EXERCISE CALORIES

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hema
hema Posts: 19
in Health and Weight Loss
Does everyone eat all of their exercise calories? I don't because I feel I should be under in order to lose weight.
Today for example, I earned 1017 exercise calories, on top of my 1200. I ate some of the extras but not 1000 calories. Should I ate more of those calories, I only eat 2-3 hundred of those extra calories. Good or bad, any thoughts, ideas opinions!!!
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Replies

  • sonjavon
    sonjavon Posts: 1,019 Member
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    I almost always eat all of my exercise calories. There are days when my "exercise" is actually "work" - that I can't possibly eat them all back... like shoveling snow, mowing the lawn... I burn a lot doing those and those activities take a lot of time out of my day... so I don't get to eat them all back.
    So... looking at what you wrote... this is my understanding:
    1200 (what you're alotted calories are)
    -1017 (calories that you've expended exercising)
    =183
    +300 (What you eat back)
    =483 calories that you are asking your body to survive on...

    Yes, in my opinion and according to everything I have read on the topic - you should be eating back more of your calories. MFP has already calculated a deficit for you that will allow you to lose weight - which is why you can eat back your exercise calories. You should AT LEAST be eating enough of your exercise calories to come back up to 1200 calories.
  • Cheryl89
    Cheryl89 Posts: 8 Member
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    was wondering the same myself. I think as long as you eat all of your 1200 and get a little exercise in each day its ok whether you eat the extras or just let it burn off. I'm going to aim for around 500 exercise each day and thats a lot for me cos I can be really REALLY lazy but I'll probably be eating around half of those. Got to eat at least 1200 to keep your body running but I dont think you HAVE to eat the extra ... just makes i easier for us.
  • LuckyLeprechaun
    LuckyLeprechaun Posts: 6,296 Member
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    Guys....PLEASE go read the newbies posts.

    Exercise calories are not optional.


    SIGH

    You can't drive across the country until you fill up your tank, right? Well your body can't burn off the fat you have unless it has fuel.
  • LuckyLeprechaun
    LuckyLeprechaun Posts: 6,296 Member
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    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo
  • GiGi76
    GiGi76 Posts: 876 Member
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    Guys....PLEASE go read the newbies posts.

    Exercise calories are not optional.


    SIGH

    You can't drive across the country until you fill up your tank, right? Well your body can't burn off the fat you have unless it has fuel.

    Completely agree, you need to eat your exercise calories back, at least most of them, but make it healthy foods.... When you read the newbies posts it will all fall into place!!!
  • MacMadame
    MacMadame Posts: 1,893 Member
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    Exercise calories are not optional.
    Of course they are optional. I didn't sign a contract when I started using MFP that I had to eat them or I'd have to give them my first born child. :laugh:

    It's a personal choice everyone has to make based on their own situation. Personally, I didn't eat them when I was losing. As my activity level rose and my excess weight dropped, I did consume more calories but it wasn't a direct one-to-one relationship. I had a range of calories that I aimed for each day and an average for the week that I was shooting for as set by my doctor and that's what I ate regardless of exercise.

    Now that I'm in maintenance (aka the rest of my life), I do pay more attention to them because I do want to eat them back at some point. But I don't stuff myself one day if I don't feel hungry and starve myself the next day if it's a rest day and I'm not burning extra calories in exercise. I try to make sure I'm in equilibrium over a 2-3 day period, going under on some days and over on others but hitting my maintenance level on average.

    Btw, in the example given above, you are not asking your body to operating on 400+ calories. It gets the rest of the calories it needs by burning your fat stores.
  • sessy1011
    sessy1011 Posts: 30
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    b.u.m.p.
  • hema
    hema Posts: 19
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    No I 1200 + 1017= 2217. I ate 1550, so I have alot left over. I don't eat all my extras.
  • rjacs188
    rjacs188 Posts: 9
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    Hi! I went and read the newbie post. I don't eat my exercise calories either. It's not that I think it will help me lose faster but more like I'm satisfied with my intake and not feeling hungry. I do try to get as close to "spending" my exercise calories but then it drives my ranges for say protein over , or fat. I'm only 3 weeks into learning to eat healthier so I'm still working on finding a good balance. Honestly I only have about 300 calories that I don't "use". I feel everyone is different and as long as I don't starve myself and make smart choices it will all fall into place for me.
  • somigliana
    somigliana Posts: 314 Member
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    Personally, I do. It all makes good sense to me, and I prefer to keep to the deficit I chose at the start--it fits in better with feeling like I'm living a new lifestyle, not cutting my throat.

    I do my best to make those extra calories healthy choices and not to leave them to 9pm to eat. If I know I'm going to exercise on a certain day, I might, for example, plan a slightly larger breakfast or dinner.
  • AprilChampion
    AprilChampion Posts: 184 Member
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    nope...i dont touch them. i was at 1200 cals and my trainer increased me to 1270 and thats it....he told me NOT to touch them, that they were bullsh*t and that the amount that it says you should eat is ridiculous and only body builders need to eat that many. my trainers a pretty big (muscle-y) guy and he told me that even HE doesn't eat as many calories as what it told me. i ate SOME of them once and i GAINED weight. never again.
  • suziblues2000
    suziblues2000 Posts: 515 Member
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    I guess everybody is different because I eat mine and I'm loosing weight steadily. (1 or 2 lbs per week)
  • suziblues2000
    suziblues2000 Posts: 515 Member
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    I guess everybody is different because I eat mine and I'm loosing weight steadily. (1 or 2 lbs per week)
  • kwardklinck
    kwardklinck Posts: 1,601
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    I don't always eat all of mine but I try to eat 1200 plus exercise calories. That works best for me. Now I don't count all of my activities as exercise. I have a pretty active job so my goals are set on lightly active lifestyle. The only things I count are the workouts I plan for myself in the evening.
  • Sunshinechic
    Sunshinechic Posts: 31 Member
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    Everyone is different. I ate my exercise calories for an entire month, and never lost a pound.
  • sonjavon
    sonjavon Posts: 1,019 Member
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    No I 1200 + 1017= 2217. I ate 1550, so I have alot left over. I don't eat all my extras.

    How do you figure? 1200 is what you ARE eating, 1017 is what you're burning off and (admittedly) not eating all back... then you have 1200-1017 + whatever you DO eat back.
  • MacMadame
    MacMadame Posts: 1,893 Member
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    nope...i dont touch them. i was at 1200 cals and my trainer increased me to 1270 and thats it....he told me NOT to touch them, that they were bullsh*t and that the amount that it says you should eat is ridiculous and only body builders need to eat that many. my trainers a pretty big (muscle-y) guy and he told me that even HE doesn't eat as many calories as what it told me. i ate SOME of them once and i GAINED weight. never again.

    That's because all these numbers are just estimates. Even getting your calories burned from an HRM or a BodyBugg is an estimate, though a more accurate one in most cases than the online formulas.

    When I first started losing, I found that The Daily Plate (where I started) would estimate that I needed many more calories than I needed just to live. According to their estimates, I should have been losing 2 pounds a week when I was only losing 1 lb. That's because my metabolism was slower than their formulas calculated. MFP did better but was still predicting faster weight loss than I was experiencing.

    But at some point that changed. Now, to get MFP to give me the number of calories I burn a day *before* exercise, I have to lie and say I'm extremely active. (The non-exercise part of my life is actually sedentary -- I have an office job -- or maybe lightly active since I do move around more than I used to outside of exercise.) Then I have to add on my exercise calories on top of that. Because now my metabolism is faster than average.

    The other thing I found is that the formulas on MFP that calculate my exercise calories were over-estimating what I burned in exercise for 75% of what I did, but underestimating it for the other 25%. If I had put in those calories, I would have ended up over-eating because it would have had me higher overall than I actually burned.

    If I'd eaten the number of calories MFP said to eat before exercise and then ate the number it said I burned in exercise, I would have really been in trouble because both numbers were too high. OTOH, for someone else, they may be off in the other direction. This is why I say reality has to trump online numbers. :laugh:

    I've had my BMR/RMR tested recently and I can see what calorie level has me maintaining and what level would have me gaining and what level would have me losing and I just force MFP to use those numbers either by changing the intensity (say I'll put in that I swam at a moderate pace when I was swimming vigorously) or by changing the time (less or more than I did to get the calories to match my HRM).

    When I do this, everything works out and I maintain and have good workouts.
  • LittleSpy
    LittleSpy Posts: 6,754 Member
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    I'm going to share my personal experience.

    I started here at 270 pounds. Very obese. I ate 1200-1300 calories a day & exercised a good bit & did not eat my exercise calories. I was under the impression that because I was so overweight, I could get away with this. And I did -- for 4.5 months.

    Then I SLAMMED into a brick wall. Still 1200-1300 calories, exercising my butt off (I had started running quite a bit at this point so my intensity was increased) and I was getting nowhere fast. That scale didn't budge for 2 weeks. I knew what I had to do at that point -- eat more. So, I started eating around 1400 calories a day. 3 weeks later my weight started dropping again. I lost 7 pounds over the next 3 weeks and SLAM -- I hit another brick wall. Thanks to MFP, I knew I needed to increase how much I was eating again. Now I'm eating 1350 base calories and 50% of my exercise calories which puts me eating about 1500-1800 calories most days. Two weeks after I started doing this and I've lost 4 pounds in the last 6 days.

    Double coincidence? No way.

    So, if you choose to chug along not eating your exercise calories for now (if it's working for you), that may be okay. But if (when) you slam into a plateau and the scale refuses to budge for weeks, you should definitely consider increasing your calorie intake.

    The thing is that MFP builds your calorie deficit into your base calories. So when you eat your exercise calories, you're still set at whatever calorie deficit you chose (depending on whether you wanted to lose .5, 1, 1.5, or 2 pounds per week. As a side note -- only VERY overweight people should strive to lose 2 pounds a week. :smile:). And the disclaimer here is that this is assuming you're very honest with yourself & log all of your food (and weigh your food to determine actual portion sizes) and don't overestimate the intensity of your workouts. I'm careful to log every morsel and gram of food I eat and I tend to underestimate my exercise calories even when I wear my HRM.
  • bobbyboy16
    bobbyboy16 Posts: 15
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    Hi guys,

    I am new member and just set my target at 1200 cals a day. I plan to bank my exercise cals of 100 a day via exercise so consuming 1000 cals. So far so good, but whats this new theory on consuming most at breakfast with light lunch and evening meal. Its about motab preparation apparantly and i should excercise at evening before lite bite

    I want to lose a stone in 5-6 weeks, mostly around the middle so any advice appreciated

    Pardon the phases I am english and based in Oxford
  • Tamishumate
    Tamishumate Posts: 1,171 Member
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    Almost never do I eat them all back. I stay around 1400-1500 a day. Sometimes I eat them all back other times I don't.

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