Eating back exercise calories

Fran_28_4_14
Fran_28_4_14 Posts: 3
in Getting Started
Hi. My name is Fran and this is my 3rd attempt at MFP! I have lost nearly 4 stone since August 2013 but have gone off track recently. WAY off track! I have just set up my new account with MFP and have a question which bothers me very much and ive noticed is a question alot of people have asked on here. . Do i eat back my exercise calories? Now i am very VERY confused with this. Some say yes eat back 100% of them, some will say eat back 50% and some will say no to eating back any of them. I must confess i dont like the idea of eating them back whilst trying to loose the weight as it just seems so wrong but i want to do this the right way. So any help on this matter would be much appreciated and i would love some friends on here to keep me motivated and help me to keep going with this. I want to do this for life, to be healthy and to be able to work out and look after myself. Thank you :-)

Replies

  • SnuggleSmacks
    SnuggleSmacks Posts: 3,731 Member
    General consensus is that you should eat back your exercise calories on principle. However, many choose to eat back 50% because it is assumed that exercise calories burned are usually overestimated, while calories consumed are underestimated, so eating back 50% strikes a balance between giving your body enough fuel and preventing accidental overeating.
  • Fran_28_4_14
    Fran_28_4_14 Posts: 3
    Thanks for the reply . . well i use my treadmill at home and it tells me exactly how many calories i burn during my workout. . would this make a difference?
  • SnuggleSmacks
    SnuggleSmacks Posts: 3,731 Member
    Your machine will give you an estimate, but it won't be completely accurate. If it asks for your height and weight, it's probably a little more accurate than if it doesn't. A heart rate monitor will be much more accurate than your machine, but it's still an estimate.

    It's a personal choice as to whether you eat back your burned calories. If your goal is fairly low, I would suggest eating them all back to keep from undereating. If you're lifting heavy weights, I would also suggest you eat them all back. Otherwise, experiment to see what will keep you full but also losing weight.
  • AmyRhubarb
    AmyRhubarb Posts: 6,890 Member
    Keep in mind that the daily calorie goal MFP has given you already has you at a deficit - meaning you could eat all the way to goal every day, do zero exercise and you'll lose weight. When you burn off more cals through exercise, you're leaving yourself with a much larger deficit, too large, which can cause you all sorts of problems in the long run. This is why the burned cals are added back into your daily goal - you are supposed to eat them back, bringing your deficit back to what it was, so your net cals should be at or very near goal at the end of the day.

    I agree that MFP calorie burn estimates and the machine estimates can be high, so eating less than the full amount could be a good idea. A good heart rate monitor with a chest strap is a better way to get your exercise burns, or something like a Fitbit or BodyMedia FIT that tracks all day for your total daily burn.

    Either way - don't sell yourself short or think you'll make quicker progress by skipping the exercise cals. You may lose, but with too little fuel you're losing lean body mass along with fat, and continue down that path and you may end up with hair loss, brittle nails, a stall in weight loss, lack of energy, etc. Not fun.

    Food is fuel! Feed your body the RIGHT amount of cals and you have energy for workouts and still lose the fat while retaining lean muscle. Good luck!
  • knra_grl
    knra_grl Posts: 1,566 Member
    I eat back some most of the time and sometimes I eat them all back, it hasn't stalled my weightloss yet. Calories burned is an estimate like anything else, so if you don't want to eat them ALL back eat between 1/3 to 3/4 depending on how you feel but don't leave yourself too large of a deficit at the end of the day.
  • JosephineBella305
    JosephineBella305 Posts: 2 Member
    I'm a newbie to MFP too and am sorting that out myself. What I decided I'll do is aim to eat back half, but adjust as necessary. That is, if I'm really hungry one day, I'll eat back more than half. If I'm not very hungry, I won't force myself to eat past the point of being full, even if it's less than half. I figure the amount of calories I'm burning in any given day will vary from day to day, week to week, depending on TOM, how much other exercise I am getting during that day, etc, so I want to learn to listen to my body. I've not been good at doing that when it comes to food for most of my life and I'd like that to change!
    Good luck!
  • waltcote
    waltcote Posts: 372 Member
    I think we have to each learn what our bodies do individually. I usually eat my calories back partly because somedays I have eaten an amount before my work out that if I don't, I will be eating bird food. I have actually started working out in the mornings for now because I can't make excuses for not having time at 5 am. Also somedays I workout in the morning and also do some other activity in the afternoon like playing golf. I don't usually eat all my calories burned daily unless i feel like I am starving. I just try to make healthy choices and not just eat junk for the sake of using my earned calories. Also sometimes I will eat a quick high protein snack right after working out to refuel so I don't get too hungry. :bigsmile:
  • MagJam2004
    MagJam2004 Posts: 651 Member
    Keep in mind that the daily calorie goal MFP has given you already has you at a deficit - meaning you could eat all the way to goal every day, do zero exercise and you'll lose weight. When you burn off more cals through exercise, you're leaving yourself with a much larger deficit, too large, which can cause you all sorts of problems in the long run. This is why the burned cals are added back into your daily goal - you are supposed to eat them back, bringing your deficit back to what it was, so your net cals should be at or very near goal at the end of the day.

    I agree that MFP calorie burn estimates and the machine estimates can be high, so eating less than the full amount could be a good idea. A good heart rate monitor with a chest strap is a better way to get your exercise burns, or something like a Fitbit or BodyMedia FIT that tracks all day for your total daily burn.

    Either way - don't sell yourself short or think you'll make quicker progress by skipping the exercise cals. You may lose, but with too little fuel you're losing lean body mass along with fat, and continue down that path and you may end up with hair loss, brittle nails, a stall in weight loss, lack of energy, etc. Not fun.

    Food is fuel! Feed your body the RIGHT amount of cals and you have energy for workouts and still lose the fat while retaining lean muscle. Good luck!

    solid advice and one of the best replies I've seen to this question
  • DeboraW_55
    DeboraW_55 Posts: 95 Member
    Listen to your body, eat some one day and the next maybe not. I'm like you, I exercise to lose weight so when I exercise to get the weight off why eat All those extra calories. So some days my body just needs a little extra food.
  • trogalicious
    trogalicious Posts: 4,584 Member
    Keep in mind that the daily calorie goal MFP has given you already has you at a deficit - meaning you could eat all the way to goal every day, do zero exercise and you'll lose weight. When you burn off more cals through exercise, you're leaving yourself with a much larger deficit, too large, which can cause you all sorts of problems in the long run. This is why the burned cals are added back into your daily goal - you are supposed to eat them back, bringing your deficit back to what it was, so your net cals should be at or very near goal at the end of the day.

    I agree that MFP calorie burn estimates and the machine estimates can be high, so eating less than the full amount could be a good idea. A good heart rate monitor with a chest strap is a better way to get your exercise burns, or something like a Fitbit or BodyMedia FIT that tracks all day for your total daily burn.

    Either way - don't sell yourself short or think you'll make quicker progress by skipping the exercise cals. You may lose, but with too little fuel you're losing lean body mass along with fat, and continue down that path and you may end up with hair loss, brittle nails, a stall in weight loss, lack of energy, etc. Not fun.

    Food is fuel! Feed your body the RIGHT amount of cals and you have energy for workouts and still lose the fat while retaining lean muscle. Good luck!

    yup. this.
  • kuolo
    kuolo Posts: 251 Member
    I think we have to each learn what our bodies do individually.

    ^ this.

    I eat most of mine back, but I don't use MFP's estimates which are extremely high. How much you burn will depend on your weight and fitness. The deficit is already built in, so if you don't eat them back you could end up with a horribly large deficit, which is not going to make you feel good. Personally I know what my body is ok with and what it is not, so I try to never net below a certain number, which is higher than a lot of people's - but everyone is different, find out what works for you. But bear in mind that less is not always better, and whatever you do has to be sustainable in the long run.
  • rose313
    rose313 Posts: 1,146 Member
    The way MFP is designed to be used, yes, eat them back. Personally, I don't eat them back, because MFP overestimates them too much. I log my exercise but I put my calorie burn in as "1". I'd start with eating half or all of them back to learn what your body feels best doing.
  • Trixsterfan
    Trixsterfan Posts: 56 Member
    I try not to but most of the time I prefer to exercise harder so I can perhaps have 200/300 more calories than my usual 1350.
  • Trixsterfan
    Trixsterfan Posts: 56 Member
    Good idea rose313
  • asciiqwerty
    asciiqwerty Posts: 565 Member
    both your calories consumed and burned are estimates

    only you can affect their accuracy but weighing everything you eat and picking conservative calorie burn extimates

    some people account for hte innacuracy of their food/excercise logs by only eating back some of their excercise calories

    whether you need to will depend on how accurate your logging is

    the way to tell is to look at your loss, intake and burn over a few weeks given that
    weight loss = calorie deficit
    and you would need a deficit of 3500cal to loose 1lb

    this allows you to work out what your deficit actually has been over a period, and when you compare it to what you thought your deficit was you will be able to tell how accurate you were, this may help you work out what % of your burn calories you should be eating back

    me I try to log very accurately and i allow myself to eat back all my excercise calories when I feel like it, but I don't eat if i'm not hungry
  • SnuggleSmacks
    SnuggleSmacks Posts: 3,731 Member
    Personally, I eat mine back because I use a heart rate monitor rather than MFP's guesstimate, so it's more accurate. Also, I don't count lifting, only cardio. And lastly, I also use a vivofit, and I usually have a slightly higher TDEE than MFP's base prediction, so if I don't eat them back then I'm shorting myself. On days when I do a lot of walking and the vivofit registers a pretty high burn for the day, I go a little over my MFP goal. I might lose faster by not eating back my burns, but I won't enjoy it as much, or feel as good, and I think those things are more important.
  • asciiqwerty
    asciiqwerty Posts: 565 Member
    Thanks for the reply . . well i use my treadmill at home and it tells me exactly how many calories i burn during my workout. . would this make a difference?

    excercise machines are notorious for overestimating calories burned
    it all depends on how they do it but if they also give you time,cadence, speed, distance then there are lots of other estimators online that you could use too

    what you *actually* burn depends on your gender, weight, height and effort
    your effort is going to be a function of your speed/distance/duration/weight/height/gender

    what you burn will change as you loose weight or get better (more efficient) at your routine

    check it out next time you use your treadmill, write down all the data it gives you and try out several different estimators online and compare them back to your treadmil reading

    me> i use several including mfp and endomondo, and i pick the lowest value to track
  • Mccmack
    Mccmack Posts: 195 Member
    If I do 52 minutes on the eliptical, MFP gives me a calorie burn of 842 calories. My machine gives me a burn of about 440 calories.
    From reading threads and doing some research, I am comfortable counting 52 minutes on the eliptial as a 400 calorie burn. So that is all i will eat back.
  • Fran_28_4_14
    Fran_28_4_14 Posts: 3
    Thank you all very much for taking the time to reply back to me on this. Its something that has bothered me for a while! Calorie counting and exercise calories are never going to be 100% accurate but ill play this by ear and hopefully there will be good results ;-) Good luck to you all too :-) Thank you again!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Thanks for the reply . . well i use my treadmill at home and it tells me exactly how many calories i burn during my workout. . would this make a difference?

    It is still very much an estimate...there is no way to know exactly what your burn will be without some very expensive and very fancy equipment.

    Another good rule of thumb is that 10 calories per minute burned above and beyond your basal rate of burn is working pretty hard for most people. I never logged anything more than that and that was for a workout for which I was unable to hold a conversation the entire time. 5 calories for minute is what I would log for a moderately paced (3.5 mph) walk...everything else was somewhere in between. I used these multipliers in conjunction with machines and my HRM to arrive at a conservative estimate. As time went on, I had a pretty good idea of what i was actually burning per given exercise...but even then, it was an estimate...just a well educated one.

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