Exercise calories and body fat percentage

Zakth
Zakth Posts: 37
in Health and Weight Loss
I don't want to beat a dead horse so to speak, but my question is in regards to eating exercise calories and your body fat percentage. Is there any information on your body fat percentage and the rule of eating exercise calories? My thinking in this is that if someone has around 20% body fat, would they really want to eat back the exercise calories that most likely used fat stores at the time of the exercise... do you want to re-stock those stores? Maybe I just don't have a good understanding here so hopefully someone knowledgeable can enlighten me.

Replies

  • Greenrun99
    Greenrun99 Posts: 2,065 Member
    Burning body fat once it starts getting lower gets challenging with how much of a deficit you can have from your TDEE, too big of a deficit may result in other things being used instead of fat and that's not what you want so yes its important to factor in your exercise to your daily calories...
  • Zakth
    Zakth Posts: 37
    So to clarify, once body fat starts getting lower you want to eat those exercise calories or from the get go?
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,427 MFP Moderator
    So to clarify, once body fat starts getting lower you want to eat those exercise calories or from the get go?

    yes, you need smaller deficit as you approach lower ranges in body fat. You have to realize that muscle is very inefficient (due to the high caloric requirements it posses) and your body will have no issue to depleting it if you do not get enough calories. Essentially, you need to feed the muscle to burn the fat.

    http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html

    Read that.
  • Zakth
    Zakth Posts: 37
    Okay thanks for clearing that up. I'm about 2 pounds from my first goal. Right now I have a 500 calorie deficit and plan to renew my goal once it's reached with a smaller deficit. I suddenly don't feel too bad about being 270 over on calories last night lol.

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