To eat the burned calories or not?!

I personally don't eat my calories burned back when I'm trying to lose. For me, that's maintaining. Personal choice though I think. I lost 20 lbs that way.

I eat them back if I'm hungry, don't if I'm not.

Are you sure you're burning 700? That seems like an awful lot: I only get that if I run 6 miles and I only hit it twice.

abakaska wrote: »

iam doing 5% incline at 3.5 on a treadmill 90mins

What is telling you you are burning 700? That is an awful high number for walking 3.5mph

abakaska wrote: »

The treadmill...

Those are really inflated and inaccurate cal burns. If you're going to eat them back, eat half. You will be eating too many if you eat 700.

1 - The way this tool is designed is that you get a calorie goal as per your stats and the activity level you told this calculator along with your desired rate of loss...this calculator calculates a calorie goal that is a deficit from your maintenance level of calories WITHOUT exercise...meaning, you just eat to that goal (consistently and accurately) and you will lose weight. Exercise is an activity that needs to be accounted for though...with MFP, you do that on the *kitten* end of the calculation when you log it and get those calories to eat back. Other calculators include such an estimate upfront in your calculation...so you are in fact eating those calories, but they're just already included in your initial goal.

2 - Does 1200 - 700 = 500 net calories per day even sound remotely healthy or good for you? You're giving your body very little to work with to perform your other daily functions, not to mention the mere act of existing and your heart pumping, lungs working, etc.

3 - It is likely that your burn is inflated...I don't know anybody who burns 700 calories walking for 90 minutes...my guess would be more like 400 or so tops.

5 - This tool is designed for you to eat back burned calories, but that estimation is a difficult thing and you need to make some kind of an allowance for that inherent error.

Most of the time I don't eat back my calories from my treadmill. I have the same problem that it over inflates the amount of calorie burn. I usually subtract at least 200 calories from the treadmill amount that it tells me and I don't log the 10 min trainer videos I do at all. The reason I don't eat the calories back is because I am not hungry though. Listen to your body and if you are hungry and are exercising, then eat some back to fuel the exercise. I agree with cwolfman13 that 500 net calories isn't much left.

I sometimes eat back half, sometimes none at all. I rarely eat all of them back. I feel MFP overestimates. That's just my personal feeling from having been un-lazy enough a few times to calculate energy expenditure myself and comparing that to MFP's calculations.

Personally, though, if I were you, I'd eat them back for a couple of weeks. See what your weight does. If you don't start losing, then you can start reducing how many you can eat back until you arrive at an approximate for you.

abakaska wrote: »

I guess walking uphill doesn't count on a treadmill? ?

Oh it definitely counts! It just might not be burning 700 calories. I use a heart rate monitor during workouts and burn about 750 calories in 90 minutes going as hard as I can on the elliptical, though I weigh less than you. Personally, I eat back some of my exercise calories if I'm hungry, but often don't since I use a weekly average and figure I might need those extra cals on the weekend for a few glasses of wine and a nice meal!

If I were you I would log half those machine calories as they sound pretty high, and eat them or not depending on your hunger and your plans throughout the week.

I agree with the others 700 calories for a long walk has to be an over- estimation. There are lots of calorie calculators out there and I just did one that gave me 300 as an estimation for your calories burned for that activity.

I also think 1200 calories seems low for someone of your current height and weight. I would consider eating some of them back occasionally. Maybe 200-300 but not every time. I find that mixing up both my eating and my workouts helps me lose.

I eat some of mine back, just like everyone else here says, in case of miscalculations atleast I have some buffer for what I already ate or didn't count. I'm also not hungry afterwards, I drink my glass of water and go straight to bed. I work out at night!

All of the comments about the OPs burn are fair - it might be an overestimate but the one piece of the puzzle that's missing is that burn depends on all sorts of factors and simple physics says that the most important one is weight.

If person A weighs twice what person B weighs then person A's burn will be roughly double person B's for the same exercise (assuming we're talking exercise that involves moving the whole body like walking).