Eating back the calories burned in exercise
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Laurie5lee
Posts: 6 Member
I have always been good at staying faithful to my exercise routine, but now I am tracking it on the fitness diary. My question is, am I sabotaging my attempts to lose 10 pounds if I eat back those calories? Should I instead just stick to my caloric intake and then record my exercise, taking it as a bonus towards meeting my goal?
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Replies
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I eat back about 50% of my exercised calories, I think you need to reward yourself!0
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When you set up your account, you should set it up to NOT include exercise in your activity level. (For instance, I work out 6 days a week, fairly hard, but my account is set to lightly active, because during the rest of the time, just everyday life, I am not very active). Then you log and eat back your exercise calories.
If you included exercise in your activity level, then you would not log and eat back exercise calories. But MFP is set up to use as I explained above.0 -
^^Both great responses. I also eat back some, but not all, and also make sure I average a deficit over several days. For example, sometimes after a long run my appetite is non existant and I eat way too little, and the next day I have to eat everything in sight. But the day after I'll be back to normal, etc. My basic rule is that if I'm hungry, I need to eat. Your stomach usually doesn't rumble if you've had enough food.0
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Thank you so much to all of you for your input. That was very helpful. I had not considered all those things..0
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Thank you, tigerblue. I just reset my activity level to lightly active, and my recommended calorie intake dropped. I should see more progress now.
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When you set up your account, you should set it up to NOT include exercise in your activity level. (For instance, I work out 6 days a week, fairly hard, but my account is set to lightly active, because during the rest of the time, just everyday life, I am not very active). Then you log and eat back your exercise calories.
If you included exercise in your activity level, then you would not log and eat back exercise calories. But MFP is set up to use as I explained above.
Ditto this!0 -
Oh, boy! I suppose I need to do the same(?) I recently made some changes to my profile & it's set on active. Mainly because I know these coming weeks will be really tough for me & I'm going to be working my butt off. I read that in the second month of Insanity, there's a possibility of seeing a calorie burn in the thousands. I noticed when I changed my profile, it went from 1300 to 1670 calories. I'm still learning how to manage my calories along with the activity that I've been doing ... so any advice is welcome!0
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For me it works better to set my daily activity lower (not including exercise) and then log and eat back exercise. I also correct for the calories that I would be burning if I was not exercising by subtracting the number of minutes exercised from the calories burned because I know that if I just sit, I burn about 60 calories an hour, and those are already accounted for in my daily goal. For me, the MFP calorie burns for exercise are fairly accurate. I wore a heart rate monitor for awhile and it read very similar to the MFP numbers for exercise. I hear other people saying MFP overestimates exercise burns for them. I guess it is just trial and error on that! Unless you have a heart rate monitor or activity monitor.0
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I have my activity level low w/ a goal of losing 1-2 lbs a week. MFP set my calorie intake at 1200. I eat back all the calories I burn in workouts and still see results. I've lost 18 lbs in about 2 months. I have looked into other calorie calculators and they all suggest 1400+ calorie intake to lose the same amount. So....you will need to find the balance that your body responds to. I should also note that I'm hypoglycemic so I can't skip meals without running into other problems.0
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I have started changing my activity level every few days. It depends on what I have been doing that day. Some days I just sitting around the house other days I am cleaning and walking the dogs.0
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I set my calories to 1K as a goal. I know I will go over this by about 500 calories on Saturday and Sunday, so if I eat all my fitbit calories, I will be at about 1200 calories on average for the week. I think the fitbit may be over estimating my calorie burn though, because while I've lost fat and I'm losing dress sizes, I am losing very, very, very slowly. I wish there was a way to adjust your fitbit calorie count, you know a button where you could say "I think fitbit is calculating my calories too high" and it would drop the count by 10%, because it is soooo easy to track with the two synched.
On the other hand, I'm not gaining when I exercise back from extra calories I eat, so maybe it's me. . .I'm at a healthy body fat % right now. I just want my size 10 shorts to be fall-off-my-hip big and to wear a high waisted bikini in September, and I'm getting there.
I could fast diet, which always works for me and more and more research says is perfectly okay, but I'm not sure I want to at the moment. Maybe if I'm not in that swimsuit in late July, LOL!0 -
You can use websites, I like IIFYM.com, to calculate a TDEE. It takes into account your daily activity and workouts. That way you eat to your goals without having to think about exercise. Listening to your body is also a great indicator!0
