How many exercise calories
bermequeen
Posts: 57 Member
How many exercise calories are you supposed to eat back? On a daily basis I burn about 1300 calories but I don't like to eat over my daily allotted calories. Once in while I will eat some back but never more than 300. Does anyone else have this dilemma? I'm just afraid of going over. Please any advice offered would be greatly appreciated.
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Replies
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You're supposed to eat them all back. If you're not sure about your accuracy then try eating half. MFP already sets your weight loss deficit into the calorie goal before exercise.0
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All of them.0
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All of them. I'll often leave about 100 to account for any inacurracy (with 600-1400 calorie burns), but if you do end up going over your goal a little because of inaccuracy, you'll still be in a deficit, so don't worry.0
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Everyone says eat them all back but I find that counter productive for me. What on earth are you doing to burn that many calories every day?0
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all or most of them...assuming your calorie count is accurate, such as using a HRM.0
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Oh my gosh! You burn 1300 calories a day? How do you do that? That's great!!! I have a hard time eating back exercise calories also. Every one has said to eat them but I haven't. Some times I will eat back like 100-200 calories but that doesn't happen often. I'm scared to.0
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I usually eat them back, but only if I'm hungry. I don't eat them just because I have them. Keep in mind though, I usually burn around 100-200 calories a day.0
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How many exercise calories are you supposed to eat back? On a daily basis I burn about 1300 calories but I don't like to eat over my daily allotted calories. Once in while I will eat some back but never more than 300. Does anyone else have this dilemma? I'm just afraid of going over. Please any advice offered would be greatly appreciated.
I don't usually burn more than 300-ish a day and I don't usually make it to my allotted calorie intake. But if I am hungry I eat, if I'm not hungry I don't.0 -
You're supposed to eat them all back. If you're not sure about your accuracy then try eating half. MFP already sets your weight loss deficit into the calorie goal before exercise.
This is the 2nd time today I've heard this ... "MFP already sets your weight loss deficit in the calorie goal" and something I never knew. Its been a frustrating road to understanding what to do: eat exercise calories back; don't eat them back. Check out a TDEE and go by that; oh wait that number doesn't take into account your deficit. Its finally becoming a little less murky and easier to understand.
This past week I've burned between 600-900 calories a day and that is a lot to eat back,0 -
This is from the Help section of MFP:Because your daily calorie goal already accounts for your intent to gain or lose weight at a particular rate, you can achieve your goal by eating the specified number of calories per day, with no additional exercise required. If you do exercise, then your daily calorie goal will increase for the day, to stabilize your weight loss or weight gain at the rate you initially specified.
http://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/410332-how-does-myfitnesspal-calculate-my-initial-goals-0 -
Okay I have to ask....if you are working to burn calories to lose weight, why must we eat them back plus what our caloric intake for the day should be....this just confuses me....I had seen that MFP figured in the burnt calories, but just have not had the nerve to ask without sounding ignorant or stupid...but just want to know....0
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You're supposed to eat them all back. If you're not sure about your accuracy then try eating half. MFP already sets your weight loss deficit into the calorie goal before exercise.
This is the 2nd time today I've heard this ... "MFP already sets your weight loss deficit in the calorie goal" and something I never knew. Its been a frustrating road to understanding what to do: eat exercise calories back; don't eat them back. Check out a TDEE and go by that; oh wait that number doesn't take into account your deficit. Its finally becoming a little less murky and easier to understand.
This past week I've burned between 600-900 calories a day and that is a lot to eat back,
TDEE takes into account exercise. The method involves take a eating usually at a 20% deficit.
So if your TDEE was: 2365
You would eat at : 1892
This would result in weight loss.0 -
Okay I have to ask....if you are working to burn calories to lose weight, why must we eat them back plus what our caloric intake for the day should be....this just confuses me....I had seen that MFP figured in the burnt calories, but just have not had the nerve to ask without sounding ignorant or stupid...but just want to know....
MFP estimates your daily burn (without exercise): 2000
1lb per week loss setting: -500
Goal (without exercise): 1500
You exercise and burn : 500
MFP estimates your daily burn ( with exercise) : 2500
1lb per week loss setting: -500
Goal ( with exercise): 2000 (or NET 1500)
If your unsure of the accuracy of your calorie burns then eat 50-75% of them back. You also don't have to eat them back the day you burn them. You could essentially save them to go out and eat later in the week.
Losing weight is all about Diet. Exercise should be for fitness and overall health.0 -
I try to eat 1600 calories and burn 200. If I burn more i eat more. I try not to leave myself in negative.0
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Okay I have to ask....if you are working to burn calories to lose weight, why must we eat them back plus what our caloric intake for the day should be....this just confuses me....I had seen that MFP figured in the burnt calories, but just have not had the nerve to ask without sounding ignorant or stupid...but just want to know....
MFP estimates your daily burn (without exercise): 2000
1lb per week loss setting: -500
Goal (without exercise): 1500
You exercise and burn : 500
MFP estimates your daily burn ( with exercise) : 2500
1lb per week loss setting: -500
Goal ( with exercise): 2000 (or NET 1500)
If your unsure of the accuracy of your calorie burns then eat 50-75% of them back. You also don't have to eat them back the day you burn them. You could essentially save them to go out and eat later in the week.
Losing weight is all about Diet. Exercise should be for fitness and overall health.
Understand my numbers...just does not answer my question...why must we eat back our burnt calories....especially since the goal is to lose gift, it just does not make sense to me to eat back the calories...it seems to me that is making a person backslide....so once again... Why eat back our burnt calories......????0 -
None-10%0
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To fuel your workouts. It's really a personal choice. But when you go to maintain, if you continue to workout (which you should), then you will have to eat them back or you will continue to lose weight. For me its about creating a small deficit, so that there isn't as much of a gap between loosing and maintaining.
In other words, you should not exercise for the sole purpose of losing weight. This can cause the problem that your talking about. If a person gets to their goal weight, moves to maintain, stops working out, but continues to eat as if they were working out, said person will gain weight back quickly. I personally plan on keeping up with exercise, for my health, and as such I should eat to fuel my workouts. I prefer not to be cranky and grumpy (which I am when I don't eat enough).0 -
Okay I have to ask....if you are working to burn calories to lose weight, why must we eat them back plus what our caloric intake for the day should be....this just confuses me....I had seen that MFP figured in the burnt calories, but just have not had the nerve to ask without sounding ignorant or stupid...but just want to know....
MFP estimates your daily burn (without exercise): 2000
1lb per week loss setting: -500
Goal (without exercise): 1500
You exercise and burn : 500
MFP estimates your daily burn ( with exercise) : 2500
1lb per week loss setting: -500
Goal ( with exercise): 2000 (or NET 1500)
If your unsure of the accuracy of your calorie burns then eat 50-75% of them back. You also don't have to eat them back the day you burn them. You could essentially save them to go out and eat later in the week.
Losing weight is all about Diet. Exercise should be for fitness and overall health.
Understand my numbers...just does not answer my question...why must we eat back our burnt calories....especially since the goal is to lose gift, it just does not make sense to me to eat back the calories...it seems to me that is making a person backslide....so once again... Why eat back our burnt calories......????
You tell the program I want to lose 1 lb a week and work a desk job. The program says okay, here. Eat this amount and you'll lose 1 lb a week. Then you go and exercise to burn 200 calories. The program then says HEY! You said you sit at a desk. The number before was just sitting at a desk now, to still lose 1 lb a week you need to eat this number.
You need a deficit to lose weight. 250, 500, or 1000 depending on how much you need to lose is normal. When you already have that amount taken out of your daily calories and add in another 200-500 working out the deficit can get too large. That's why you eat back exercise calories.0 -
Well MFP usually is overly generous with workout calories so I usually adjust them down anyways. I eat them back. I really shoot for my net goal to be between 1200-1460 everyday. If my net falls somewhere in there then I am happy!0
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You need to make sure you eat enough. It seems counterintuitive, but eating too few calories will hinder fat loss. When you enter all of your vital statistics into MFP, it comes up with a total number of calories you should be eating. This number includes a healthy deficit below what you would need to eat to maintain, so you should try to get as close to that number as possible. When you burn calories, your body pulls both from fat reserves and muscle tissue, but the ratio of the two can change. When you eat at a small deficit and exercise, your body will tend to pull from fat reserves since they are easier to access and your muscles are being used. When the deficit grows too large for too long, your body will start to shift towards burning muscle tissue rather than fat. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat cells, so when your body expects to not get enough food for an extended period, it will hoard fat cells to try to maintain an energy reserve for future use. You will still lose weight, but most of that weight will be muscle, not fat. As long as your deficit is small, your body isn't worried about getting enough food and will be comfortable burning through the fat reserves.
When you exercise, MFP expects you to eat back any calories you burn to ensure that you total deficit does not grow too large (see above). This also seems counterintuitive, since it seems like you are undoing the benefits of the exercise, but this is not the case. The more muscle you build and the better shape you get into, the more calories your body will require to maintain itself, so you will eventually be able to eat more without gaining weight. Exercising without eating enough calories can easily result in burning muscle rather than fat.
Hope that helps.0 -
I was eating back my calories sometimes, but I realize after getting a heart rate monitor I was estimating my calorie burn on the higher side. But like most people say. I will eat them if I am hungry, or save them for a time in the week when I want to go out and have a few drinks or a fast food meal or something.0
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Cardio and weightlifting0
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I'm normally full by the end of the day I won't eat more, but if I feel a bit snacky I'll eat more but I feel guilty. Even though it's usually nuts or something like that. Just wondering some people say do others say don't.0
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I don't eat back exercise calories. I eat at a deficit, anything else I consider bonus.0
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I ate back some today but not many.0
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This keeps coming up over and over and over again. Folks, there is a Search link on each forum page....
But to give a short version of the answer: MFP calculates the calorie deficit you need based on your regular daily activity WITHOUT exercise.
Let's say you need 2000 calories a day to maintain your weight, without exercising. You want to lose a pound a week, so MFP says you should eat 1500 calories a day.
Now, let's say you go for a 2-hour bike ride at a decent pace. You burn 1000 calories.
If you eat only 1500 calories, you're basically telling your body to survive on only 500 calories beyond what you burned in exercise. That's starvation rations. It won't provide what you need to stay healthy. If you don't eat those 1000 calories back, you're effectively aiming for 3 pounds a week, which is extreme unless you're quite big to begin with.
Now, if you only do that 2-hour bike ride once a month, it's no problem. I've had a few days when my net calorie intake was negative, because I spent the whole day on my bike. But if it's day in, day out, you'll be depriving your body of what it needs to function well.
If you've set MFP to lose 0.5-1 lb./week, you burn 500 calories a day exercising, and you're OK with losing more, then don't eat back your calories; 1-1.5 lb./week is still perfectly OK. But if you exercise more, or your MFP goal is set to 1.5 or 2 lb./week, then do replenish your body's stores by "eating back" those exercise calories.
"Eating back" is misleading. Replenishing your stores, or filling the tank, is better. The only caveat is that many tables and sites, including MFP, overestimate how many calories are burned by exercise. So you might start by eating back 75% of the estimate, and then after a couple of weeks, compare your results with MFP to find out how many calories you're really burning.0 -
@bwogilvie This question may be all over the place on the site, but to me that just means we don't get it. I understand that at a sedentary life, my body needs X number of cals to exist and that I need to knock off 1000 cals/week to lose 2 lbs/week. BUT, at the end of the day, I am always under what it tells me (especially taking into account any exercise I do) but I'm too full to eat any more food.
I'm like the OP and others, I really don't get why I need to eat if I'm not hungry.0 -
@echelonokie: If you're *really* not hungry, and haven't met your target, then that's great! Don't eat any more.
But I think a lot of people are on MFP (myself included) either because our hunger feedback system is out of whack, or we confuse hunger with other feelings about food. If our hunger system really worked perfectly, we wouldn't need to lose weight.0 -
HI THERE, I KNOW IT MIGHT BE A LIL LATE TO SHARE THIS BUT I BELIEVE THIS WILL HELP YOU.
1. IF YOU ARE GOING BY THE FITNESS PALL ESTIMATE OF CALORIES BURNED YOU ARE WAY OFF BY OVER 50% OF THE REAL VALUE. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE I BOUGHT A HR MONITOR FOR MY CYCLING TRAINING AND WHEN I PLACED MY MINUTES OF EXERCISE IN THE APP THE NUMBER WAS WAY OFF WHEN COMPARED TO MY GARMIN EDGE 500 CALCULATIONS WHICH ARE WAY MORE ACCURATE. A HR MONITOR IS THE CLOSEST TOOL TO MONITOR THIS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A POWER METER WHICH WILL BE THE MOST ACCURATE. ALSO, I WAS NOT LOOSING ANY WEIGHT USING THE FITNESS PAL APP B/C I WAS EATING SOME OF MY BURNED CALORIES AND SINCE IT WAS OVER ESTIMATING BY A LOT IT DIDN'T WORK.
2. IN MY CASE I CYCLE 6 TIMES A WEEK AND IN A REGULAR TRAINING DAY I DO 40-45 MILES IN ABOUT 2 HR 15 MIN TO 2 HR 30 MIN, AVG SPEED 18-19. AFTER 2 MONTHS LOOKING AF WHAT I BURN DURING EACH SESSION I REALIZED I AM BURNING 1100-1250 KCAL ON AVG. I AM 205 LBS PLUS THE GEAR AND ALL THE OTHER STUFF ADD AN EXTRA 20-25 LBS TO ACCOUNT FOR. YOU CAN CHECK THE NUMBER ON THE APP AND YOU WILL SEE THAT AT THIS SPEED THE NUMBER IS AROUND 2300 KCAL.
3. IF YOU WANT TO LOOSE WEIGHT ACCURATELY YOU NEED A HR MONITOR, THAT IS THE BEST TO ASSESS YOUR OUTPUT.
4. YOU CAN EAT INTO YOUR EXERCISE CALORIES IF YOU WISH TO DO SO, ALTHOUGH IT DEPENDS ON YOUR GOALS. IF YOU ARE TRYING TO MAINTAIN WEIGHT YOU SHOULD EAT THEM EVERY DAY. IF YOU ARE TRYING TO LOOSE WEIGHT YOU CAN GO AS FAR AS 2 LBS PER WEEK WHICH IS 7000 KCAL. THIS IS THE SAFEST WAY TO DO IT TO ALLOW YOUR BODY TO ADAPT. IT TAKES ABOUT 2 WEEKS FOR YOUR BODY TO ADAPT TO THE LOWER CALORIC INTAKE.
5. IF YOU KEEP ON EXERCISING AND DON'T EAT YOUR CALORIES YOU ARE GOING TO START EATING YOUR LEAN MUSCLE SINCE THE BODY WILL TRY TO KEEP FAT AT A HEALTHY NUMBER.
WHEN I GET TO MY TARGET CYCLING WEIGHT WHICH IS AROUND 180 I WILL HAVE TO EAT ALL MY EXERCISE CALORIES OR I AM NOT GOING TO REPLENISH THE BURNED GLYCOGEN AND FAT, THEREFORE CAUSING DECREASED PERFORMANCE AND ENDURANCE SINCE MY MUSCLE IS GOING TO START BEING BURNED INSTEAD. I HOPE THIS HELPS, FEEL FREE TO ASK ANY QUESTIONS.
THIS IS A GREAT PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION ALTHOUGH IS NOT FOR THE LAY PERSON. IT GOES DOWN TO THE BIOCHEMICAL EXPLANATION.
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kurilla2.htm0 -
i eat 0 calories back. Let your exercise work for you. I've had great success.0
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