vs. calories out. We're big bags of hormones that have a significant effect on how body recomposition works. Hormones I'll add that are working overtime when we exercise, thus complicating things even more. Two, calories eaten are generally underestimated by those trying to lose weight and calories expended often are over estimated. I read somewhere that most pre-prepared foods are up to 10% off and restaurants often are 20% over the listed calories. Add that to the inexact science of estimating calorie burns and you could be completely stalling your weight loss.

    In short, I'd recommend a more moderate approach where you only eat back a portion of your exercise calories until you know how it effects you.
  • pelleld
    pelleld Posts: 363 Member
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    When I was trying to lose I ate about half of my exercise calories back.
  • gable39
    gable39 Posts: 9 Member
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    Great, thanks for the comments. I have been
    underestimating my exercise and I will continue to do so. When I work out for an hour, I'll track 30 minutes and really try not to eat that.

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