calories earned. to eat or not to eat?

jenny181111
jenny181111 Posts: 163 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Are you supposed to eat back the calories you earn or not? I'm confused :/

Replies

  • Stopin_da_yoyo
    Stopin_da_yoyo Posts: 138 Member
    Depends. At the beginning of myfitnesspal you entered personal info age weight goal activity level etc...

    This came up with caloric intake number for day which will get you to your goal weight by the date you put in.

    Exercising allows you to earn more cals for the day. So you can either eat those cals back and you will still be on track for weight goals.

    OR

    You can not eat and be ahead of the game.

    Its hard for me to put into words also since im new here too...so I hope I did it well enough for you to understand.
  • karmac0matic
    karmac0matic Posts: 285
    Make sure that if you're setting your activity level to "active" because you go to the gym, you don't ALSO input your exercise into the log, or if you do, change the calories to be like 1. MFP already determines how much you'd need to eat to lose, maintain, gain, based on your activity level so like I was saying, at "active" it's already including the calories you'd burn at the gym (unless you were working SUPER hard at the gym, in which case I think it's fair to add some)

    At the same time, all the calories burned are grossly overestimated, I'd say about 1/4-1/3 too many. So if you're going to eat them back, only eat between 1/3 and 1/2 of what you burned.
  • nezbit88
    nezbit88 Posts: 37 Member
    I don't see why - I see it as progress, why would you eat more than you initially strive for because you went for a run? It's calories lost (calories in - out - simple). However it could be handy when you want a little more, you earn it then indulge a more than you initially planned without going over your initial count .

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