Eating back my exercise-earned calories?

eemitchell1984 · May 2014

Am I required to eat back these calories? Is there a benefit to eating/not eating them? I feel like when I do, I have defeated the purpose of having a daily caloric goal and that I've just "eaten back" what I burned in my work-out.

psych101 · May 2014

If you are using MFP the way that it was designed, then you are required to eat back your exercise calories as your deficit is already built into the number of calories given to you.

But, you need to make sure that the calories burned is correct - use a HR monitor and eat back most of those calories.

csuhar · May 2014

If you have told MFP to give you a defecit (as in, you told it you want to lose X pounds per week), then you're supposed to eat back those calories. The "remaining" calories in your food log are the number of calories you can eat to reach the target level that will yield the defecit necessary for the weight loss rate you established in your profile.

But, as others have said, there can be a question as to how accurately MFP measures your burn and may overestimate what you've burned through activity, so it's common to only eat back some of those exercise calories.

goldthistime · May 2014

I rarely eat back all my exercise calories. When I burn a lot of calories exercising, my body seems to want to compensate, and I end up resting more during the rest of the day.

GBrady43068 · May 2014

You have asked a relatively common question. I'm going to link to some threads that give more thorough answers, but the takeaway is this.
1. MFP is set up on the presumption you will eat back your exercise calories
2. MFP is not necessarily perfectly accurate on measuring your exercise calories.
3. As a result, some people eat none of them, some eat all of them, some eat a portion.
4. There are arguments for both sides.

Enjoy reading!

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1259696-i-m-so-confused-on-eating-back-calories?hl=eating+back+calories#posts-19667785
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1232113-confused-eating-back-calories?hl=eating+back+calories#posts-19279973
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1229958-whats-the-point-in-eating-back-calories?hl=eating+back+calories#posts-19246123
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1221960-eat-back-calories-burned?hl=eating+back+calories#posts-19123003
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1206040-eat-back-calorie-foods?hl=eating+back+calories#posts-18862883

+1

I'll just say that: I approach the calorie burn as being 1/3 too high. So I manually input my calories burned using the formula .666x where X is the estimated calorie burn from MFP or the machine. Obviously if you have access to a heart rate monitor, it should give you a much better estimate (for cardio, that is...I don't even try to estimate the burn I get from lifting...) and you should use THAT number instead. I then eat back the calories I enter as burned for the day since there's already a deficit built-in to my MFP daily calorie goal...any exercise calories allow me to eat more :happy:

I have not seen any detrimental effect to my weight loss doing this and I'm never "hangry".

eemitchell1984 · May 2014

Thanks for the info. It sounds like unless its a day where i am,able to really push myself and get extra exercise there is no need to eat the extra calories. im def not starving myself,but it sounds like both fitbit and mfp over estimate calories burned.

Eating back my exercise-earned calories?

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