Extra calories earned - My fitness pal - do you eat yours?

Hey all,

Just a quick question. When you earn your extra calories through exercise do you eat them or not? I usually try and just stick to 1200 and I don't dip in to them unless sometimes if I'm over by accident.

I thought it might be defeating the purpose but I could be doing it all wrong. Advise please

Thanks x

Yes, eat them.

I never have before. Figured i worked hard for those calories burned, so high 5 for me, but i burned a fair amount yesterday and ate a lot of it back.

Didn't feel great afterwards, and the weight gain, even tho it was obviously just the food i ate and water weight, it has been enough to stop me from doing it again.

If i was hungry tho, id eat. I don't believe in the 'starving yourself' mentality, because someone doesn't want to go into the red.

That just doesn't make sense.

I eat 90-98% of my exercise calories. It's helping because I'm once again dropping weight. I try to net close to the calories I'm allotted throughout the day.

I eat most of mine back, although some days I just can't manage it. I don't eat all of them back though typically, because for some reason I just don't trust my calculations every day. I like to leave a bit of a buffer if that makes any sense so I don't go over.

That's the way MFP works. I eat them and have always been successful. I've been on maintenance now for a couple of years.

It's important to eat back exercise calories or at least most of them as MFP has already worked out a deficit into your calculations and so if you do this you will have more of a deficit than advisable. Make sure your settings are set to sedentary and eat back any exercise cals you create.

Yes i eat mine , thre might not be a lot of them sometimes , but i lose weight nearly every week , so eat them .

This question is asked so many times!!!!!!!!!!


MFP site provides all the facilities you need to log both your food and your exercise. Once you have correctly input your personal data it then does all the work for us and calculated our daily calorie goal.

Then.......

When we log our exercise, it changes the calorie goal on our food diary.

Why does MFP do that?????????

To make it awkward for people as they now have to remember to now ignore the calorie goal and just look at those consumed?????

Would there be any point in the MFP system doing this if there was not a reason for it?????

Why does MFP include the facility on your Home Page to show you how many NET CALORIES you have eaten????


I personally follow the TDEE - a reasonable deficit %. If following MFP though, you should actually - follow MFP!!!

Yes, I eat all of them back, and always have.

It doesn't defeat the purpose. The goal MFP gives you already has a calorie deficit built into it. If you never exercise, you should still lose weight with that goal. MFP gave you that goal on the assumption that you would log exercise and eat those calories back. Otherwise, it would have given you a higher goal to start with. If you exercise, and don't eat the calories back, you may have too large of a calorie deficit, which may not be healthy for you. This is especially true the closer you are to a healthy weight. Eating as little as possible will only leave you feeling weak, miserable and make you lose more muscle mass than is necessary, and may mess up your hormone functioning along the way.

So why bother exercising if you're going to eat those calories back? Well, so that you can eat more, so that your heart and lungs are fitter and healthier, so that you maintain as much lean mass as possible, so you feel fitter and stronger and have more energy, so you look fitter and stronger (and more "toned"), to boost your mood, to maintain bone density, to prevent various lifestyle-related diseases... etc.

ETA: there are lots of people on MFP who do not eat back their exercise calories, and are "doing it right" - because they have customised their own calorie goal and eat more than MFP recommends. They work out their own goal based on the exercise they are going to do, so they don't need to add those calories as extra.

Yes. I welcome any reason to cram more food in my mouth. :happy:

if you aren't doing TDEE and you've set up MFP to run you at a calorie deficit then eat your exercise calories. It's just that simple. For the record, I haven't considered TDEE myself because I burn a widely variable amount of calories through exercise in a given week... between 2800 and 5000 or more depending on how much running I do. That means my food intake is somewhat reactionary to the exercise and the scale bounces a bit through the week... thats why you dont weigh in every day. :drinker:

If you have a fairly egular fitness regimen, (or none) TDEE is awesome.

Don't understand the question--calories burned through exercise are not "extra," they're necessary to fuel your workouts. Of course I eat the calories I burn, leaving roughly the deficit I've got MFP set to. That's how it works, unless you're doing TDEE -20 or some other method that already accounts for your exercise.

Yes and no.. I am on maitenance now and it just depends.

Hi all,

Thank you for all of your replies and advise!

I am going to have to look up all these different things...TDEE etc as I have no idea what that is! haha. I will click on the link.

It would probably help if you knew my height, my goal etc.

Well my current weight is 123lbs! I am 5ft 2" and I guess I am loosing vanity pounds! I want to weigh between 115lbs to 119lbs! (I am same height as Jillian Micheals, love her figure and aiming for something like that.....eventually lol)

I do cardio and weights most days. Focusing alot on weights at the moment to get nice and toned up with days where I blast cardio.

So that's where I am at

I can almost guarantee Jillian Michaels eats a lot more than 1200 calories for that physique.

When I started MFP, I ate 1200 calories and was sooooo hungry. I went to bed hungry, I woke up hungry, I dreamed about food.I was doing this while exercising daily but not eating back my calories. Now, I am eating closer to 1500 calories and I am losing weight and not hungry. I too think MFP way over estimates the calories burned in exercise. With eating 1500 calories, I'm eating 1/3 to 1/2 of my exercise calories. I am thinking of going up to 1600 some days as I am doing quite a bit of exercise. I'm also trying to eat more protein and fat and it makes me so much more satisfied. I am not weighing myself right now and just going by how my clothes fit.