Eating you calories burned: do or do not?

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  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    2012 Thread, they ate them already!
  • Yasmine91
    Yasmine91 Posts: 599 Member
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    I can't, I don't lose weight if I do. I think what you should do is a little trial and error, see how your body reacts to it x
  • Carbsmakefat
    Carbsmakefat Posts: 89 Member
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    Calories are a very strange little thing. I've been researching how they are measured and am finding the whole counting calories at all very pointless. I exercise for the general Heath benifts, not to fool myself into thinking I can eat more.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    i dont deliberately eat them back, no. If I'm hungry I'll eat, or if I had a crazy high calorie meal, i might exercise a little more to help compensate and count that, but as far as day to day habits go, not really.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    I'm guessing most nutritionists just assume that you're not logging properly (a lot of people don't), so eating exercise calories might undo any deficit you have. But technically, you're supposed to, or it makes the deficit too large.

    It depends also on your deficit anyway... If you're set at 1 pound a week but have a lot to lose, it's not a huge deal if you don't. It gets more of a problem when you don't have much to lose, have a big deficit, and don't eat your calories back (like a lot of the people who eat 1200 calories when they have 10 pounds to lose) - then it's unhealthy and you're more likely to lose muscle.

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    Francl27 wrote: »
    I'm guessing most nutritionists just assume that you're not logging properly (a lot of people don't), so eating exercise calories might undo any deficit you have. But technically, you're supposed to, or it makes the deficit too large.

    It depends also on your deficit anyway... If you're set at 1 pound a week but have a lot to lose, it's not a huge deal if you don't. It gets more of a problem when you don't have much to lose, have a big deficit, and don't eat your calories back (like a lot of the people who eat 1200 calories when they have 10 pounds to lose) - then it's unhealthy and you're more likely to lose muscle.

    Exactly this.

    I understand why nutritionists may feel like they should err on the side of assuming people will log badly, but as someone who has mostly logged very carefully (and thus gotten the results predicted while eating exercise calories) that assumption seems rather insulting and condescending to me. This is related to why I'd never want to go to a nutritionist anyway, though, as I think it's kind of ridiculous to think that you need help with a basic human function like what to eat unless you do have a medical condition that requires a specific diet.

    I think it's sensible to try to reduce calories to lose a lb a week and increase exercise for a second lb (if you have lots to lose), and MFP doesn't really let you approach it that way, so I think a good way to get around that is ask for a lb/week goal and don't eat back exercise. But that doesn't mean that you should eat 1200 (which is where a really high percentage of women end up with the MFP method if they ask for 2 lbs/week or even 1.5 lbs/week) and then exercise on top of that without eating more. If you log right, that's too aggressive. If you don't log right, I think it's better to fix your logging than have a screwed up idea of what your maintenance calories are.

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