Need a little help!

hll2465 · July 2014

Hey everyone,
I know this question has been asked before so I apologize for that. I am just really struggling with my exercise calories. I know that MFP and Fitbit averages a bit on the high side. Therefore, I am not sure how many of my exercise calories I should eat back. For instance today with my exercise I have earned 1,763 calories from exercise. I have a lot of weight to lose and feel I can not justify eating a lot of those back but on the other hand I know with exercise you need more fuel. Today I have had 1592 to eat and my net is -171. I was only planning on having another snack tonight but will not be much in the positive before I go to bed. What is a good average? Should I eat 500 of them back? 1,000? Is there a certain net I should reach regardless? I would appreciate any advice you may have. I know everyone has different viewpoints on this so I need some guidance! Thanks!

segovm · July 2014

Lots of different opinions on this but before you deal with those I think you need to figure out if you are really burning that many calories or not. I'm 235 right now and ride my bike at 13 mph for four hours a day and burn about 2000 calories from that. If you are putting out that sort of effort than KUDOS! cuse it's hard work.

There's a good chance that the fitbit is reporting calories that you "burn" just by being alive and MFP already has those calories factored in so it might be double dipping. I don't have a fitbit so I could be wrong, I just know a lot of folks don't do four hours of exercise a day so it sounded a little high was all.

With all that said, I personally don't eat them back unless I am hungry. I don't normally get hungry now that I have my diet and meal times sorted out pretty well.

Good luck!

hll2465 · July 2014

I know that the calories are high for sure! Today I hiked for an hour and ran for 30 mins....I think my problem is that the estimate is high but I am not sure then exactly how many calories I am burning. I also do Zumba frequently which MFP says is over a 1,000 calorie burn. Just not sure how accurate it all is! Thanks for your input!

shiningpotential · July 2014

Lots of different opinions on this but before you deal with those I think you need to figure out if you are really burning that many calories or not. I'm 235 right now and ride my bike at 13 mph for four hours a day and burn about 2000 calories from that. If you are putting out that sort of effort than KUDOS! cuse it's hard work.

There's a good chance that the fitbit is reporting calories that you "burn" just by being alive and MFP already has those calories factored in so it might be double dipping. I don't have a fitbit so I could be wrong, I just know a lot of folks don't do four hours of exercise a day so it sounded a little high was all.

With all that said, I personally don't eat them back unless I am hungry. I don't normally get hungry now that I have my diet and meal times sorted out pretty well.

Good luck!

So how are you calculating your actual calorie burn? Do you use an HRM, or does your bike have one built in?

Hll2465, I totally agree that you really do need to find out a more accurate count on the calories you're burning. I had the EXACT SAME question like a week or two ago, and a lot of people said a heart rate monitor is the way to go, and more specifically, the Polar FT4. I finally bought one from eBay, and it should be arriving in the next few days.

wampahoofus · July 2014

During my weight loss, I rarely ate back my calories except when my exercise was over 800 calories and then I would not eat back all of them. I remember going on a 40 mile bike ride with my son's boy scout troop. It was about 1500 calories burned. I had a nice meal that night!

My advice is to try to keep your calorie intake and burn around the same level for several days and see what happens on the scale. You can then start to do some basic math to see what your base metabolism looks like and how much you are really burning.

1763 is a lot of exercise. I would need to walk about 20 miles to burn that so make sure that makes sense for what you are doing.

segovm · July 2014

So how are you calculating your actual calorie burn? Do you use an HRM, or does your bike have one built in?

Honestly I am fudging the numbers a bit. I use Endomondo to track my rides and it was reporting back crazy high numbers so I went into the app and told it I was 150 lbs instead of 235 lbs and that got the numbers down to about 2000 which based on my totally non-scientific observations of weight loss patterns over the last two months is much closer to reality for me.

For me I just eat when I am hungry and workout as hard as I can every time I have the opportunity so the specifics aren't all that important. The weight will fall when it does and in the meantime I get to spend my days riding around lakes and enjoying nature.

MississippiMama87 · July 2014

Since you're fudging the calories burned, just eat back about half of the calories IF you're hungry. If not, just save them for a rainy day

jkal1979 · July 2014

Do you have it synced to your MFP account?

If so are you adding in any exercise manually to MFP?

If the answer is yes to both you may be double counting your exercise calories. If you are wearing your Fitbit while walking, hiking, running, you are not supposed to add those exercises in manually.

ETA: Here is a link to the main Fitbit group on here. They have a lot of great information to help you get the most out of it. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/1307-fitbit-users

rmullins16 · July 2014

it's funny...I just asked my fitness coach about eating calories back and she said if you want to lose you don't wanna eat what you just burned. im confused, it doesn't make sense to me haha
I think heavy exercise makes us hungrier and small healthy snacks for energy is needed throughout the day

Need a little help!

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