Eatting back calories?

There are two schools of thought on exercise calories. Those who base their deficit off of their TDEE or total daily energy expenditure do not eat back exercise calories. Their exercise is taken into consideration when estimating their TDEE. Those who use the goal MFP sets DO eat back their exercise calories. This is because MFP sets your goal based on the fact that you will exercise, and you will create a bigger deficit so you can allow for eating more calories while still maintaining a deficit. Both methods work. The reason why you would not want to use the MFP method and NOT eat back your exercise calories is that it will likely create a very large deficit. There are several reasons why you might not want a very large deficit. For some it may cause them to be hungry all the time. Others might find that after a few weeks/months, keeping such a steep deficit is too difficult and it leads them to burn out or binge.

There are obvious benefits of a large deficit such as quicker weight loss and less overall time you actually need to maintain the deficit and a lot of new research indicating that those who lose weight quickly are more likely too keep it off. In the end you can make arguments for small, moderate, and extreme caloric deficits. They all have pro's and they all have cons. In my opinion a moderate deficit will probably be the best choice for most people but this is purely my opinion and based only on my own anecdotal experience and observations. I would experiment and see which method works best for you.

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

Because the winner here, eats the most while still losing weight.

This is really key for me! I strive to find the balance where I can eat the most amount of food in a day I possibly can, while maintaining a 1.5lb per week weight loss. I'm there, but in about another 5lbs, I'll be striving for 1lb per week, so it will take a few weeks to find the balance again.

If you do a significant amount of exercise you really need to take that into account when working out your calorie balance.
Whether TDEE method (estimating an average amount in advance) or MFP (eating back estimated exercise calories after the event) is down to personal preference.
As my daily calorie burns vary enormously (zero to 3000 - I cycle) the MFP method suits me best and worked perfectly both during weight loss and now maintaining.

I use MFPs calories and I don't eat back any of my exercise calories ever. I'm too afraid to gain weight by doing so.

On top of the good advice already given here, remember that calories are fuel. If we're talking about a small calorie burn with slight exercise, its probably not a big deal to add back extra calories. But I can't imagine putting my body through, for example, a 5 mile run or an hour on the elliptical without giving it more fuel to keep going.

My doctor & dietician told me not to eat exercise calories because of 2 things:
1 - most people underestimate what they eat
2 - most machines (including MFP) overestimate calories burned

Those pretty much cancel each other out for most people.
Once in a while I'll eat back part of my exercise calories if I'm really hungry, but it's not an everyday thing.

They also told me to eat 10x my healthy goal weight in calories, which I did for months until I hit a plateau, then I dropped another 50-100 cal at a time so I'd start losing again. Right now I'm aiming for 165 lb (no less than 150) and 1400 cal.

Completely off topic, but how do you put the little tracker in your signature? (MKEgal)

MaryCS62 wrote: »

Completely off topic, but how do you put the little tracker in your signature? (MKEgal)

You have to manually add it. It used to be automatic and they might change it back again, who knows. I liked it, but not enough to manually add it to my posts.