stop eating back burned calories?

Not having much success with weight loss. Has anyone found success with NOT eating back their burned calories?

I never do for the simple fact that it is very difficult to accurately know how many calories you burned. It is all estimated and if you overestimate your burn and eat some, half, most, all of them back then you could be doing it for naught.

Personally burned calories from exercise or hard work are just bonus from eating at a deficit.

Rather than not eating them back at all, which can really leave you under-fueled considering that your original daily goal already has you at a deficit, and burning off more through exercise leaves you with a HUGE deficit - maybe cut back to only eating a portion of them back. MFP is notorious for overestimating calorie burns, so a lot of people choose to err on the side of caution and only eat 50-75% of the burned cals back, and have good success doing so.

Other than that - looking through your diary I see several days where you're well over your goal, which is likely the problem. And I wouldn't log things like cleaning - unless you're hanging wallpaper or moving all your furniture or something out of the ordinary like that, things like housework and your job are regular activities which should be accounted for in your activity level, and already factored into your daily goal. Logging them as exercise and then eating back the cals takes you out of your deficit.

Do your best to log as accurately as possible, weighing and measuring foods (get a food scale if you don't have one, they don't cost much), and consider investing in a decent heart rate monitor (Polar is a very popular choice) with a chest strap to more accurately gauge calorie burns.

Good luck!

AmyRhubarb is wise!

Since MFP doesn't accurately track calorie burn, I don't eat mine back at all.

I went through this too little/too much imbalance after I'd been on MFP for a few months and read a couple posts about starvation mode, exercise cals, etc. I logged my exercise and ate back the majority of the calories of my "estimated burn." I plateaued for many months. It did NOT work for me.

It took me almost four months to finally wake up and say "this is not giving me the results I want to see." So I adjusted things in my settings to start putting me at a more structured deficit. I plugged in my estimated work out time, set my activity level at sedentary (I have a desk job) and MFP put me at 1800 cals/day to lose 1.5lbs a week. I'm 5'11", 24 yo.

I'll be honest, bumping up my daily caloric intake in general was helpful since it helped me not to feel like I was starving and also gave me the energy to do what I do on a daily basis. Yes, I frequently go over my limits by about 200/300 calories which has slowed my progress, however it is PROGRESS so for me personally, I've been happy with it.

It's all about finding what works for you. From this post, it sounds like the current system is not working. Yes, you should eat enough calories to fuel your body and I certainly don't recommend eating anything less than 1200 a day however it is not necessary to eat back your exercise calories (unless you might be seriously lifting/bulking). You won't enter starvation mode. You might lose some muscle tone but you're not going to wind up a bag of bones. Regardless- one solution does not fit all, especially for weight loss.

ETA: Just checked out your diary. I know it feels awesome to think you have all these cals left at the end of the day but I would definitely try to refrain from eating half a pie as your "reward." You're only hurting yourself there. Moderation is key to those treats! (This is coming from someone who eats chocolate every day and is still losing weight.)


TL;DR: You do you, boo. Just make sure you're accurate in your measurements and if the current system is not working, try something else.

I took a peak at your diary as well. Read through the sexypants link. I also suspect that you are overestimating calories burned in exercise (perhaps try eating about half of them for a while and see if that makes a difference). Also, if you don't have one, I highly recommend a kitchen scale to weigh out all of your solid foods. Particularly items such as macaroni salad (I can't remember if it was macaroni or potato), these things are really calorie dense which means if you are off by a fraction, it will wipe out your calorie deficit pretty fast.

I also recommend looking around in the forums for people who are helpful, and send them a friend request. It is nice to send them a note along with the request. Take a peak at their diaries. It's helpful to have support along the way. You can do it! You just need to figure out the right amount for you. :flowerforyou:

I never eat mine back. In fact, I do not even log it here on MFP. I set my own goals because I am eating between 1500-1800 per day and working out 6 days per week (kickboxing cardio and resistance band strength training rotating every other day).

I eat 40% of my cals from carbs, 30% from fat and protein respectively....

TL;DR: You do you, boo.

:laugh: I needed that. thank you.

Whether or not you 'should' eat back your exercise calories depends on your calorie strategy. If you do TDEE you should not eat back your calories, if you do a net calorie approach (MFP default) you should eat back you exercise calories.

I found this list to work well for me:

I don't ever rely on MFP for calories burned. I think it overestimates, which will set you up for failure. I use what the machine tells me I burned. If I walk the dog at night, I still use what the treadmill I use everyday would have calculated. For example, I walk the treadmill some days for 60 minutes. I know that I normally burn 100 cals for every 15 minutes so if I walk a similar pace at home for 60 minutes, then I log approximately 400 calories burned. Who knows if that's exact, but it is closer than what MFP tells me I burned just by putting in my minutes.

I agree that you shouldn't log your everyday activities as exercise because I believe that it already taken into account when you set up your weight loss goal. I do, however, log in yard work, mowing grass, etc that I do once a week. That is considered exercise since it's not an "everyday" activity. Swimming is good to but it doesn't burn that many calories (that I'm aware of) but it is good exercise.

I eat back some just to make sure I NET 1200 calories in a day. That is the minimum that your body needs just for it's normal functions. If you are eating less than that, eventually your body will not lose weight because it wants to hold on to the extra fat for energy. It's called "starvation mode"

I agree that you are most likely overestimating your calorie burns from exercise. What exercises are you doing, and for how long?

I'd have a hard time burning more than 500 calories in an hour of non-stop circuit training. A burn of closer to 1400 calories in a day seems like a lot to me. I actually had a stall in my weight loss last August because I was doing a lot of bike riding, and MFP was way too generous in calculating my calorie burns for that activity. I think it gave me upwards of 600 calories for an hour of biking, and although it was a good workout with a fair amount of hills, there was also a lot of down time, and I simply wasn't burning that much. For awhile, I ate back all of those calories, but the scale didn't budge. Once I figured out that I probably wasn't burning as many calories as I thought I was and started eating just a portion of those calories back, things started moving again.

You may benefit from reading the sexypants link, calculating your TDEE, and including regular exercise as part of your normal daily activity rather than eating those exercise calories back as you burn them.

I'm all for kickboxing, but 45 minutes will not burn 629 calories when you only have 18 lbs to lose. Hubby can burn that much running for 45 minutes but he weighs 220 lbs and is a man.

Wherever you're getting your burn numbers, it's very inflated as suggested above. So I think TDEE will be a better fit for you.

Add up the exercise hours of your average week and enter your stats here: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

Then set your calorie goal to that number and eat that much every day (no adding exercise calories as they already estimated it for you). That's it, attempt to meet your exercise goal each week. As long as you stay in the range you should start losing.

I would also recommend a kitchen scale to make sure your food logging is accurate.

I tend to assume that my food diary is not 100% accurate, even though I do weigh everything. In that assumption, i also assume that any calories burned during exercise should cancel out any underestimates of food calorie I eat. So i log my exercise, but i don't eat back my calories. Everything then balances out in the end that way.

That being said, if i go over my calorie goal but stay under my calorie goal + exercise calories burn, i don't really feel guilty about that either. Its really just about paying attention to what your body is telling you based on your results.