Eating back exercise calories?

I'm new to MFP and have heard a few things from reading the forums...

1) you should eat back all of your exercise calories, and
2) you should eat back only half of your exercise calories.

I figure that MFP is already accounting for a deficit when it calculates what my net calories should be, and therefore I should eat back all of my exercise calories (not doing so would result in an even bigger deficit).

I wear a HRM for all of my exercises except swimming, so I think the calorie burn that I enter is pretty accurate. I usually work out 2x a day during the week and once on the weekend, so the difference between eating back all of my calories and only have of them is pretty big (~400 calories).

What do you recommend??

You are on the right track..but even with a HRM, it's still an estimate. A HRM is relatively accurate...probably the most accurate for a steady state cardiovascular event...the further you get from that, the more inaccurate it is...pretty much worthless for weight training unless you're doing circuits...and even then, circuits are not a completely steady state cardio event.

Keep in mind that you HRM is also counting calories that you would have otherwise burned sitting around watching t.v....you have to account for your basal calories at minimum. I used to cut my HRM burn by 20% to account for this and estimation error for a cardio event. That worked well for me.

Also, compare what you're getting with your HRM to a 5-10 factor level of effort...I always did this for a reasonableness test. A 5 basically being a walk in the park and a 10 being a level of effort for which holding conversation would be difficult. Note that some exercises would have you at various levels of effort so you would have to estimate somewhere in between...for example, you might hit a 10 during a round of circuit training, but you're also going to have periods of rest...so really you're working maybe an 8 overall.

It's pretty hard to burn more than 10 calories per minute for any length of time...if you're heavier, you might burn a bit more, but really it's negligible and you want to be conservative as possible. It's not that important that you hit it exactly...in fact that's impossible..you just want to make sure you're provide some fuel for that activity.

Also, if you're working out a couple of times per day, it is likely you are burning more than 400 calories...I have two a days on Wednesdays where I do a steady cycle for 60 minutes at lunch and burn around 500 calories and then I lift in the evening and I've determined that I burn around 200 - 250 or so for 60 minutes of that activity.

It's fine to do either. I go by if I am hungry or not.

i think the reason that a lot of people only eat back 1/2 of their exercise calories is because (like someone else said), it's an estimate. you might have to play around with how many calories you eat back to find your "sweet spot." you could start with eating them all back and if you find your weight loss is slowing down, try only eating half back. good luck!

I don't know if this is correct or not, but I just go by when I'm hungry. If my stomachs growling, I feed it. If I'm not hungry but burned 300 calories during the day, I don't make myself eat those 300 calories.
But then again, I'm not the most scientific when it comes to this whole weight loss thing. I just listen to my body! My body makes it very clear when I'm hungry - I get grumpy and can't focus.

But with that being said - if I had a really good day with how many calories I ate, I try not to go to bed with a huge amount left. Like for example, yesterday I had like 650 calories left over at the end of the day, so I ate some greek yogurt with peanut butter after dinner.

I eat my sedentary TDEE-15% + ALL exercise calories....I've been loosing 1.4 lbs per week with this method. I think it all depends on the individual though.

I'm fairly new to this too, and a lot does depend on how you set up your initial information. However, most people seem to suggest eating back all your exercise calories. The baseline MFP gives you is what you need to eat to lose weight at the pace you designated. If you do not eat back all of your exercise calories you will lose weight even faster, but not as healthily and not as sustainably. I would echo what others have said, base it on the results you have seen/will see. Personally, I would start with eating them all back and work down from there. Especially if you have a 1200 calorie base rate! As my mentor told me, you could be in a coma and still burn 1200 calories per day - and you definitely aren't!

Good luck!

I don't know... I just exercise so I can eat.

lol, if you wanna eat more you better exercise:laugh: , thought this was funny

Thanks for the information! I like the idea of cutting the HRM burn by 20% to correct for any error. So, when you do that - do you then eat back all of those calories or just some of them? In other words, do you keep aiming for the net calorie goal MFP calculated for you (including 80% of the calories from your HRM workouts) or do you make that deficit bigger?

Thank you!

When I log my exercise, I log the calorie burn from my HRM less the 20% so that I will net and eat those calories back...there is no reason to create a bigger deficit with your exercise...that isn't the purpose of your exercise and you calorie target is already a deficit from maintenance.

One caveat here would be that if you accounted for an estimation of your exercise in your activity level already you would be double counting if you then logged that activity and ate back exercise calories...with MFP you're only supposed to include your day to day living type of stuff and exercise is extra. If you want to do that I would highly recommend using an actual TDEE calculator though as MFP's activity level calories are just based on your NEAT (day to day stuff)...so for example, to get my true maintenance calorie goal with MFP I'd have to put very active...vs moderately active on a TDEE calculator.

AMEN TO THAT.