Excersize calories

Run_Away_Turtle
Run_Away_Turtle Posts: 47 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I am a bit confused. Should I be replacing the calories burned during excersize in my total daily goal or not if I want to lose weight?

Replies

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    If your calorie goal is coming from MFP, it's designed for you to eat back the calories burned through exercise. However, many users have found that the calorie burn estimates provided by MFP are over-estimates, so they eat back only a portion of the calories as a result (25-75%).

  • AJ_G
    AJ_G Posts: 4,158 Member
    The calorie deficit is built into your default calorie intake. Any exercise calories can and should be eaten back. That being said, exercise calories tend to be overestimated, even by MFP, so I personally recommend that you only eat back between 1/2 and 3/4 of the calories that MFP gives you for exercise.
  • Run_Away_Turtle
    Run_Away_Turtle Posts: 47 Member
    Thank you both so much! It seemed counter productive to me.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    Run_Away_Turtle wrote: »
    Thank you both so much! It seemed counter productive to me.

    Nope. Your MFP goal already has a deficit built in. If you're adding exercise, you're increasing the size of the deficit. If you're only exercising a little, it's not that important. But if you're exercising more or if you already have a large deficit, you'll run out of energy and feel not so great if you don't eat back at least SOME of the calories. Even when we're losing weight, our bodies need food.

    Eating back calories helps reduce the amount of muscle that we lose (a large deficit means that we can lose more muscle than fat) and it also really helps us feel happy and healthy while losing weight.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    edited November 2015
    Run_Away_Turtle wrote: »
    Thank you both so much! It seemed counter productive to me.

    you have to understand the methodology being used...your calorie targets on MFP are derived as per your stats, goals, and activity level WITHOUT exercise...meaning if you just hit your targets consistently without doing any exercise, you'd lose weight...your deficit for weight loss is built into your diet. exercise activity would thus be an unaccounted for activity for which you should account for somewhere.

    the purpose of exercise is overall health and well being and fitness...not trying to out run your diet. learning to fuel your fitness is pretty important, particularly if you really get into actually training. proper nutrition and learning to properly fuel your training is highly critical to performance and recovery. most "overtrain" issues aren't really a matter of truly overtraining but rather a matter of underfeeding that training which causes your body to breakdown. regular exercise is very good for you...but it can also be a major stress on the body...proper rest and nutrition are important to your recovery and allowing your body to repair itself.

    diet for weight management; exercise for fitness.
  • Run_Away_Turtle
    Run_Away_Turtle Posts: 47 Member
    I'm so glad I asked. This is fantastic.

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