Eating exercise calories
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1,000 calories from walking? Impressed. How far do you walk?0
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do you eat the extra calories you earn by exercising? I'm doing 1200 a day but after a workout the program then says I have 700 calories left rather than the 400 I left for dinner. Aren't you just erasing your workout?
MFP gives you a calorie goal based on NEAT eg it ignores purposeful exercise
so when you exercise yes you eat them back on top of your initial calorie allowance from MFP - but best to eat 50-75% of machine / MFP database estimates and judge on your weight loss
you need to fuel your body to workout
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christinev297 wrote: »galgenstrick wrote: »I'll eat them or half of them if I know I worked hard that day. If I just walked or something, then I won't eat those back.
Shut the front gate!
So when I burn 1000 calories from walking, then I shouldn't bother counting those? Because piddly walking doesn't count as exercise....
OP I try not to eat my exercise calories back, but sometimes I just have to lol It is then I hope and pray that my fitbit and mfp is giving me accurate numbers. As long as I'm in the green at the end of the day all is good.
I remember the days when you were a couch potato
:bigsmile:
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If I didn't eat them back I'd probably quit my diet...0
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christinev297 wrote: »galgenstrick wrote: »I'll eat them or half of them if I know I worked hard that day. If I just walked or something, then I won't eat those back.
Shut the front gate!
So when I burn 1000 calories from walking, then I shouldn't bother counting those? Because piddly walking doesn't count as exercise....
OP I try not to eat my exercise calories back, but sometimes I just have to lol It is then I hope and pray that my fitbit and mfp is giving me accurate numbers. As long as I'm in the green at the end of the day all is good.
I remember the days when you were a couch potato
:bigsmile:
aaahh yes, I was pretty bad!
Getting a fitbit was the best thing I could have done. I'm addicted now!!
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christinev297 wrote: »christinev297 wrote: »galgenstrick wrote: »I'll eat them or half of them if I know I worked hard that day. If I just walked or something, then I won't eat those back.
Shut the front gate!
So when I burn 1000 calories from walking, then I shouldn't bother counting those? Because piddly walking doesn't count as exercise....
OP I try not to eat my exercise calories back, but sometimes I just have to lol It is then I hope and pray that my fitbit and mfp is giving me accurate numbers. As long as I'm in the green at the end of the day all is good.
I remember the days when you were a couch potato
:bigsmile:
aaahh yes, I was pretty bad!
Getting a fitbit was the best thing I could have done. I'm addicted now!!
it's being able to eat all the foodz
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christinev297 wrote: »christinev297 wrote: »galgenstrick wrote: »I'll eat them or half of them if I know I worked hard that day. If I just walked or something, then I won't eat those back.
Shut the front gate!
So when I burn 1000 calories from walking, then I shouldn't bother counting those? Because piddly walking doesn't count as exercise....
OP I try not to eat my exercise calories back, but sometimes I just have to lol It is then I hope and pray that my fitbit and mfp is giving me accurate numbers. As long as I'm in the green at the end of the day all is good.
I remember the days when you were a couch potato
:bigsmile:
aaahh yes, I was pretty bad!
Getting a fitbit was the best thing I could have done. I'm addicted now!!
it's being able to eat all the foodz
Man, makes every minute of exercise so worth it
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I don't. One, I feel the calorie burns are exaggerated. Two, I know I'll probably go to an event this weekend and eat/drink with abandon. Doing it this way makes my calories balance out over the week.
^^not this ^^
This is one of the things that leads to weight gain. People exercise and then tell themselves that means they deserve to eat more later. Even if you want want a day when you eat more than on other days, you should never "eat/drink with abandon."0 -
I eat at least 50% of them back and have lost weight well.0
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If I didn't eat mine back, I would be at a dangerously low deficit, and I suspect that my body would be burning off muscle to fuel itself (not good - This really does "erase" your workout!)
I keep my net intake at about 1700, which for me means a total intake of about 3000 on a typical day. I've been losing steadily at the expected rate, approximately 0.5kg (1 lb) per week.
Does make rest days difficult though, as my appetite is "tuned" to receiving 3000 calories worth of food, so if I have a day off I have to be very careful with what I eat. I tend to make rest days coincide with maintenance days for this reason.
One thing to be careful of though: MFP will quite often vastly overestimate the calories that you burned through exercise, so if you can't get an accurate number then try dividing MFP's estimate by 2 before logging it.0 -
I keep my net intake at about 1700, which for me means a total intake of about 3000 on a typical day. I've been losing steadily at the expected rate, approximately 0.5kg (1 lb) per week.
I'm curious how you got your calorie number. MFP placed me at 1200 calories but I'm told that may not be enough and that is why my weight is not going down even as my body changes shape.0 -
christinev297 wrote: »galgenstrick wrote: »I'll eat them or half of them if I know I worked hard that day. If I just walked or something, then I won't eat those back.
Shut the front gate!
So when I burn 1000 calories from walking, then I shouldn't bother counting those? Because piddly walking doesn't count as exercise....
OP I try not to eat my exercise calories back, but sometimes I just have to lol It is then I hope and pray that my fitbit and mfp is giving me accurate numbers. As long as I'm in the green at the end of the day all is good.
Agreed when I was doing NEAT I ate them all back...heck sometimes I would walk to eat something I wanted like ice cream in the summer.
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I'm curious how you got your calorie number. MFP placed me at 1200 calories but I'm told that may not be enough and that is why my weight is not going down even as my body changes shape.
I'm a competitive cyclist and have a power meter on my bike which accurately gives me my energy expenditure for all the riding I do. Methods based on speed/heart rate etc are all likely to overestimate.
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TimothyFish wrote: »I don't. One, I feel the calorie burns are exaggerated. Two, I know I'll probably go to an event this weekend and eat/drink with abandon. Doing it this way makes my calories balance out over the week.
^^not this ^^
This is one of the things that leads to weight gain. People exercise and then tell themselves that means they deserve to eat more later. Even if you want want a day when you eat more than on other days, you should never "eat/drink with abandon."
Tell me how it leads to weight gain as I have never been overweight in my life. Notice in my statement I said "I dont, I feel, I know I'll" don't knock what doesn't work for you. I was simply stating what works for me.
Additionally, I said I DONT eat my exercise calories... but yet your'e saying "people exercise then tell themselves they deserve to eat more later"... aka eating your exercise calories.
ETA: If you plan on going to a social event in your life I hope you enjoy yourself and indulge once in a while.0 -
TimothyFish wrote: »I don't. One, I feel the calorie burns are exaggerated. Two, I know I'll probably go to an event this weekend and eat/drink with abandon. Doing it this way makes my calories balance out over the week.
^^not this ^^
This is one of the things that leads to weight gain. People exercise and then tell themselves that means they deserve to eat more later. Even if you want want a day when you eat more than on other days, you should never "eat/drink with abandon."
Tell me how it leads to weight gain as I have never been overweight in my life. Notice in my statement I said "I dont, I feel, I know I'll" don't knock what doesn't work for you. I was simply stating what works for me.
Additionally, I said I DONT eat my exercise calories... but yet your'e saying "people exercise then tell themselves they deserve to eat more later"... aka eating your exercise calories.
ETA: If you plan on going to a social event in your life I hope you enjoy yourself and indulge once in a while.
What you implied is that you exercised, therefore, you can now go eat and drink with abandon. Perhaps you are one of these people whose "eating with abandon" isn't excessive. But most people who eat with abandon eat too much and people who use the fact that they exercised as a reason why they can eat more tend to eat even more than those who don't.0 -
TimothyFish wrote: »TimothyFish wrote: »I don't. One, I feel the calorie burns are exaggerated. Two, I know I'll probably go to an event this weekend and eat/drink with abandon. Doing it this way makes my calories balance out over the week.
^^not this ^^
This is one of the things that leads to weight gain. People exercise and then tell themselves that means they deserve to eat more later. Even if you want want a day when you eat more than on other days, you should never "eat/drink with abandon."
Tell me how it leads to weight gain as I have never been overweight in my life. Notice in my statement I said "I dont, I feel, I know I'll" don't knock what doesn't work for you. I was simply stating what works for me.
Additionally, I said I DONT eat my exercise calories... but yet your'e saying "people exercise then tell themselves they deserve to eat more later"... aka eating your exercise calories.
ETA: If you plan on going to a social event in your life I hope you enjoy yourself and indulge once in a while.
What you implied is that you exercised, therefore, you can now go eat and drink with abandon. Perhaps you are one of these people whose "eating with abandon" isn't excessive. But most people who eat with abandon eat too much and people who use the fact that they exercised as a reason why they can eat more tend to eat even more than those who don't.
You've misinterpreted.0 -
I eat some, not all.0
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I eat my exercise calories back most of the time. Sometimes I only eat some of them, sometimes all. It really just depends on if I'm hungry and how accurate I feel my logging was for the day. For example, I had sushi last night at a restaurant which I obviously couldn't weigh so I don't know how accurate my calories were, so I didn't eat back my exercise calories that night. I also wasn't hungry.
I'm sure this has been said already, but mfp sets you at a deficit without exercising at all. So if your calorie allotment is 1200, that is probably around 500 or so cals less than your body burns a day doing normal non exercise activity. If you exercise you're just making that deficit larger. With a 1200 calorie limit, you really need to be eating back your exercise calories since 1200 is the minimum for women to function. If you keep eating too little you could start having side effects from it like severe muscle loss, hair loss, etc.0 -
TimothyFish wrote: »If the only reason you are working out is to burn calories, then yes, you are erasing your workout. You might as well not even do it. But most of the health benefits come from exercise rather than from being thin. Instead of looking at it like eating your exercise calories is erasing your workout, look at it as, the extra fat you are carrying around is detrimental to your workout.
This doesn't even make sense in terms of how mfp is set up. Now, if your daily allowance is set at maintenance and the exercise is the only way you get a deficit, that's different. But considering mfp is set up to where you are at a deficit anyway, it doesn't. If someone is set at 1200 cals, they really don't need a larger deficit. If the goal is weight loss then an individual should be working out to either 1) give them more calories or 2) preserve muscle mass (or both). If they want to build muscle they should eat at maintanence.0 -
I generally don't eat my exercise calories back. If I'm really hungry I will eat some of them.
My doctor recommended MFP and when I asked her about eating exercise calories back, she told me not to. That said, I do monitor my total calorie expenditure (TDEE) and what I'm eating to make sure my deficit isn't too low.
I figure not eating them also helps to offset the overestimation of burns and the underestimation of food if I go out. For example, my family wants to go to a Chinese buffet tonight. I will do my best to log what I eat, but it will all be estimates of portions and estimates of how many calories are in something. I'm bound to be wrong and likely will underestimate. My exercise calories will help offset that.0
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