Sucess stories from people who eat back calories

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ginaward1990
ginaward1990 Posts: 30
in Health and Weight Loss
After reading loooaaaddddsssss of posts about whether or not people should eat back exercise calories I came to the conclusion that I should be.....however..... my first week in and I have gained a pound and over 1% body fat :(((((
Is this just an anomaly or should I just be eating plain old 1600 calories again to lose 1lb a week???? I am 5ft 8" and lightly - moderately active.
anyone lost a load of weight by eating exercise calories back all the time? tell me!!
hhhhheeeeeellllllllllpppppppppppppppppppppp

Replies

  • carriespence1
    carriespence1 Posts: 70 Member
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    Could you maybe be miscalculating calories burned? Could be that or your bmr is less than estimated. That's assuming you didn't somehow eat hidden calories. Also low water intake can cause it too.
  • levitateme
    levitateme Posts: 999 Member
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    I pretty much always eat my exercise calories back and I've lost 13 lbs since January 2nd. I only log cardio, though, because my I feel that calorie burn based on a sustained elevated heart rate should be fairly accurate. I lift weights 3-4 times a week and don't log it as anything. I go over my calories (sometimes by a lot) probably 3 days a week and my pre-exercise goal is 1350.
  • ginaward1990
    ginaward1990 Posts: 30
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    Could you maybe be miscalculating calories burned? Could be that or your bmr is less than estimated. That's assuming you didn't somehow eat hidden calories. Also low water intake can cause it too.

    i have a heart rate monitor with a chest strap and use it for the length of my workout including weights. i checked my bmr a thousand times and set my activity level at lightly active even though i think im probably more moderately active due to the nature of my job. hidden calories is a possibility....... and possibly the odd guilty unrecorded food......but i dont think a whole pound of weight is justifiable from that :(
    i drink loads of water on weekdays then forget to drink as much at the weekend cos im out of my routine.
  • Ninkyou
    Ninkyou Posts: 6,666 Member
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    That 1 lbs could literally be ANYTHING. Glycogen replenishment, sodium, muscle repair from exercise, time of the month.... basically, that 1 lbs means squat. It's water and it will go away. You need to give it more than a week to see change. You should give it at least 4 weeks before deciding to change things up.

    Since you're looking for successes with eating back calories, I'm one. All of my loss up until last week has been with eating exercise calories back. Last week I switched over to the TDEE method, but that's just because I want to experience both methods.
  • ginaward1990
    ginaward1990 Posts: 30
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    That 1 lbs could literally be ANYTHING. Glycogen replenishment, sodium, muscle repair from exercise, time of the month.... basically, that 1 lbs means squat. It's water and it will go away. You need to give it more than a week to see change. You should give it at least 4 weeks before deciding to change things up.

    Since you're looking for successes with eating back calories, I'm one. All of my loss up until last week has been with eating exercise calories back. Last week I switched over to the TDEE method, but that's just because I want to experience both methods.

    Thanks for the advice :)

    I will continue eating them back for a while then.... which is good because I love eating.
  • helen8328
    helen8328 Posts: 36 Member
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    Are you using your weight to calculate the calories you've burned? The lighter you are the less calories you burn. My treadmill asks me to input my weight before I start to get an accurate calorie reading.

    The same thing happened to me though and I now only put half the amount of calories in and this seems fine.
  • ginaward1990
    ginaward1990 Posts: 30
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    Are you using your weight to calculate the calories you've burned? The lighter you are the less calories you burn. My treadmill asks me to input my weight before I start to get an accurate calorie reading.

    The same thing happened to me though and I now only put half the amount of calories in and this seems fine.
    I use a heart rate monitor with a chest strap sensor and that tells me me how many ive burned :) the treadmill usually gives me a slight over estimation.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,868 Member
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    I don't think you gained 1% BF...my guess is you're using one of those scales and those scales cannot tell the difference between water and BF%...you just don't fluctuate with BF% like that. Water would also explain your tiny scale gain.

    That said, you have to make sure everything is set properly...if you're selecting moderately active activity level because you're including exercise in there then if you log and eat those back you are double counting them. With MFP, exercise is meant to be extra activity.

    You also need to be precise in your intake and conservative in your burn estimates. Don't just take some calorie burn from the database and call it good...you should be doing some kind of reasonableness test on that burn to determine how realistic it is. A good rule of thumb is 10 calories per minute max for a level of effort that would not really allow you to hold a conversation or do much of anything other than focus in on your workout. 5 calories per minute for a moderately paced walk. You may actually be burning a bit more, but again...you want to be conservative and the purpose behind eating these calories back is to provide at least some measure of fuel for that activity.
  • bwogilvie
    bwogilvie Posts: 2,130 Member
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    i have a heart rate monitor with a chest strap and use it for the length of my workout including weights. i checked my bmr a thousand times and set my activity level at lightly active even though i think im probably more moderately active due to the nature of my job. hidden calories is a possibility....... and possibly the odd guilty unrecorded food......but i dont think a whole pound of weight is justifiable from that :(
    i drink loads of water on weekdays then forget to drink as much at the weekend cos im out of my routine.

    I have a couple responses to some points here. However, before getting into them, a general bit of advice: if your exercise pattern is consistent from week to week (you do about the same amount of activity each week), and you were losing weight at your desired rate (and not too fast) when you were eating 1600 and not eating back exercise calories, then the obvious solution is to go back to doing that. Why mess with what works? This post might help put things in context:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/818082-exercise-calories-again-wtf

    That said, a couple of points:

    1. Heart rate monitors are usually more accurate for aerobic exercise than tables or MFP's database, but they aren't 100% accurate, and often overestimate calories, especially for intermittent exercise. They seem to be less accurate for women. And they are more or less useless for weight training; the formulas that they use were developed for estimating energy consumed in steady-state cardio. See the end of the post if you want more details. I use mine only for cycling, running, and cross-country skiing, not for weight training.

    2. How are you checking your BMR? Are you having it tested? If you're "checking" by going to a website, keep in mind that those calculators give estimates based on a group of people, and there is some variation between individuals. The only way to really know your BMR is to do a test.

    Every number you enter on MFP is an estimate. You need to compare those estimates with results, and adjust accordingly. I eat back my exercise calories and have lost weight, but my figures show an average discrepancy of 150-200 calories a day between what I enter and what I should lose if all the numbers are correct (more slowly than the numbers would predict). That's probably a combination of (1) my having a somewhat lower BMR than average due to adaptive thermogenesis, (2) slightly underestimating how much I eat, and (3) slightly overestimating calories burned in exercise. I could worry all day about the difference, but it's more productive to simply lower my calorie goal by 200 calories a day and get the results I want.
    More on HRMs: One study of the Polar F6 showed that, even calibrated with subjects' actual VO2max and HRmax, it overestimated energy expenditure by 27% (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21178923). An earlier study showed that the Polar S410 overestimated energy expenditure in women by 12% (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15292754). Another study found that the Polar S810i overestimated expenditure when exercising lightly but not moderately (http://www.jssm.org/vol9/n3/21/v9n3-21abst.php). The research seems to suggest that HRMs are less accurate for women than they are for men.
  • ginaward1990
    ginaward1990 Posts: 30
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    I don't think you gained 1% BF...my guess is you're using one of those scales and those scales cannot tell the difference between water and BF%...you just don't fluctuate with BF% like that. Water would also explain your tiny scale gain.

    That said, you have to make sure everything is set properly...if you're selecting moderately active activity level because you're including exercise in there then if you log and eat those back you are double counting them. With MFP, exercise is meant to be extra activity.

    You also need to be precise in your intake and conservative in your burn estimates. Don't just take some calorie burn from the database and call it good...you should be doing some kind of reasonableness test on that burn to determine how realistic it is. A good rule of thumb is 10 calories per minute max for a level of effort that would not really allow you to hold a conversation or do much of anything other than focus in on your workout. 5 calories per minute for a moderately paced walk. You may actually be burning a bit more, but again...you want to be conservative and the purpose behind eating these calories back is to provide at least some measure of fuel for that activity.

    yep i have been using the posh scales at the gym where you hold the handles and it tells you your height and weight and bfp :)
    ok so no longer worried about bfp.......
    i have also since discovered that i should maybe not be recording what my HRM tells me I burn through weight training!! so from now on I will only record cardio.....one question though....can i record walking if my activity level is set the lightly active....... heres my daily life......
    walk to work in the morning takes 25 mins
    work involves walking around most of the day from 7-3.30.... moving mannequins around, lifting and pulling and pushing things, drilling, pretty much everyday but not all day...
    sometimes i walk home too...another 25 mins
    gym 3 times a week doing 30 mins of cardio (stairmill, running or crosstrainer) and 30 mins weights

    am i doing it right?

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