Do you eat your exercise calories?
annalisbeth74
Posts: 328 Member
I've just recently signed up after turning 40 and I'm wondering: Do you eat your exercise calories or not?
I never did in the past on WW, but I also never worked out with any regularity either. Now I'm older, and I haven't worked out in over a year due to achilles tendonitis, so I'm slowly adding exercise back in, but I can't decide whether to eat those extra calories or not. Do you all eat your exercise calories every day, some days, or not at all?
Thanks!
I never did in the past on WW, but I also never worked out with any regularity either. Now I'm older, and I haven't worked out in over a year due to achilles tendonitis, so I'm slowly adding exercise back in, but I can't decide whether to eat those extra calories or not. Do you all eat your exercise calories every day, some days, or not at all?
Thanks!
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Replies
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For me, yes. I eat back 75-85% (guesstimate) of my calories. First, I don't necessarily need to lose a lot of weight. Second, road riding for hours and hours on end requires fuel. If I didn't eat back what I've burned, I wouldn't be physically able to keep up with my riding. There has to be gas in the tank, and the only way to get that is to eat.
But that's just me. :bigsmile:0 -
It depends on the day and how much I exercise. When I ride long, I eat back most of my calories. When I do average workouts 60-90 minutes, I typically eat back about half the calories. I usually go by hunger and let that dictate what I eat back. Don't eat them for the sake of eating them.0
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There is a lot of back on forth on this topic in the forms and most times the answer you get will depend on who you ask. For me I choose to try to eat the calories back. I am not always able to just due to the amount I burn in a long run and how late in the day it is. For me it is a case of trying to keep my body out of starvation mode, and the other is I am training for a marathon so I need the extra calories to fuel my body for the training. Hope this helps.0
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Eating them back didn't work out very well for me but if I were doing more intense workouts I would.0
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I don't. In fact I play a little head game with myself where I try to have MFP's outrageous estimates of my calories burned in exercise and my caloric intake for the day as close to net as possible.0
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Okay, "outrageous estimates" seems to be the key here. I did an hour's worth of yard work this morning and mfp told me it was 386 or something. Granted, it was pretty vigorous, but it didn't seem like 386 calories worth of vigorous. I guess I'll start with eating some of them back depending on the activity.
Thanks for your help!0 -
Right now I am not eating any of my exercise extra calories but that is because I have a lot of weight to lose and am not exercising to my max capacity. When I start to workout to a higher intensity then I plan to eat about 25-30 percent of them.0
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OP, just for giggles, put in a three hour round of golf, riding in an electric cart. That was when I realized that MFP could not be relied on for accuracy. If MFP was accurate, then why are there so many overweight golfers at my course. They must be on the all double quarter pounder all the time diet to make up for all those calories burned riding around in carts. LOL
MFP is a tool nothing more. A person has to learn to use any tool properly for it to be useful. A hammer does absolutely no good if you don't know how to swing it. And the better you learn to swing it, the more useful it gets.
I look at what MFP claims I am taking in and expending and track that against whether or not the scale is moving. The exercise numbers themselves are arbitrary to me (especially since I don't eat any of them back), it is just a scale. May as well be in tens of millions, all you have to know is where on that scale is "your" sweet spot and get yourself there somehow.0 -
I mostly do because I have trouble keeping to the 1200 calorie limit, but I have heard it isn't an even match so try to have at least some leftover each day.0
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OP, just for giggles, put in a three hour round of golf, riding in an electric cart. That was when I realized that MFP could not be relied on for accuracy. If MFP was accurate, then why are there so many overweight golfers at my course. They must be on the all double quarter pounder all the time diet to make up for all those calories burned riding around in carts. LOL
MFP is a tool nothing more. A person has to learn to use any tool properly for it to be useful. A hammer does absolutely no good if you don't know how to swing it. And the better you learn to swing it, the more useful it gets.
I look at what MFP claims I am taking in and expending and track that against whether or not the scale is moving. The exercise numbers themselves are arbitrary to me (especially since I don't eat any of them back), it is just a scale. May as well be in tens of millions, all you have to know is where on that scale is "your" sweet spot and get yourself there somehow.
You make a great point! Between MFP and Map My Ride, I have no clue what my actual calories I burn are. My last two bike rides Map My Ride said I burned over 1000 calories.....granted I'm pedaling well, but I guesstimate I burned maybe 400-500 calories. I try not to eat back my calories, but some days I'm just hungrier than others.
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I tried to put the calories back prior when I used MFP and it did NOT work, this time it is working for me to just watch my calories, not to exceed 1200 and now the weight is slowly but surely coming down. I do tai chi and belly dancing but only once a week classes so that to me is not enough. My goal is to up my exercise. I have yet to find an exercise I enjoy AT ALL when it comes to cardio errrgggg but I am going to work on that aspect now. I eat as much whole foods as I can and I adjusted my MFP to make my proteins a bigger part of the pie than sugar and carbs. I limit my intake of anything processed and avoid it totally 80% of the time. This works for me. I have problems with hunger at bed time so for me I will eat anything that is 60 calories or under and it never hurts my weight loss. I mean I LOVE cucumbers and they are only 25 calories and I am full on one whole cucumber
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I do eat them. I have trouble sticking to 1200 calories and need the 200 calories or so my exercise gives me. I am tracking activity on a fit bit.0
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I eat some back some days, none some other days, and all on the days in between...just depends on how hungry I am really.
I listen to my body, stick to or below my calorie limit of 1300 (just got back on the wagon and giving my body a bit of a shock before getting back up to 1400 in a week or so), and make sure I have room for ice cream every day regardless.
:happy:0 -
No, I don't eat mine back. I don't work outside the home so I am not as active as most people except for the exercise I do. That is only 2 miles of walking and maybe some step ups for about 15 minutes. I don't count normal daily activities in my calories burned either. I found if I eat mine back, which I did in the beginning, it wasn't working for me.0
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I never do. For me, it's like the deposit of money in a savings account. I don't want to use it unless I absolutely have too.0
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I eat some of them back but it just depends on the day. If it is a vigorous workout day which is 3-4 times a week then I definitely eat more of them back because I am hungry. Very rarely do I go to bed with no calories left.0
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My doctor said not to, and most of the time I don't.
That being said, I'm also not too upset if I go over my calorie goal by 50 cal once in a while.
And if I'm really hungry at the end of the day, despite having eaten all I'm "allowed" to, I'll have 1/3 to 1/2 of what the machine at the gym says I burned (not MFP, because it overestimates).0 -
It really depends on how I feel that day. Most of the time I use some of my calories I earn from exercise.0
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I don't eat them back. I bank them for the weekend so I can eat a little extra and have a few drinks0
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I do eat my exercise calories...it is what motivates me to exercise! It works for me! 0
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I try not to eat back most of them but if burn 500-600 calories I might eat 200 or so extra calories.0
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I don't use the site estimate, I go off my garmin which gives me a better guess by using my weight, gps and heart rate monitor. I'm trying to keep it balanced over the week rather than eating back a long runs calories in one day. It's the day before that I'd need to eat them really or I just get 'empty legs'. Eating back lets me put my weekly loss goal at 2lb whilst still being able to eat pretty normally.0
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As a general rule, no, I don't eat my exercise calories. I'm a binge eater (recovering) and if I get overwhelmed, those exercise calories give me a buffer that I can use to indulge a little a stave off a major attack.0
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I do, I have 1250 allowed which is not enough to make my belly happy all day. I do enter my own burn numbers for exercise, although they are basically guesstimates based off of what the machines used to tell me when I went to the gym (I do DVDs now). My numbers are usually about 65% of the MFP numbers.0
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I have to because if I didn't I was be way to skinny. I already have a fast matabalism so I don't gain weight by eating them. I don't mind because I love to eat anyway. I guess it just depends on the person. You have to keep track and if you seem to be gaining then maybe try cutting back.0
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I seem to be eating at least some of mine back every day, as I am quite hungry and having trouble getting under the calorie goal. I just track my steps with a Fitbit and do not count my weight lifting, so I believe I am still ahead.
For awhile, I believed the MFP estimates of exercise calories and was eating them all back. I've lost 5 inches but only 1 pound, so clearly that wasn't working for me! (Oops...I'm figuring things out and not hurrying myself.)0 -
Like many people are saying, I try to mostly not eat them back and have a deficit most days. It is hard to stick to 1200 so even on good days it creeps up to 1300-1400 but with exercise I'm still at a few hundred calories deficit. I've been doing it for a couple of months and have lost a pound a week. I like to save the extra calories up for "special" days (read upcoming holidays) so those days don't make much of a difference on the scale when they inevitably happen. I do think it depends how much you exercise though. I have a fitbit and like it much better for calorie burn data than MFP and they sink nicely.0
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No, I don't. It's a trick that can leave so discouraged that you quit trying.
You are actually yo-yoing yourself. Logically if you work them off and eat them back (regularly) why did you workout anyway? It's just delaying yet again your INEVITABLE weight loss. Now, occasionally eating them back is cool, but this is all my personal opinion. 0
