why eat back exercise calories?

Be careful eating back calories if you are relying on MFP's estimates on how many calories you burn. If you have a relatively active count from a heart rate monitor, or bodybugg, or something similar that's one thing. But from an online calculator estimate it's another.

What I mean is, if you use MFP and just enter in 'jogging' and '45 minutes', the number it spits out may be wildly incorrect. If it's higher than what you actually burned, then you eat all those calories, you are not going to have your target deficit. Make sense?

Anyway, my thought on eating back calories is pretty simple. I'm not going to eat them all back, but I'll eat some of them back (or maybe even all of them) if I'm hungry. But, regardless of how many calories I've burned...if I'm not hungry, I'm not going to eat....because doing so makes me feel like crap. That last part is really my final opinion on the subject, to be honest. Everyone is right, you already build in a calorie deficit so you dont actually HAVE to burn more than that....slow and steady wins the weight loss race. It just doesnt work for me if I'm not hungry.

edit: forgot to add. I wrestled from 5 years old until 25. Highschool, then college, then briefly after when I thought I was good enough to continue to the olympics in Greco (hah, I wasnt! Mike Foy was mean...). Anyway, back then I would stay @ around 178 lbs, and generally right around or less than 7% bodyfat. There's no way in hell I could have ever eaten all my exercise calories back if I'd have wanted to; but I'd have never wanted to because < 180 lbs is just NOT a natural weight for me. I did not train that hard just to get in shape, I trained that hard because I required that much of a calorie deficit to maintain and stay in a certain weight class. In college it was basically to stay out of heavyweight (this was before they added the 220lb class in folkstyle), in AAU it was to stay at 180.5. Then once the season was over I'd go right back to ~210 lbs for 4 or 5 months, then start cutting again to get down to the proper weight class.

Anyway, not saying thats right (its quite incorrect and incredibly unhealthy, I know)...but that's the mindset I have. Burn more calories to lose weight.

Ok. So, I have been on MFP Aug 29th of last year and in that time I have lost 36lbs, eating a base of 1200 and my exercise calories. I put it that way because it varies from day to day as to how many calories I burn.

But I have been on a horrid plateau for the last two months and I have not lost a dany ounce.....Granted I have not gained any weight, but hell I want to lose so much more. So I joined a gym and I have been working out with a trainer. He has adviced me to eat 1500 calories per day period and not to track calories burned or to eat them back. Under pressure from him and my spousal unit I am trying this for 2 weeks. I am almost one week in and I FEEL LIKE CRAP. I have NO energy. I am exhausted. I can't focus.

And yes purhaps I will lose weight as my body is probably eating away at its fat stores, but hell I would rather live in a plateau state then live like this. Damn I feel horrible.

My nutrionist said that if you want to keep the weight you are now you eat back your exercise calories, but if your trying to lose you dont eat them back.. another thing no matter how much strength training or walking you , if you dont add cardio you wont lose as much weight..

Wrong, this only makes sense if you are eating maintenance calories. MFP gives you a deficit to lose your goal amount of weight, in order to lose that goal amount you MUST eat your exercise calories. It is all based on math by giving you a caloric deficit that will achieve your goal.

Not eating them may lead you to burn muscle, instead of fat, for fuel. Your metabolism may slow down, lack of energy as the more you workout the more fuel you need.

Think of a car. sitting in the driveway you don't burn much (evaporation) going slow burns less gas/km than going fast (think of this as normal daily activity) need some fuel, now if you drive further and faster (exercise) you will require more fuel.

Thank you for responding to this. I see alot of people make this same statement. This would be true for someone that did not adjust their diet. But for us on MFP the diet has been adjusted already. I feel like people fail to mention the calorie deficit they are already on when talking to nutritionists/dieticians/phyical trainers/etc.

My nutrionist said that if you want to keep the weight you are now you eat back your exercise calories, but if your trying to lose you dont eat them back.. another thing no matter how much strength training or walking you , if you dont add cardio you wont lose as much weight..

Wrong, this only makes sense if you are eating maintenance calories. MFP gives you a deficit to lose your goal amount of weight, in order to lose that goal amount you MUST eat your exercise calories. It is all based on math by giving you a caloric deficit that will achieve your goal.

Not eating them may lead you to burn muscle, instead of fat, for fuel. Your metabolism may slow down, lack of energy as the more you workout the more fuel you need.

Think of a car. sitting in the driveway you don't burn much (evaporation) going slow burns less gas/km than going fast (think of this as normal daily activity) need some fuel, now if you drive further and faster (exercise) you will require more fuel.

Thank you for responding to this. I see alot of people make this same statement. This would be true for someone that did not adjust their diet. But for us on MFP the diet has been adjusted already. I feel like people fail to mention the calorie deficit they are already on when talking to nutritionists/dieticians/phyical trainers/etc.

So whens the last time any of yall be to a nutrionist ? yes i told her about this website and she agreed that it was a great website.. But far as me wanting to lose weight why would I eat back what i just burnt off? It makes no sense.. You go with how your body feels.

It wont actually let me change my goal to lose more than 2 lbs per week.

Can someone please explain why I would eat back exercise calories? Seems like there's no point in exercising if I just eat the calories back. I am currently eating about 1300 per day. Some days, like on weekends I go up to 1400 - 1600. How do I prevent going into starvation mode, but still lose weight? I don't want to eat too much or too little. My weight loss has been less than a pound a week, even though I have went from sitting on the couch all night and at my desk all day and not caring what I ate to eating 1300 calories and working out 5-6 days a week. aghhh

Okay... Assume that all of the solid advice for *healthy* weight loss is to be ignored...for now. I am not encouraging this by any means, but go ahead and try not eating them back if you think it's counterproductive. I'll tell you from experience that NOT eating them back IS counterproductive, but if you want to learn for yourself, I'll be the first to point you in the right direction for failure.

Constantly not eating them back creates an exercise bulimic disorder, where you will be having a massive calorie deficit each day. You say you don't want to hit "starvation mode", well, mathematically, you will be. It's inevitable. Eating 1200 calories and burning off 600, for example, will only give you 600 calories for that day. Do it again, and you'll have had only 1200 calories in 2 days. Do it again, and so on and so forth. By the end of the week you'll have accumulated so many negative calories that your body will do what its supposed to do... and think that it IS starving. Therefore it will eat away at your muscles and fat and anything else it can use for fuel.

Any food that you put into your body will be held onto for as long as it possibly can and it will convert it immediately for storage in the form of fat. You will then at that point become "skinny fat," where you may be low in weight, but absolutely emaciated and possibly still have flab. Great. You will have successfully attained your goal weight in the worst way possible to your health.

So, that's what the future of not eating your exercise calories holds for you. If it's something you can live with, by all means, don't eat them back. No one here will force you to. Make an informed decision and question no further.

I was just answering your suggestion about sticking to 'your goal', and if you dont like your 'goal' you should change it. I cant change it on MFP, that's my point. Your suggestion:

Is your goal so wrong that you want to lose more, if so just change your goal, then you can still eat your exercise calories and lose your new goal amount of weight. It is a goal for a reason.

...won't work, because I cant 'just change my goal'. MFP's goal is only a guideline for me, my actual goals are higher.

Once I bought a 24/7 monitor that gives me an accurate calorie burn count, I've been losing 4 lbs per week pretty much like clockwork. I'm following my 1k per day caloric deficit (based on my sedentary bmr) strictly, then exercising off another 1k per day: then weigh in every Thursday minus 4 lbs. It's like my diet is a math equation, and I have not felt this healthy in 15 years.

So I hear what you guys are saying about the eating off your calories thing, and if that works for you that's awesome. I'm really just not hungry enough to eat that much, and not eating those calories has been working like clockwork for me. Now that can certainly change in the future, and if so I'll change with it. But for the time being, if it aint broke I aint fixin it...