An objective look at eating "exercise calories"

I agree with your post for "moderatly fit" people, like you've said. I see a lot of "obese folks" replying here though, do you think you can give us your advice for someone who is obese?

Sure.

Let me touch on some of your points. I think that will clear up a lot of my beliefs about obese folks who are dieting.

I can totally wrap my head around eating back exercise calories when you're close to a healthy weight, but when you've got 70, 80, 200lbs to lose, it just doesn't make sense.

I'd reread the original post.

The weight of an individual doesn't dictate whether or not eating back calories expended during exercise makes sense or not. The total energy balance picture is what drives the sense of it or not. Regardless of your weight, if the deficit established from food and exercise expenditure together throw you in "too large" of a deficit, it'd make sense to eat back some or all of your exercise calories or to reduce some of the exercise volume.

What's "too large"?

It depends on the person and it's tough to overlay rigid boundaries here. If I had to though, I'd say 25-35% off of maintenance would be the sweet spot for non-obese folks in most circumstances and 25-50% off of maintenance for obese folks in most circumstances.

Now here's something else to think about.

Most obese folks do not have the capacity to expend large amounts of calories via exercise. Which is why you see all of these articles in notable publications claiming stuff like, "exercise doesn't work for fat loss." Ironically, the people who need help controlling energy balance the most are the ones who don't have the physical and mental capacities to expend a lot via exercise. And the people who don't need help in the energy balance department are typically the ones who can expend the most energy due to their high level of fitness.

You said, Obese people can run much larger deficits. I think the biggest confusion on this site comes from those who don't understand this point.

For example. I am 5' 3", 216lbs, eating 1200 calories a day and doing a pretty intense workout routine with my trainer 3 days a week, and a mix of strength training/cardio classes on the other 3-4days. On MFP, I get "yelled" at (for lack of a better term) when I don't eat back my exercise calories. Now, I don't starve myself, I'm not hungry, or sluggish, tired, miserable or anything like that... And, if I'm at 1200 and I'm hungry after a workout, you bet your bottom dollar I'm gonna eat/drink something. In my mind there is no reason to be eating back any of my calories though.

The focus on exercise calories is uncalled for in my opinion.

Rather, there should be a focus other factors. Namely, let it be known that the stress response applies to all of us. While our bodies will resist large deficits more when we're lean compared to when we're fat.... extreme approaches will still yield more significant impacts on our capacities to manage stress. No matter how you slice it, if you outpace your ability to manage stress, crappy stuff can and will happen.

You can look at it like obese folks how a larger stress management capacity to deal with energy deficits, and in a way, they do. However, that doesn't mean a capacity doesn't exist.

Also, the larger the deficit and the fewer calories you eat, the higher the chances of providing your body inadequate amounts of nutrition. Remember, it's not solely about calories. It's about nutritional requirements as well for health, physique, performance, etc. The higher your energy output, the higher the need for nutritional reinforcements. Which is why the starve and crush yourself with exercise approach generally doesn't last very long. Longer for obese folks, but still, not a permanent solution.

So the lower you go in calories, the more critical food selection becomes to assure you're covering your bases in the nutritional requirements department. When you're eating more, requirements are more likely to be met simply due to the higher volume of various foods being eaten.

Because of this, and the need for a more rigid food selection, the starve and crush approach typically backfires not only for lean people, but also obese people. It's just for obese folks, it's more often psychologically related than physiologically.

Which is why I tend to tell people that if what they're currently doing isn't something they can see themselves sticking with in some form or fashion for the remainder of their lives... well guess what... the results these methods will provide aren't going to stick either.

I know you said you weren't going into it today, but in your opinion, what should obese people (in general, I know this isn't one size fits all) be doing? Eating back or not eating back? I think it's important for us to hear what the difference is and not assume this post was meant for everyone no matter their weight..

Again, it has nothing at all to do with eating or not eating back your exercise calories. It has to do with deep you're tapping into your capacity to deal with stress. Think of it as a bucket. Each bit of stress you apply to your body adds some water to the bucket. The bucket represents your stress management capacity. Once it's full, if you let it overflow, stuff will eventually backfire. The steeper you take your deficit, the greater the volume of water you place in your bucket. The more intense and voluminously you exercise, the greater the volume of water you place in your bucket.

Which is why I'm not a fan of prepackaged diets and exercise programs. In my opinion, how many calories you're consuming and how much you're exercising should vary based on how much stress management reserves you have. And there's no science to this. But look at it like this. If I know my client has been dealing with a lot of stress at work, not eating as well as usual, and having trouble sleeping... I know that these things are eating up some of the stress capacity. A prepackaged program would have him do X exercises for Y volumes and intensities regardless, where I, on the other hand, would modify things accordingly to manage the overall stress environment.

I mean, if eating back your exercise calories keeps you from overflowing your bucket, than it's meaningful for that given person in that given situation. But we can't prescribe rules for all obese people whether they should be eating them back or not - just like we can't for leaner folks. And given the fact that *most* obese folks simply can't expend all that much energy via exercise, we're really talking about a small component of the stress capacity.

I've worked with many obese folks over the years and my approach is never the same for each. Some fair better on steeper deficits. Some do not. The steepest I'll generally take them, as noted above, is 50% of maintenance calories. And most obese folks seem shocked to know what their true maintenance is. When I tell them it's 3500 or 5000+ they say I'm crazy and don't believe me. Mind you, we're talking about 300-400+ lb people.

As a culture, we're so brainwashed into low calorie thinking that when I tell my 400 lb client that it's perfectly okay to eat 2500 calories, she or he is screaming that's way too much. They don't factor in the metabolic cost that being that size entails.

And on the exercise front, I keep things very simple. I don't like high intensity modalities until I've conditioning at a point where I believe it's safe and even then, I avoid all high impact stuff. The conditioning side of things might start out with 2-3 sessions of structured "cardio" per week and as many walking sessions as they can fit in.

I'll also have them weight train too, but it's almost always of the circuit training type for various reasons we won't get into here.

I feel like I'm rambling a bit and I don't feel this is an organized collection of my thoughts on the matter at all. Maybe I'll get around to writing an article about this shortly.

If I had to sum it up though, I'd say when it comes to obese clients, fat loss is much easier. Given their large calorie allotments, there's so much more "wiggle room," which is one of the reasons why I cut calories by a greater relative percentage from maintenance. Even if they mess up, there's such a long way to maintenance that as long as they're not gorging themselves, it's unlikely they'll stall their fat loss.

Pretty much everything works for the obese client. I've my own strategies, but there are many ways of going about it and with all of them, there's a lot less concern about managing the finer nuances. It's more a matter of managing the mental side of things and keeping them positive, consistent, happy, etc.

I just stumbled upon this thread while trying to figure out the whole goal calories, exercise calories and net calories but still losing. I'm in my first week of being on this site and for the first time in my life counting calories of what I put in my mouth. It's been a learning curve to say the least but am encouraged that this is something I can see myself doing for the rest of my life (once I get the hang of it).

I want to thank you for posting this as this is the simpliest and most understandable post I've found on this topic. I do have one question though, you had mentioned back a ways about post training eating. Would you recommend a balanced smaller meal of protein, veggies, carb or protein, veggie or protein? and why please.

Thanks
Liz

If you're just starting out, I wouldn't worry too much about post workout nutrition. In fact, I could make an argument that pre-workout nutrition is more important. But the general idea is that after a workout (especially weight training or high intensity cardio) the tissues are most sensitive to partition calories favorably. Which is just a fancy way of saying that body composition can be enhanced.

But again, it's hair splitting in my opinion. If you're hitting your net calories and nutrient targets, that's the majority of the battle.

If you're going to sweat the small stuff though, ideally your post workout meal would include protein and carbohydrates. The former promotes protein synthesis and the latter inhibits protein breakdown.

You're welcome!