extra exercise calories?

kleon15
kleon15 Posts: 2
edited September 21 in Food and Nutrition
Hi! im new to MFP, i really like it and think it is going to be very helpful! i was wondering when i get extra calories from working out, is it better to eat them or not? for example im on a 1200 calorie diet and i said i could eat a totally of 1800 from exercise, but i didn't because i wasnt really hungry? but will i benefit from more exercise by eating more calories?( healthy ones of course!) and also has anyone tried alli or anyother supplement to boost your weight lost? i was thinking about tryin something but didn't know if it was such a great idea? help please
thanks =)

Replies

  • Chelsinicole63
    Chelsinicole63 Posts: 62 Member
    Eat your exercise calories!
    I didn't used to think it was important and that I would lose faster if i didnt eat them, ended up only losing 5 pounds and hitting plateau for over a month :( i then started eating my exercise calories and began losing again...
    Even if youre not hungry, if you start eating them you will notice a difference in youre appetite.
    :smile:
  • Hi, I am getting the same thing this week. I have excerised all week & my calories are over the 1200. I have noticed in the past that if i eat more calories I stay the same amount of weight. So i try to eat the 1200, all though they say you have to eat to loose, but ive been plateued for a long time and its hard for me to loose, so i try to eat 1200. I have not tried Ali. so I can't speak for that. I would see how you do for one week eating the stated calories it says and see how you do. If you gain you willl no how to go from there.
  • LittleSpy
    LittleSpy Posts: 6,754 Member
    I have to eat mine to lose weight at this point. But it's important to note everyone is different.

    I will say that I did not eat them for the first 4.5 months and then I slammed into a wall and couldn't lose any more weight because my metabolism had apparently slowed itself down to cope with how little I was eating (1200 calories regardless of exercise). I had to increase the amount I was eating to get my metabolism back up to par (which took nearly 4 months to do). Now I try to eat them all and I'm losing an average of 1.5 pounds a week which is exactly what I should be losing based on the calorie deficit I'm creating. :smile:
  • dtraylor
    dtraylor Posts: 32
    Be sure to eat something after you exercise. Whether you are eating your exercise calories, or saving your daily calories to eat, your body needs the nutrients for various reasons. Protein is a must, as are electrolytes. I read someone else's post that recommended eating half the exercise calories which sounds like a good plan. Don't gorge yourself after, but just eat, or drink, something healthy. I like a protein rich smoothie after my heaviest workouts. Another easy way to get added calories and protein is a tall glass of milk for an after workout treat without filling you up. (I drink lactose free 2%)
  • GooBeGone
    GooBeGone Posts: 439 Member
    ok, i understand with eatin the extra calories but i already eat approximately 1500 - 1700 calories a day. when i exercise (i'm currently doin the insanity program) i burn an average of 800-900 calories (i exercise 6 days a week). so for wednesday i'm suppose to eat an extra 700 calories!!! that means i'm eatin approximately 2200-2400 calories a day. :noway:

    and i get the fact that you need to eat more calories in order to burn fat. but how do i eat more calories if it goes that high? i can't eat that much food. i already eat 5 times a day!
  • Thanks for asking this I have been wondering the same, I am really just getting started on this even though I have been trying to eat better for a few months this is the first time I have ever counted calories. I exercise quite a bit and when I see all those extra calories I just wanna splurge for some chocolate or something. When I do eat a little more it almost makes me feel worse, and when I don't it is like I know they are there and I didn't eat them so I start feeling hungry. I think it is all in my head. Anyway when I do splurge I try and make sure it is either high in fiber, protein, or a fruit. It makes me feel better and so far so good!
  • colyarkid
    colyarkid Posts: 2
    Some days I eat my extra exercise calories and some days I don't. It really depends on what I did and how hungry it makes me. Most important is to drink tons of water!!! That's all I drink and I drink it all day long. Super important to weight loss.

    A warning about weight loss drugs... I've read that they can cause problems with fertility later in life and now I'm living it and have been for years. I've has 7 miscarrages and my son was born 3 months premature. On all accounts I'm a healthy woman but after years of eating disorders and diet drugs I'm paying the price. Still trying for child number 2 but hey it's the trying that's the fun part right. Just want to warn you. I refused to listen when it mattered.
  • GooBeGone
    GooBeGone Posts: 439 Member
    i'm sorry to hear abt that colyarkid, i know what u're goin thru. my daughter was stillborn and 2 months premature. And yes, the tryin is the most fun i've not tried that many weight loss drugs in the past & when i did it was for a few days (i don't like takin pills lol). i've heard that being near ur ideal weight actually helps with fertility so maybe u're in the process of reversing it. YAY! :flowerforyou:

    i try 2 drink as much water as i can since i don't get along with it (i drink an average of abt 6-7 glasses daily). it doesn't taste right unless it comes of a filtered container (water isn't SUPPOSE to have a tastes right? lol) i've actually have some pills in my drawer & i'm throwing them away right now (i actually 4got that i had them anyways so that means i don't need them haha).

    i do eat a little extra such as some fruit so that helps out a bit, but i still don't know what 2 do abt the extra 1000 calories a day! gimme a break.... :grumble:
  • I started MFP back when my husband deployed and lost all the weight I had wanted by eating my exercise calories. He came back and then I stopped doing this and gained it all back. I agree with what someone earlier had said about eating when you are hungry and not to over indulge. You just want to make sure that your body doesn't go into starvation mode, that's when you will hit that plateu and it's hard to loose the weight.
    Thanks to the other ladies that have shared the stories of the pregnancy issues. I am very sorry for you loss. My husband and I are in the mist of trying to get pregnant, so thanks for the info on the diet pills.
  • dtraylor
    dtraylor Posts: 32
    This has been discussed on the forum many times apparently, lol. I just found this post that pretty much sums up why we should eat our exercise calories to lose weight:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/100068-eating-your-exercise-calories-oldie-but-goodie?hl=Nutrient+Summary#posts-1382451

    If the link above gets broken, you can also find the thread by hitting the search button and put in the topic title:
    Eating your exercise calories (oldie but goodie!)
    I still see many people that are confused or "question" the idea of eating your exercise calories. I wanted to try (as futile as this may turn out to be) to explain the concept in no uncertain terms. I'll save the question of "eating your exercise calories" for the end because I want people to understand WHY we say to do this.

    NOTE: I'm not going to use a lot of citation in this, but I don't want people thinking this is my opinion, I have put much careful research into it, most of which is very complicated and took a long time for me to sift through and summarize, and thanks to my chemical engineering backgroud I have the tools to read clinical studies and translate them (somewhat) into more human terms. Some of this information comes from sources I can't forward because they are from pay sites (like New England Journal of Medicine), so you can ask for anything, but I may or may not be able to readilly provide it for you (I can always tell you where to go if you want to though).

    I'll break it down into 3 sections.
    Section 1 will be our metabolic lifecycle or what happens when we eat and how our body burns fuel.
    Section 2 will be what happens when we receive too much, too little, or the wrong kind of fuel.
    Section 3 will be the steps needed to bring the body to a healthy state and how the body "thinks" on a sympathetic level (the automatic things our body does like digestion, and energy distribution).

    Section 1:
    Metabolism, in "layman's" terms, is the process of taking in food, breaking it down into it's components, using the food as fuel and building blocks, and the disposal of the poisons and waste that we ingest as part of it. Metabolism has three overall factors, genetics, nutrition, and environment. So who we are, what we eat, and how we live all contribute to how our metabolism works. You can control 2 of these 3 factors (nutrition, environment).
    When you eat food, it is broken down into it's component parts. Protein, vitamins and minerals are transported to the cells that need them to build new cells or repair existing cells. Fats(fatty acid molecules) and carbohydrates are processed (by 2 different means) and either immediately burned or stored for energy. Because the body doesn't store food in a pre-digested state, if you eat more carbs and fat then you need immediately, the body will save them for later in human fat cells (adipose tissue). This is important to realize because even if you eat the correct number of calories in a 24 hour period, if you eat in large quantities infrequently (more then you can burn during the digestion process), your body will still store the extra as fat and eliminate some of the nutrients. (Side note: this is why simple or processed carbs are worse for you compared with complex carbs)

    Section 2:
    The human body has a set metabolic rate (based on the criteria stated above), this rate can be changed by overall nutritional intake over a period of time, or by increasing activity levels also over a period of time (the exact amount of time for sustained increase in metabolic rates is the subject of some debate, but all studies agree that any increase in activity level will increse the metabolism).
    It is important to note that obesity does not drasticly change the level of metabolic process, that means that if you become obese, you don't burn a higher fat percentage just because you have more to burn.
    The balance of incomming fuel vs the amount of fuel the body uses is called maintenance calories, or the amount of calories it takes to run your body during a normal day (not including exercise or an extremely lethargic day). The metabolism is a sympathetic process, this means it will utilize lower brain function to control it's level, it also means it can actively "learn" how a body is fitness wise, and knows approximately how much energy it needs to function correctly. It also means automatic reactions will happen when too much or too little fuel is taken in. Too much fuel triggers fat storage, adipose tissue expands and fat is deposited, also free "fat" cells (triglycerides) will circulate in the blood stream (HDL and LDL cholesterol). Too little fuel (again, over an extended period) triggers a survival mode instinct, where the body recognizes the lack of fuel comming in and attempts to minimize body function (slowing down of non-essential organ function) and the maximization of fat storage. It's important to note that this isn't a "switch", the body does this as an ongoing analysis and will adjust the levels of this as needed (there is no "line" between normal and survival mode.).
    When you're activity level increases, the human body will perform multiple functions, first, readily available carbohydrates and fats are broken down into fuel, oxydized, and sent directly to the areas that need fuel, next adipose (body) fat is retreived, oxydized, and transported to the areas it is needed for additional fuel, 3rd (and this is important), if fat stores are not easilly reachable (as in people with a healthy BMI where adipose fat is much more scarce), muscle is broken down and used for energy. What people must realize is that the metabolism is an efficiency engine, it will take the best available source of energy, if fat stores are too far away from the systems that need them or too dense to break down quickly, then it won't wait for the slower transfer, it will start breaking down muscle (while still breaking down some of that dense fat as well).

    Section 3:
    The wonderful part of the human metabolic system is it's ability to adapt and change. Just because your body has entered a certain state, doesn't mean it will stay that way. The downfall to this is that if organs go unused over a long period, they can lose functionality and can take years to fully recover(and sometimes never).
    As long as there is no permenant damage to organ function, most people can "re-train" their metabolism to be more efficient by essentially showing it (with the intake of the proper levels and nutritional elements) that it will always have the right amount and types of fuel. This is also known as a healthy nutritional intake.
    Going to the extreme one way or the other with fuel consumption will cause the metabolism to react, the more drastic the swing, the more drastic the metabolism reacts to this (for example, a diet that limits fat or cabohydrate intake to very low levels). In general terms, the metabolism will react with predictable results if fuel levels remain in a range it associates with normal fuel levels. If you raise these fuel levels it will react by storing more fat, if you lower these fuel levels, it will react by shutting down processes and storing fat for the "upcomming" famine levels. The most prominent immediate issues (in no particular order) with caloric levels below normal are reduced muscle function, reduction of muscle size and density, liver and kidney failures, increase in LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and gallstones .


    Now onto the question of "Eating your exercise calories"

    As I have hinted to throughout this summary of metabolic process, the body has a "range" in which it feels it is receiving the right amount of fuel. The range (as most doctors and research scientists agree) is somewhere between 500 calories above your maintenance calories and 1000 calories below your maintenance calories. This means that the metabolism won't drastically change it's functionality in this range, with that said, this is not exact, it is a range based on averages, you may have a larger or smaller range based on the 3 factors of metabolism stated at the top.
    On our website (MyFitnessPal), when you enter your goals, there is a prebuilt deficit designed to keep you in the "normal" metabolic functionality while still burning more calories then you take in. This goal DOES NOT INCLUDE exercise until you enter it. If you enter exercise into your daily plan, the site automatically adjusts your total caloric needs to stay within that normal range (in other words, just put your exercise in, don't worry about doing any additional calculations). Not eating exercise calories can bring you outside that range and (if done over an extended period of days or weeks) will gradually send your body into survival mode, making it harder (but not impossible) to continue to lose weight. The important thing to understand is (and this is REALLY important) the closer you are to your overall healthy weight (again, your metabolism views this a a range, not a specific number) the more prominant the survival mode becomes (remember, we talked about efficiency). This is because as fat becomes scarce, muscle is easier to break down and transport. And thus, the reason why it's harder to lose that "Last 10 pounds".

    I really hope this puts a lot of questions to bed. I know people struggle with this issue and I want to make sure they have the straight facts of why we all harp on eating your exercise calories.

    -Regards,

    Banks
  • GooBeGone
    GooBeGone Posts: 439 Member
    ok, so if i understand this correctly:

    i normally eat 1270calories daily when not exercising. i'm suppose to eat 1730calories daily, so this means that i'm already under my caloric goal by 460 calories. if i exercise today & burn approximately 800calories then that will mean i'll need to eat an additional 800calories meanin that in total i'll need to eat 1260 MORE calories for the day in order for me 2 lose fat, meanin that i'll eat a total of approximately 2530calories. [1730 (suppose 2 eat) + 800 (calories burned) = 2530 calories]

    i could eat veggies all day, there's no WAY i can eat that much... i'd make myself sick, veggies don't have enuff calories in it for me 2 make that up easily!! i'm NOT kiddin!

    (100g = 3.5oz)
    http://www.positivehealthsteps.com/calories/vegetable-calorie-chart.shtml

    i also need 2 b careful of not eatin too much carbs (since that would b easy for me to do since i'm a carb addict so that mean not a lot of potato & rice. i also need to cool it on the chickpeas b/c they have a lot of sodium dependin on how they r fixed i think)

    1260 calories is:

    36 medium carrots (35cal each)
    21 medium corn on the cob (60cal each)
    5.5cups kidney bean (100cal every 3.5oz)
    abt 8cups lentils cooked (70cal every 3.5oz)
    4.5cups pumpkin backed (120cal every 3.5oz)

    even if i mixed this up so that it's not just 1 of somethin over & over that's still a lot of food!

    i understand that i need to eat my calories.

    my issue is that is a lot of FOOD to consume. how am i suppose to eat all of that? even if i ate throughout the day i'd wouldn't b able 2 exercise! LOL that's literally a lot of food.

    what r suggestions for eatin more???
  • LittleSpy
    LittleSpy Posts: 6,754 Member

    what r suggestions for eatin more???

    2 tablespoons of natural peanut butter and 8 oz of 2% milk will add 320 calories to your day. :wink:

    Low calorie does NOT automatically mean healthy and high calorie does not mean unhealthy.

    Edit: For anyone who is very obese, the rules change a little. I started here very obese and got away with not eating my exercise calories for 4.5 months. The problem for me was I didn't know when to start eating more until it was too late & my metabolism had already slowed itself down. I was rockin' it those first 4.5 months but it honestly wasn't worth the struggle I've had over the last 4 months with my metabolism.
  • GooBeGone
    GooBeGone Posts: 439 Member
    i can do the peanut butter but not the 2% milk, i'm becomin lactose intolerant & the 2% milk messes up my tummy REALLY bad :blushing:

    my soy milk is only 90calories a cup LOL. that a lot 2 drink of soy milk hahaha

    but 2 tblsp = abt 200cal so that only means i need 2 eat 10 tblsp (2/3 cup) of them. which is a lot more do-able. THANKS!!!
  • aippolito1
    aippolito1 Posts: 4,894 Member
    I agree, eat them. As I've increased my work outs, I'm hungrier and hungrier and honestly, I would starve if I didn't eat the close to 500 extra calories I'm getting today. To do this easily, I put my "guesstimated" exercise in for the day and then spread out the calories throughout my day. I usually do this right after breakfast 'cause I have a good idea that day what I'm in the mood for. Some do their meals for up to 2 weeks' time (DrBorkBork) but I can't do that. I eat what I feel like eating!
  • LittleSpy
    LittleSpy Posts: 6,754 Member
    i can do the peanut butter but not the 2% milk, i'm becomin lactose intolerant & the 2% milk messes up my tummy REALLY bad :blushing:

    my soy milk is only 90calories a cup LOL. that a lot 2 drink of soy milk hahaha

    You don't have to do peanut butter and milk, I was just giving you suggestions for healthy calorie packed food. 2% milk is only 130 calories for 8oz.

    You pour yourself 12oz of soy milk and you're at 135 for the milk and 190 for 2 tbs peanut butter= 325 cals. Put that PB on a piece of whole grain toast and you'll easily bump that calorie count up to 445. I'm sorry, but I have fallen in love with natural peanut butter over the last 9 months. :laugh:

    Add an ounce of unsalted nuts to your AM and PM snacks. That adds hundreds of calories as well. Have a few ounces more of your lean protein at each meal, etc. Olive oil, coconut oil, grapeseed oil -- all add good for you fats and are packed with calories. Avocado is yum & calorie packed (also good fats). Bananas are pretty nutrient and calorie packed.

    Just look for foods that are really nutritious but also calorie dense and add them in here and there where you can. If you think you'll have a hard time fitting all your calories in then eat less celery and cucumbers (for example) which have very few calories but also very little nutrition, and more of the nutrion/calorie dense options.
  • GooBeGone
    GooBeGone Posts: 439 Member
    ok, cool. i was also thinkin abt changin my settings as well. i'm currently on a recommended 1lb/wk loss. i'm thinkin of changin it to 2lbs/wk. i need 2 lose almost 80lbs so that approach won't hurt for a while. when i get closer 2 my goal i'll change it so that it's less lbs lost per wk. :tongue:

    but i'm gonna use ur suggestions. they sound good, especially since i'm a bread lover LOL (my fave is sourdough :wink: ) heeheehee
  • dtraylor
    dtraylor Posts: 32
    I read your comment about milk and being lactose intolerant. I too am lactose intolerant but have switched to lactose free milk and now I can have my dairy again. :o) There are also generic tablets you can take to offset the lactose in cheese and other dairy products if you don't have a lactose free version. Milk is a great way to add good calories and protein.
  • GooBeGone
    GooBeGone Posts: 439 Member
    well i was never to keen on any milk but skim milk anyways, but i do eat other diary products just not a lot. but i'll try those pills & c how they work.

    i get abt 88g of protein daily. i eat chicken & drink a protein shake daily, also i'm abt 2 add a homemade protein bar so i can get more healthy calories so that will increase the protein as well. lol
  • kleon15
    kleon15 Posts: 2
    thank you everyone for your responses they were all helpful! as for the diet pills, i was leaning on not taking them im just gettin frustrated because i have been working out and eating healthy and want to see the results right now!!! but i know it unfortunatley takes some time! thanks again everyone!! :smile: :smile:
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