Do you eat the calories you burned working out?

Yes absolutely otherwise I would be never be able to stick with the 1200 I was given. I also store up my left over calories each day (if any left) for a Saturday night, I just work on the average being correct. I do not eat under 1200 on any day though I just store the exercise ones.

Has worked for me when losing or maintaning now for two years. Good luck.

If you follow MFP, then you want to eat at least some of them back. MFP sets you up with a deficit so that you could lose weight without exercise. When you exercise, your body needs more fuel. An example would be:

-500 calories a day per 1lb per week loss
1810 calories burned per day without exercise
burn 300 calories with exercise
2110 calories burned with exercise
1610 calories to lose 1lb per week with the exercise burn of 300
if you didn't eat the calories though, your deficit would be increased to 800

I have to watch and make sure I eat enough. If my deficit becomes to large I have a very hard time doing high intensity workouts. The effects aren't immediately noticeable, but a couple weeks of it and I feel like crap.

My guess is that since your training for a marathon, you will probably want to eat some of them back to provide the fuel you need for those training sessions.

No, I already ate them once, that is why I need to work out!

I've actually skipped eating them on a regular basis and when I do I find I get more weight loss stalls. I calculate my weight x.63 then x that per mile of running and try to eat up to 1800 calls a day. On some runs I still bank 200-400 a day.

harat101 wrote: »

I have only been using this app for a week and a half and I just started my half marathon training schedule (24 weeks long). My activity level is set to sedantary, and then I log my cardio exercise. I haven't been eating any of my exercise points. I have done a half marathon a couple times before so I understand I need to fuel my body properly. However I have done weight watchers before and I lost like 5lbs the first week! Then this first week now I've only lost 0.5lbs. What gives? That's why I was afraid to eat my exercise points. Thanks for the feedback everyone! I think I will eat some but not all of my calories burned from working out.

How accurate are your entries? Do you weigh and measure everything? Do you log everything (there was a thread just today where someone just realized that cooking oils have a lot of calories and they weren't logging them)?

It's probably not a huge issue now depending on what your workouts look like...but it will be a much bigger issue down the road when you really start logging the miles. I don't run (anymore), but I'm an endurance rider and I can rack up a good 1,500+ calorie burn on a 50 mile training ride, if I didn't make up for that I would have an incredibly difficult time recovering.

Obviously if you're training for a marathon, you're not sedentary...so you do have to account for that activity somewhere. Most people make some kind of an allowance for error in their exercise burn, but it's important to your training that you do eat a good chunk of those calories back.

harat101 wrote: »

I'm measuring everything! Literally the 1/2 TBS of honey that I put in my tea is measured and logged. I just googled the TDEE method and I understand why that makes sense. Also, my dad rides and he burns so many calories! But anyways, I figured if I wasn't losing a lb a week but I was staying under calorie goal, then maybe my calorie goal was too high..? But I will try eating some of my exercise calories. It's only been a week and a half, I suppose my body needs time to adjust to my new caloric intake and working out.

Give it more than a week. When I was losing I had weeks with bigger losses, weeks with smaller losses, weeks with no losses and even week with small gains...in the end, it averaged out to about 1 Lb per week, but it wasn't exactly that every week.

Keep in mind also that if you just started back to running then you could be retaining fluids as is typical when you start a new exercise regimen or increase intensity...this can mask losses on the scale.

Also, most people I know who did WW were at a more aggressive cut than they realized because they were counting points and not calories...you may not be making an apples to apples comparison in RE to your energy deficit.

I try my hardest to stick to the 1200 calorie goal that is set for me. I log my exercise and if (more like when) I ever go over my 1200 calories, it acts like a buffer so that I'm not in the negative. But I also don't just think that exercise = more calories to eat. It's been working for me; lost about 1 lbs per week and now I'm 16 lbs down