Eating back your calories

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danasmama914
danasmama914 Posts: 3
in Health and Weight Loss
Does anyone know if it's better off not eating back the calories you work off for faster results?

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  • MelanieHave
    MelanieHave Posts: 8 Member
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    It is best to not eat back your calories for faster weight loss results.
  • Cindyinpg
    Cindyinpg Posts: 3,902 Member
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    Does anyone know if it's better off not eating back the calories you work off for faster results?
    You don't want too aggressive of a deficit, especially if you are close to your goal weight, so it might be wise to try eating back only half of them and adjust from there.
  • j6o4
    j6o4 Posts: 871 Member
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    Yes you will lose faster, but it might not be the best approach depending on your deficit. Larger deficits have a greater chance of eating away at your muscle which most people do not wish to happen.
  • danasmama914
    danasmama914 Posts: 3
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    Thank you! That's what I was thinking to start trying. Most times I'm extremely hungry after doing a hard work out, so half or a little less of what I work out I will start eating back. I find myself forcing my self to eat more because I don't want it to say under for the day but then obviously why would I keep eating if I'm trying to lose? Lol Thank you for the response!
  • danasmama914
    danasmama914 Posts: 3
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    I'm not that close. At first it seemed to be falling off left and right and now I think I will start eating half or less back if I'm hungry. I was just un sure if even it says under if that's okay sometimes.
  • Mr_Knight
    Mr_Knight Posts: 9,532 Member
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    There isn't anywhere near enough information in your post to give reasonable guidance.

    How much to you have to lose? What is your diet like? What is your exercise like?

    Etc etc etc.
  • eryquem
    eryquem Posts: 66 Member
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    It is best to not eat back your calories for faster weight loss results.

    Using that logic, I could conclude that you're better off not eating anything at all for faster weight loss results. But that's not healthy.

    When you specify how much weight you want to lose per week in MFP's settings, it calculates your daily intake assuming no exercise. So if you do exercise, you are increasing your deficit beyond what you specified. In order to maintain your originally planned deficit, you need to eat the additional calories that you burned.

    If you want to lose weight faster, simply specify a larger amount of weight loss per week in the settings, although the highest you can set it to is 2lb / week.
  • kamakazeekim
    kamakazeekim Posts: 1,183 Member
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    It depends on if you're at the maintenance stage or still wanting to lose weight. My nutritionist says not to eat them back because I'm a long ways from my weight loss goal.
  • Kasi_Smith
    Kasi_Smith Posts: 4
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    I've been wondering about this too. I'm close to my goal weight, but would prefer to mostly lose body fat, and minimize muscle loss.
  • jennifer_417
    jennifer_417 Posts: 12,344 Member
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    The number of calories that MFP gives you is a deficit before working out. Therefor, when you work out, you are creating an even greater deficit, which can be too great.

    A note, though, MFP tends to overestimate calorie burns, so if I don't have a way to record a more accurate calorie burn, I will record about 2/3rd of the time I actually spent exercising.

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