Exercise and Calorie Intake Question

mererusso
mererusso Posts: 4 Member
edited September 18 in Fitness and Exercise
When you are eating your daily calories, do you also eat the extra calories you get from working out? So if I spin for 30 minutes and burn 350 calories, the daily calorie intake for the day adds on 350 more calories to my food/ calories category, should i eat those too?

Replies

  • mererusso
    mererusso Posts: 4 Member
    When you are eating your daily calories, do you also eat the extra calories you get from working out? So if I spin for 30 minutes and burn 350 calories, the daily calorie intake for the day adds on 350 more calories to my food/ calories category, should i eat those too?
  • Me_Im_2b
    Me_Im_2b Posts: 165
    YES! I know it sounds crazy, but it is what you're supposed to do. Good Luck!:flowerforyou:
  • Laguapa
    Laguapa Posts: 58
    Yes because you do not want to go into starvation/survival mode. For example, to lose my desired weight I am supposed to take in 1200 calories however, I did kickboxing and burned over 400 calories that day. SO my goal was to eat 1600 calories. If I had only eaten 1200 and burned off 400--that is only 800 net intake and is tooo small of an amount. With all that being said, I dont always eat the extra calories in its entirety.
  • frankp
    frankp Posts: 83
    To say you should eat your excercise calories is a good rule but is an over-simplification.

    Banks wrote a good post on this and from that post wrote if you consistently eat around 1000 calories less than your maintenance then you risk going into survival mode which will slow your metabolism. That 1000 is a bit of an average you may be more or less than that.

    Using myself as an example.

    Calories needed for me to maintain my weight 2010
    Less 1000 calories (deficit that triggers survival) -1000
    Add my excercise for the day (For me today 300) 300

    Equals calorie intake threshold that will put me in survival mode 1290

    So I don't want to go below 1290 in this example, I'd actually add a couple hundred just to be safe as that 1000 deficit is an average. So personally I wouldn't go below 1490.

    In my case, I set my goal at 1/2 lb per week of weight loss. So let's look at that scenario:

    Calories needed for me to lose 1/2 lb per week 1760
    Add my excercise for the day (For me today 300) 300

    Equals net daily calories needed for me to lose 1/2 lb per week 2060

    In my case if I didn't eat my excercise calories then I would have eaten 1760 calories, well above my safety level of 1490. So in my case, I didn't need to eat my excercise calories and still would have no fear of triggering a 'survival' metabolism.
  • mererusso
    mererusso Posts: 4 Member
    thanks everyone, i have a better idea now how important it is to eat when exercising. Sometimes I am just not hungary after a good work out. I will see how things go with eating those calories.
    :smile:
  • Crystal_Cherry
    Crystal_Cherry Posts: 92
    i dont get it...

    i thought we need to cut down on our calories.. and burned which r in store.

    heared that if u eat 500 calories less than ur daily requirement u will loose 1 lb per week

    whats that all about

    need explanation :noway:
  • ohthatbambi
    ohthatbambi Posts: 1,098 Member
    This week I have eaten my exercise calories. I really wanted to see if it worked. It didn't work for me. Igained two pounds. I was methodical about everything. I bought a Polar F6 HRM and tracked my true calorie burn etc. I logged in everything I ate including ketchup...I usually skip the small stuff like that. I never ate more than what I earned. A couple days I may not have eaten every last earned calorie, but I came close. So that being said, it does NOT work for me. It may work for you. I was really hoping for results, but I didn't get any. I sure did enjoy being able to eat a little more each day.

    MFP suggest 1360 calories a day for me to lose a pound a week. As long as I exercise and eat around 1500 I seem to do okay.

    Experiment and see what works for you.
  • Me_Im_2b
    Me_Im_2b Posts: 165
    i dont get it...

    i thought we need to cut down on our calories.. and burned which r in store.

    heared that if u eat 500 calories less than ur daily requirement u will loose 1 lb per week

    whats that all about

    need explanation :noway:

    When you tell the site how much you want to lose a week it sets a deficit for you (500 cals for 1 pound...) so then if you exercise, you have a greater deficit, which could lead to putting your body in starvation mode. But when you eat the calories that you've burned off, you are just getting your deficit back to a healthy range. But, like Bamboo said, you have to see what works for you. This is what has worked for some people on the site. Just be careful to not starve yourself. Hope this helps :flowerforyou:
  • astridfeline
    astridfeline Posts: 1,200 Member
    This week I have eaten my exercise calories. I really wanted to see if it worked. It didn't work for me. Igained two pounds. I was methodical about everything. I bought a Polar F6 HRM and tracked my true calorie burn etc. I logged in everything I ate including ketchup...I usually skip the small stuff like that. I never ate more than what I earned. A couple days I may not have eaten every last earned calorie, but I came close. So that being said, it does NOT work for me. It may work for you. I was really hoping for results, but I didn't get any. I sure did enjoy being able to eat a little more each day.

    MFP suggest 1360 calories a day for me to lose a pound a week. As long as I exercise and eat around 1500 I seem to do okay.

    Experiment and see what works for you.

    Your body might have needed more time to adjust to the higher calorie level. You may have been in starvation mode & slowed your metabolism. Then, when calories available increased, your body wanted to hold onto those & you gained. I read in one the posts here that it takes 3-4 weeks for your metabolism to adjust to higher calorie levels.
  • Me_Im_2b
    Me_Im_2b Posts: 165
    I read in one the posts here that it takes 3-4 weeks for your metabolism to adjust to higher calorie levels.

    really? Wow, that's interesting. I had never heard that! Thanks for the info! :smile:
  • tparkin
    tparkin Posts: 126 Member
    When I first started eating healthier and exercising in September I was trying to stick to a 900 cal a day diet. Sure I lost 15 lbs fairly quickly but for a couple of months after that I just could not loose anything. Infact I went up a ouple of pounds. No doubt from the occasional special meal that my body was probably clinging to. When I began using this entire site I began reading what everyon was saying. I started eating my excercise calories and at first I did gain a couple more pounds but within a couple of weeks I started to loose and have been loosing on average 1.5-2 lbs consistently every week since. Everyone like to do things differently though.



    7508.png
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  • shorerider
    shorerider Posts: 3,817 Member
    This week I have eaten my exercise calories. I really wanted to see if it worked. It didn't work for me. Igained two pounds. I was methodical about everything. I bought a Polar F6 HRM and tracked my true calorie burn etc. I logged in everything I ate including ketchup...I usually skip the small stuff like that. I never ate more than what I earned. A couple days I may not have eaten every last earned calorie, but I came close. So that being said, it does NOT work for me. It may work for you. I was really hoping for results, but I didn't get any. I sure did enjoy being able to eat a little more each day.

    MFP suggest 1360 calories a day for me to lose a pound a week. As long as I exercise and eat around 1500 I seem to do okay.

    Experiment and see what works for you.

    Bamboo--

    two pounds could very well have been fluid weight, too. On any given day, our weight can fluctuate as much as 5 pounds due to retaining fluid--particularly us women :grumble:

    I think you need to give it more time. Trust me--it works!
  • Crystal_Cherry
    Crystal_Cherry Posts: 92
    :smile: ic
  • Crystal_Cherry
    Crystal_Cherry Posts: 92

    When you tell the site how much you want to lose a week it sets a deficit for you (500 cals for 1 pound...) so then if you exercise, you have a greater deficit, which could lead to putting your body in starvation mode. But when you eat the calories that you've burned off, you are just getting your deficit back to a healthy range. But, like Bamboo said, you have to see what works for you. This is what has worked for some people on the site. Just be careful to not starve yourself. Hope this helps :flowerforyou:
    [/quote]

    thx for explaning..

    so what do u think is the healthy deficit range... is 500 or less is ok?
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