Eating back exercise calories?

Depends on how you're progressing toward your goal.

There is no consensus on this.

Many members of these forums eat back half their exercise calories.

I tend to ignore my exercise calories but sometimes eat back a small amount.

When I was trying to lose I ate back around 50 - 75% of exercise calories, as long as I was logging accurately I consistently lost.
I now follow TDEE method, my maintenance calories are 2300, I can eat that amount to maintain and if I want to lose I just eat at deficit of that total.

You should, but just remember that you should eat back net exercise calories, not gross exercise calories and some estimators tend to be off for some people. But yes, if you calculate your exercise calories correctly, you should eat those calories.

If / How much of exercise calories to eat can be easily determined after answering two questions
1) Are you exercising specifically to increase your healthy deficit ?
2) How accurate is your calorie expenditure estimate/logging ?

If your answer to #1 is yes, then don't eat the cals, but try to eat the increased protein.

If your answer to #1 is no, then eat the increased protein, and you can safely eat a % of the total calories based on accuracy rate. IE if you think its 50/50 chance its accurate, eat back 50% of the calories. If your using a high quality HRM with 95%+ accuracy, then you can eat them all.

That is a starting point, then adjust/tweak based on results history.

kimbulie wrote: »

All the answers are what I suspected...that there's no definite answer, right or wrong!

There is a correct answer, and as stated, it depends on how you have set up your goals, and how accurate you are in tracking. You haven't supplied those variables, so nobody can give you a definitive answer about what is the best course for you.

Nuke_64 wrote: »

kimbulie wrote: »

All the answers are what I suspected...that there's no definite answer, right or wrong!

I think the correct answer is based on your results. If your goal is to lose 2 lbs/ week, that is what you are achieving (on average) and you aren't eating back your exercise calories, then you are dialed in. If you are losing more than you planned, then you should eat some back (say 50% like others do) and see what the results are.

It depends. Your example is 2 pounds a week (I know it's an example).

But let's say OP is looking to lose 2 pounds a week. If so, she has unrealistic goals and would be alloted 1200 net calories. Your advice would be eat nothing back to achieve that unrealistic goal. Eating calories back should be based on results.....but some people have it wrong from the beginning.

OP - is you are seeing a daily goal of 1200 net calories I would be concerned that your weekly goal is too high. 1200 net is MFPs minimum. 1200 is appropriate for petite, senior ladies.

Within 10 pounds of goal you should be looking for 1/2 pound a week, 1 pound a week is appropriate for awhile. Hunger is not a good indicator of adequate nutrition.

kimbulie wrote: »

All the answers are what I suspected...that there's no definite answer, right or wrong!

actually, there is...people are just woefully ignorant.

you have to account for exercise somewhere. there are basically two methods used for calorie counting...the NEAT method (MFP) and the TDEE method.

With the NEAT method, your activity level only consists of your day to day hum drum...this is why MFP only talks about what kind of work you do (i.e. desk job or whatever) and makes no mention of exercise...you set your activity to account for only your day to day hum drum and your calorie targets are based on that. Suffice it to say that when you exercise, you are going beyond your daily hum drum...thus increasing your energy (calorie) requisites...thus you would eat back exercise calories to account for that extra activity.

With the TDEE method, you include an estimate of your exercise in your activity level...a TDEE calculator will then give you a calorie target based on you day to day AND your exercise...thus your calorie targets would already include some estimate of the energy required to fuel your fitness.

The difficulty with the MFP method and calorie counting in general is that people tend to not be very accurate...they choose erroneous entries from the database...they eyeball servings...they don't actually account for everything going into their mouth, etc...people in general tend to underestimate their intake. On top of that, they also tend to overestimate their exercise burns...so the net effect of all of those inaccuracies for someone eating back exercise calories is often maintenance and not losing weight.

Done properly and being as accurate as possible, the MFP method works...I lost 40 Lbs eating back exercise calories using the MFP method...it's just that it requires a high degree of accuracy as well as consistency.

All that said, it's important to learn how to fuel your fitness...when you start to look at fitness for the sake of fitness rather than as a weight management tool, it makes sense. I ride roughly 80 miles per week...if I didn't know how to properly fuel that, I'd be on my *kitten*. If you watch fit and healthy people closely, you will notice that they do not diet and exercise...they eat and they train.