Net Calories - Exercise Calories - To Eat or Not to Eat

I'm new, so take my advice with a grain of salt, LOL, but no - I don't think you have to. You got your 1200 minimum, and I don't see why you need to eat more than that if you aren't hungry! Your body knows best. :happy:

Hi!
Not sure how correct my philosophy on that is but here's what I do. I try to stay close to my base 1200 calories no matter what exercise I do but when I do splurge on a high calorie item I do borrow from the exercise earned calories. I try not to totally deplete my allotted calories and I try not to leave too many so that I don't go into starvation mode.

Yes, you DO want to eat your exercise calories. You want to do this to KEEP your body from going into starvation mode.

For example:

If you are on a 1200 calorie diet and eat only 600 calories ( I am sure we can all agree that), your body will go into starvation mode. It will begin to store fat because it's lacking 600 calories it needs perform basic metabolic functions. This KEEPS you from losing weight, no matter how hard you work out.

So, if you earn 500 calories by exercising and add it to your 1200 calorie base, you come to 1700 calories. That's because your body actually burned 500 calories, so if you cheat it those 500 calories, you're actually doing the same thing... letting your body go into starvation mode. Your body doesn't have enough calories to perform basic metabolic functions (blinking, growing hair, heart beating, making urine, etc.) AND allow you to burn 500 calories it couldn't afford to lose. Your body will hang onto weight, and if you do manage to lose some, you will gain it back when you go back to your previous habits.

This is dangerous. Very dangerous. Don't leave too many calories... too often. Don't make it a habit.

Having said this, I do not always eat all my exercise calories. I try to come close, sometimes I'm over... but the really cool thing is... I'm steadily losing weight, gaining muscle, and fitting into smaller clothes... and all with eating my exercise calories. It's the HEALTHY way to do it.

Be careful, be safe! GOOD LUCK! You are asking ALL the right questions!

I wish people would stop saying starvation mode is a myth. It's not. People perceive it wrong many times. But it's not a myth at all. It's a real and proven response to a calorie deficit.

Will you stop losing weight in starvation mode? Probably not, but it will most likely be slower then the predictions because of the human body's conservation of energy, but it will continue to lose weight.

Things to keep in mind about starvation mode.

1) your body uses all three types of energy simultaneously. I.E. at all times, in a catabolic state (calorie deficit) your body will ALWAYS be burning calories from food, stored fat, and Protein. This only changes by ratio, and it does NOT happen in succession.

2) You probably won't gain weight in starvation mode. BUT you may gain weight by quickly upping the amount of calories consumed to get out of starvation mode. It takes the body 3 to 5 days to adjust it's metabolic state to any significant degree, thus, eating 1 day of significantly higher calories will only accomplish you adding stored fat, not much else. Better to slowly up your calories than to just go from 1200 a day to 1800 a day all in one whack.

3) The body WILL store fat at a higher rate when it perceives starvation mode. The rate of extra storage is a direct correlation to the size of the deficit, the length of the deficit, and the amount of stored fat available. The calorie difference, in this instance is made up by canabalizing protein from muscles.

4) The body will only recognize starvation mode if there is a real deficit in calories. That mean people with a lot of extra body fat won't generally have this happen until sufficient fat has been burned off to have a real deficit. I.E. obese people can have a larger deficit without affecting their metabolic rate.

5) besides 1200 calories being an arbitrary number that the WHO came up with in the 80's (a lifetime ago in the medical world) and took into account the average FEMALE minimum dietary requirement to stave off malnutrition and starvation, it's generic, meaning that while 1200 might be somewhat close to what you need as a bare minimum, it's probably not THAT close, you need to do your own research, and testing, For most people who are not obese, your BMR is the lowest you want to go.

6) the ONLY reason for someone who is not obese to not eat their exercise calories (assuming they are correctly reporting their caloric intake) is because they are impatient and don't want to wait. It can backfire on you. Besides slowing down the metabolism and possibly causing long term damage to your organs and glands, it will cause fatigue and possibly muscle degradation, which may help you lose weight, but actually can make you more unhealthy overall.

7) There is NO SUCH THING as gaining significant muscle mass while in a catabolic state. You can't put on muscle while at a calorie deficit. What you CAN do is minimize the amount of muscle mass the body identifies as inactive and keep most of your muscle mass intact while in a deficit, you do this by continuing to exercise (both aerobically and anaerobically).

there's far more to talk about but these are the ones I identify most often.

My response to the initial question posed, was from a post that I had read months ago while researching this topic for myself. I wrote what I remembered... it doesn't sound much the same... alas, I started eating my exercise calories after reading it.

I don't know how to do the quote thing, so I'm just going to copy and paste it. I found it quoted on someone else's thread (not mine b/c I didn't bump it) in the community tab.

Hope this helps, sorry to ignite such strong emotions...


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

I am having a really hard time eating 1200 calories. What do I do. You can only eact so much!

Just listen to your body....................In the end, it will all balance out.

lol, that was my post. Here's the link.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

I wrote this a while ago under a different username (don't ask, long story), so if you have any questions just ask.